[lkrubner]

"Ordinary people—who watched their rent, groceries, and gas bills skyrocket—saw a profession more invested in protecting Democratic policy narratives than in telling the truth. The result is a self-inflicted torching of trust."

This post is ridiculously partisan. The head of the Fed was Republican, the majority of the Fed has always been Republican, the money-printing response to the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020 when the President was a Republican, the majority of all economists are Republican, but somehow this writer blames this on Democrats? The result is a self-inflicted torching of trust.

[dsjoerg]

> the majority of all economists are Republican

citation for that please? quick Gemini work gives me the opposite so could you please back that up?

Federal Reserve Economists: A 2022 analysis of voter registration data found the ratio of Democrat to Republican economists at the Federal Reserve System to be 10.4 to 1.

American Economic Association (AEA) Members: Studies have found the D:R ratio among AEA members to be around 4:1 or 3.8:1.

Economics Faculty: One study reported that Democrats outnumber Republicans 4.5:1 among economics faculty at 40 leading universities.

General Survey of Economists: A 2003 survey of American Economic Association members found the voting ratio of Democrat to Republican to be 2.5:1.

https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-fall/political-affiliat...

https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-fall/political-affiliat...

https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-fall/political-affiliat...

[Projectiboga]

Yep, I did one of my two majors in Econ, and from that my politics moved left. Single payer is more about better results for less money than "giving something away". The income multiplier, the additional circulation to money for the 12 months after it was received. For the bottom 60 % the money gets spent quickly and locally. Give extra to a multimillionaire they will be in much less of a hurry to spend it, and they often just buy and sell ecpensive things amongst their own class.

[spwa4]

Isn't single payer just a cop-out? A way to allow government (and every economist hopes: they personally) to simple force outcomes on both medical providers and consumers?

Because that will destroy medical care rather than save it. Just look what's happening in Europe (the waiting lists, and the game of attempting to force neighboring countries to carry the costs of training medical personnel)

[_kulang]

As opposed to what? Access being limited to those who can afford exorbitant prices, and medical tourism?

[spwa4]

Medical care will always be limited in the real world, no matter the system. There's a bunch of possibilities:

Limiting what you can be treated for (EU)

Oh and this is horrible too. When the government is forced to implement limits such as this, they always carve out their own care as a special case (yes, Parlementarians and government officials have different, better, health care, especially when it comes to long-term care, coverage outside of your own country and emergencies. The UN has it's own system as well, for example), and they impose limits.

In Belgium there's a joke. There's 2 treatments in Belgium that are not like everything else when it comes to national health insurance: anorexia for teenagers and a certain congenital disease. They are covered despite it being a BIG negative in terms of money for the insurance/state. This is strange, it doesn't match what they "usually" do at all. Now one might go and check if what the daughter of the prime minister is in treatment for (she's a teenager). One might check what the daughter of 2 prime ministers back, French side, is in treatment for (she's much older, which is strange, given that given the particular congenital disease life expectation ... without gene treatment which is normally a no-no for the national insurance. Just look up "Baby Pia" to see how much they fight it normally). I resent identifying the patients involved to this degree, but obviously their family relation to currently in power politicians matters a whole lot in this case.

From everyone else "reasonableness" is required: for example moral limits. E.g. political decisions about organ replacement: no organ replacements allowed if you've been treated for drug addiction at any point in your life. No gene treatments, no matter how life-saving they will be. Strict (and quickly changing) limits to psychological care, as politically convenient at the time. Using changes in coverage to guarantee jobs. Etc.

Limiting how much is covered (US)

Basically you paid in X, you get < X back. Either it covers or it doesn't. Use whatever care you want. The US profit-driven system.

Which do you want?

In practice, of course, to some extent both systems are limited in both ways. You cannot get treatment for absolutely anything in the US, and you cannot really exceed what you pay in for coverage in the EU (you can, however, in both system get insurance to cover you not working for a decade). But the emphasis of the different systems is very different. Mostly the above classification is true.

What was pretty popular when it was available was medical care, limited to cheaper care. Making sure you get expertise when dealing with a broken leg or pregnancy or ... but for example explicitly excluding psychiatric problems (which are really expensive). However, this means the government has to provide a place to live for people who cannot live by themselves and so the government always insists this is included in private insurance. The problem, of course, is that it's both necessary for some people and easy to abuse to get long-term care without a job. Since the government doesn't want to pay for this largely but not entirely abuse of the system, they force it into the insurance.

[conception]

You don’t have to wait for care in America??? Wow!

[softsound]

Such a joke right? It's hard to find a good time to schedule most things if you are scheduled properly. My mom had some surgery were they said we aren't sure the day of your surgery but just in case be prepared. We'll let you know the night before, hope you are ready.

Also care speed isn't that bad in Europe, I went to a few clinics while I was there with short notice and didn't have any issues. Same as America honestly, the price difference though was way better though.

[snapplebobapple]

I did a couple economics degrees at a decent school in Canada in a conservative province and even there 80% of the people were left wing wackadoos so I call bs.

[rayiner]

Economists at the Fed skew Democrat 10 to 1. https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-fall/political-affiliat.... In a 2006 study of economists, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2.5 to 1: https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/KS_PublCh06.pdf

Although it’s not really a partisan issue. Establishment republicans and establish democrats both support the central banking system.

[user____name]

Worth noting this might be more indicative of the state of modern US politics than any bias within the profession. Science professions as a whole overwhelmingly skew Democrat, it's not hard to imagine why.

[JamesBarney]

I'm pretty sure it's that professors skew left, and science professors skew less to the left than other professors.

[filloooo]

The problem is not with economists, running modern economy is kind of like managing a state-owned corporation that can't just drop the none-performative ones, there are going to be unsolvable ills, cycling between imperfect plausible solutions, and a necessary change of path or thinking is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, everytime.

[umutisik]

He should add “Economists confidently making wishful-thinking based proclamations without a shred of evidence or even a plausible logical path.“ to the list!

[alephnerd]

Chris Brunet is part of the Canadian turned American Alt-Right movement having been a worked at the Daily Caller and "The American Conservative" [0]. Sort of like a Canadian and less sharp Oren Cass, and basically the same ideological pipeline that created "Rebel News".

He attempted a pre-doc at UChicago but didn't stand out, and had similar issues at his other conservative employers along with his personality.

One of my buddies was his peer in the program at the time, and from down the grapevine, he was dismissed for some, let's say "academic issues". The reason he failed in his Econ career was for similar reasons a large number of Econ majors can't hack it - they lacked the mathematical and computational sophistication needed in modern Econ.

He was right to call out Christine Gay for academic fraud, but it's a bit of a "pot meet kettle" kind of situation given his academic background.

The stereotype of what Econ is in common parlance is what has become "Political Science" in 2025. To succeed in a modern top tier Econ or PoliSci program, you will need data science and mathematical chops comparable to a bachelors in Applied Math or CS (excluding the systems programming portion). Heck, Government students gunning for grad school back at Harvard tend to take mathematical Game Theory classes with proofs comparable to those taken by CS and Applied Math majors.

This wouldn't have been bad in the policy world (plenty of non-technical "economists" on both sides) but his personality has made the actual Alt-Right and the traditional conservative right both detest him based on my friend and alumni group. One of the other comments on this thread about applied versus think tank and journalist background does resonate to my personal experience to a certain extent.

> the majority of all economists are Republican

I'd disagree with that. The majority of economists ik who ended up in academia or industry are largely split evenly ideologically, but in action don't really care one way or the other. They tend to have a "show me the data" mentality.

On top of that, while UChicago is nowhere near as conservative as it was when Friedman roamed the earth, it's Econ and PoliSci departments are very open to heterodox thought and various conservative leaning Econ and PoliSci grads have come out of the program.

[0] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brunet-28074a288

[imtringued]

>they lacked the mathematical and computational sophistication needed in modern Econ.

From where I'm coming from, no amount of mathematical sophistication is going to save an economist from facing reality.

[lurk2]

Why do you believe the alt-right was Canadian in origin? I was under the impression that it originated in the US.

Tangentially, none of them call themselves “alt-right” anymore; this label was imposed upon three disparate movements (techno-commercialists, ethno-nationalists, and theonomists), rather than one that emerged organically. It was never a particularly popular label on /pol/ or Frog Twitter, for example.

[esseph]

I don't know what Frog Twitter is/was, but it was incredibly popular in many different spheres on twitter, now bluesky.

[ivape]

The money people are generally unconcerned with what they label themselves as. If anything, you are articulating the chameleon’s nature. That creature will masquerade as necessary.

Sound souls don’t go into certain professions. One doesn’t just go into porn, and one doesn’t just find themselves at the Federal Reserve. Your soul is already blasted before you head down these paths.

We never got soulful outputs from these professions because they are a void, no return.

[Citizen_Lame]

Here is another shocker, this writer is also Republican, he used to write for The American Conservative.

[monkeyelite]

> the majority of all economists are Republican

Of mainstream politicians they are most aligned with Obama or Clinton.

The Trump movement since 2016 has taken republicans away from mainstream Economics.

[notmyjob]

Hilariously wrong to anyone who has spent any portion of their career working with actual economists. Every working economist is at the very least classic liberal/neo-liberal. It is the basis of the profession. Political economists don’t really exist now, even if they did they’d be liberal or anarcho/liberal. They worship in the church of free trade and unrestrained immigration. The most famous and influential media economists for those who are not familiar with economics or haven’t interacted with economists are people like Krugman and Robert Reich, or Larry Summers for the better educated. All deep blue democrats. Some economists may lean right and many tend to side against democrats but that’s because they all rightly fear government debt and socialism. They fear it less than tarrifs or tightened border security if you poll them. The most famous economist of all time is Marx!

[erxam]

Economists always do this shit. They talk about the unimpeded free market being some sort of saintly state of being, convince governments to implode themselves, everything goes to shit and… guess what? Apparently the economists had nothing to do with any of it?

Also, just calling the majority of economists 'Republican' doesn't explain it completely. The truth is that the Austrian School of Economics (Mises, Friedman, Hoppe) IS economics, and every single successful economist believes 100% in their gospel.

[notmyjob]

Friedman was not an Austrian. You are ignorant of basic facts. Austrians are fringe and have almost no influence within mainstream econ, and beyond that Austrians are closer to Chomsky than Burke.

[pram]

This isn't exactly true. Marginalism, which is basically taught to the exclusion of any other economic value theory, is largely from Menger.

[erxam]

If they have no influence, then why are they found in every single right-wing government as the architects of the new economic model?

Is Javier Milei not influential? Who or what is influential, then?

> Friedman was not an Austrian

Yeah, ok, he was from the Chicago school. Same shit to me. Whatever mental masturbation they dedicated themselves to is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is which policies they championed, influenced and implemented.

And they seem pretty indistinguishable from each other. At the end of the day, they all loved the holy and sanctimonious free market like a harsh but fair deity who would grind all the undeserving and the rabble into dust.

[rayiner]

I strongly suspect most practicing economists are Keynesians.

[nxm]

Stimulus was required at beginning to avoid a recession. Biden came in when economy was well recovering and overheated the economy, especially with his 2nd stimulus bill resulting in very high inflation

[Braxton1980]

Trump's last stimulus package was on Dec 27th 2020 and Biden's inauguration was on January 20th 2021. The economy went from needing a stimulus package to "well recovering" in less than 30 days?

[ttonelli]

Right, so much stimulus that it caused inflation all over the world!