In this Freeman piece, economics professor Sandy Ikeda discusses the risible idea raised by an economics prof in Britain (along with a number of so-called students) that universities stop teaching free market approaches to economics and instead teach Marxian and Keynesian economics, which are supposedly more in touch with “the real world.” Ikeda argues that the British prof has it exactly backwards. Marxian and Keynesian thinking is built upon flawed “models” of how the world works, whereas Austrian economic analysis starts with the decision-making of actual people.
One reason why so many people find economics baffling is that professors who they’ve had are imbued with the notion that economics is about abstract models presented to students through mathematics.
