Sunday, May 11, 2008

Economists: Out-of-Touch Pointed-Headed Academics

I haven't been able to get the following comment on a Freakonomics post about the gas tax holiday off my mind:

What don’t you people understand.

Normal working class Americans do not care about the inner-workings of the economy. They want affordable energy, health care and groceries. If someone can make it so they buy cheaper gas, all the better.

— Posted by doug

Good of Doug to speak on behalf of "normal working class Americans," whoever that is, most economists I know work. Anyway, Doug clearly doesn't (want to?) understand what economists are pointing out when they say "vertical short-run supply curve" and I suppose that falls on us. However, it is the dismissal of the chance that a very complex system may be in place that I find haunting, because if Doug carries this same approach with him to the Hospital and requests leech therapy, the attending doctors who would suggest this to be bad medicine will likely hear the following complaint from him:

What don’t you people understand.

Normal American patients do not care about the inner-workings of the human body. They want to feel good all the time and have lots of energy. If someone can cure them with leeches, all the better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hilarious. Great blog btw.

Unknown said...

Leeches are still used in modern medicine for certain applications:

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/504_leech.html

I think people actually farm them.