Editors Note: these are personal opinions expressed by myself. I was going to report on the story, but I found it very difficult. Therefore, to maintain the spirit that my blog should be as unbiased as possible, I decided not to run the story.
Sitting in the middle of the aisle, the feeling of indignation washed over me. Did anyone sense the same thing I was feeling too, or was I the only one? The speaker, Lawrence Reed, made an uncomfortable joke about how President Franklin Roosevelt had tried to stuff the Supreme Court in a proposed bill but was shot down, "probably because of all the happenings in Europe and Germany."
I blinked. Reed had mentioned dictatorships and the president of the United States in the same breath. He actually alluded to FDR as be likened to Hitler. Sure, it was inductive, but still.
Students took notes. Of course they would. It was being offered as extra credit for classes. The name of the lecture was indeed called "Lesson from the Great Depression".
And, the allusions to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and today's President Barack Obama were very apparent. When had economics been political? I never realized before.
More astute students would have noticed that the organization paired with the Students for a Free Economy was the Campus Conservatives. However I knew about that, the fact of the matter was that I was not ready to confront the idea that money and politics were two sides of the same coin.
So, as a journalist, I'm now aware that there are two large schools of thought within the economy. Portraying as much as I can from both sides has now become my major goal.
Once a week, I will read from a school of thought and summarize the arguments. Because the job of a journalist, the job of a citizen, the job of a person in this world is to be informed, to stay informed, and to know what's out there.
This is my goal for myself and for you.
Thank you for reading,
R.e. Whipple
Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Stories?
Feel free to e-mail me at whipp1re@cmich.edu
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Economics is the study of human action. Governments always try to control and change and manipulate human action to result in their desired outcomes - certain unemployment rates, wages, etc. - nearly all of what government does is done with some economic goal in mind.
ReplyDeletePoliticians constantly talk of how their plans will affect the economy.
An economist, in merely describing the causal chain of human actions in the market, is "political" because his understanding and explanation either proves or disproves the claims of politicians. It either shows the wisdom of folly in past government actions.
Don't blame economists for being "political"; blame government for meddling in individual human beings economic decisions.
If you're a journalist and you somehow missed the fact that economics and politics are intertwined (indeed, they spring from the very same study and nearly all early economics was called "political economy") I'm not sure what you're been reporting on, but it hasn't been the world around you.
For a look at a use of economic tools applied specifically to government, look into Public Choice Theory.