The Ways That Pop Economics Hurt America

Someone needed to write a book about how economic theory has been abused in American politics. And someone finally did. James Kwak’s “Economism” is a very important and timely book, and anyone who is interested in public affairs should pick up a copy and read it.

Kwak, a law professor at the University of Connecticut, spins a tale of how simple supply-and-demand theory fed a free-market ideology that led to a financial crash, a dysfunctional health-care system, spiraling inequality and a threadbare social-safety net. The basic idea is that by getting everyone to think in Econ 101 terms -- perfectly competitive well-functioning markets, rational well-informed consumers and so on -- free-marketers were able to redefine the terms of the national debate to favor their own interests. With Econ 101 as the default lens through which everyone views the world, Kwak argues, government programs and regulations start to seem dangerous and inefficient, while inequality begins to feel like the natural and just order of things.