People can only change politicians. Not economists.

Writing for Bloomberg, Noah Smith despairs about rational economic policy under Donald Trump. "There is a broad consensus that the kind of policies that our president-elect has proposed are among policies that will not work," said Joseph Stiglitz at the annual conference of the American Economic Association. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate so we are entitled to ask him why economic policies did not prevent the Great Recession of 2008. Smith fears that Trump will not listen to the science of economics. Trouble is that economists do not agree with each other. What is "technocracy" to Smith is derided as "mathiness" by Paul Romer. Trump has picked Peter Navarro as Trade Secretary. "He picked Navarro because Navarro's ideas on trade -- basically, that China is screwing the US -- align closely with what Trump already believed," writes Smith. Is he wrong? The US had a trade deficit of a record $343 billion with China in 2015, imports reached a record $483.9 billion, which is about 2.5% of the US GDP of $18 trillion. If some of these imports were manufactured in the US it would create thousands of precious jobs. Besides it is impossible to understand why economists do not accept that China exports disinflation to the US and, by keeping prices low, encouraged the famous Greenspan put, which was largely responsible for the subprime crisis. Smith feels that "....wise, expert leaders should steer policy for the good of all...". How can he say that when the gap between earnings of blacks and whites has increased to 1950s level? "The elite, supported by the vast majority of the economic profession, took the virtues of free trade as a given..." writes Smith. But, Dani Rodrik of Harvard does not agree on the virtues of free trade. Rodrik thinks that the death of the huge trade agreements with Asian countries and Europe, known as TPP and TTIP respectively, is a good thing. Avinash Persaud agrees that global trade lifted over a billion people out of poverty worldwide, but for every $1 earned by the poor the elite took a cut of 44 cents. In a scathing attack Paul Romer wrote,"For more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards." Anantha Nageswaran cites figures to prove that financial markets are teetering on the edge of collapse. In an earlier article Smith himself wrote that monetary policies are not working and maybe it is time for unthinkable ideas, such as increasing interest rates to increase inflation. The rising gap in salaries between the top and bottom is fueling rage in ordinary workers. This was the rage tapped by Karl Marx, what the Germans call "Wutburgers", which means 'angry citizens', writes Jochen Bittner. Citizens cannot change professors, but they can and do change politicians. Professors have to adapt.