Economists Are Not Therapists
27th May 2017
Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, explains the nature of reality to some who Really Need it.
For the first time I see something that I don’t recall seeing in the past – namely, economists who endorse free trade are often criticized, as they are here, for not being emotional or psychological or spiritual therapists.
I have nothing against such therapists. I have nothing against people who use such therapists. Such therapists, I’m sure, often do genuine good for those suffering loss, grief, anguish, anger, anxiety, fear, or depression. But I’m an economist and not a therapist. My job is to address people’s actual concerns insofar as these concerns are about how the economy actually works and what are the likely consequences of government interventions. My job is not to sugar coat reality. My job is not to hide reality from the public. And it certainly isn’t to distort reality. (Politicians and media personalities do quite enough of that.)
A favorite cliché of the proglodyte Left is ‘We don’t care how much you know until we know how much you care.’ Such people are morons who put ‘feeling’ ahead of ‘thinking’, which results as you see them in places where the proglodyte Left rule, from the Left Coast to Venezuela. Those who feel first and think later are responsible for a lot of the suffering in this world, not least because they feel free to oppress people who don’t agree with them and act the same way. These Care Bares are the ones that encourage stupid shit, like crossing the Mediterranean in a makeshift boat in the hopes of getting a free ride once they get to Europe, and evil shit, like encouraging a young mother to kill her child so that she is spared from dealing with the consequences of her own thoughtlessness.