Deep Thoughts

Tyler Cowen has two posts up about bad tendencies of economists, one for right-leaning and one for left-leaning. But really both are the same post, and all the items in them sum up to two things:

1. Economists don't understand politics.

Therefore (or also),

2. Economists don't understand economics.

The problem is that economists study how to maximize aggregate utility in a social environment in which that is literally no one's priority. There is some value in understanding the realm of the possible, but it needs to be tempered by context.