I am not an economist, just an ordinary artist and activist that cares, and I am very concerned about the interview you printed in last week’s Real Change with Dean Baker [“Tools of free trade,” RC, Nov. 13]. I am concerned because the way that Mr. Baker speaks in this interview is no different from the way any of the people he claims to be his adversaries speak. It is an exclusive way of speaking and as so, heavily persuasive as to be reminiscent of a car salesman. One gets the impression that he is trying to sell you his solutions and assert that his economic theory is the right one. However, he doesn’t really give us enough information about his economic theory to decide that; he mostly was saying a lot of sympathetic words to make it appear that he is on the side of the poor. What I did understand of what he was saying sounded scary. Speaking about outsourcing, he suggested opening up white collar jobs like doctors and lawyers to outsourcing as the solution. So somehow by outsourcing more, we’re supposed to have more jobs. That sounds crazy.
As for “the market” he kept referring to, I was never sure what he was talking about, but I suspect he meant the unregulated market — Friedman economics.
The argument that the disciples of Friedman economics always use when people start to clamor for the regulation of corporations and banks (Friedman economics believes that markets have to be completely free and unregulated) is to say something that places the fault of the continuing financial disasters not in the lack of market regulation but in the fact that the market is not yet free and unregulated enough.
Beware of economists that dazzle you, but don’t really include you in the conversation. The “Trust me, I’m an expert” pitch should put you immediately on your guard because this is a democracy, and we all need to make the decisions about the economy — period. The economist I will listen to will speak in a way that invites me into the conversation, explaining thoroughly why she or he is making each recommendation.
My cousin, Michael Goodwin, wrote a graphic novel called “Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work)” in words and pictures. I think everyone should read it and not just because of my tie to the author. The book was written to empower ordinary people to get in on conversations about the economy because speaking exclusively and encouraging people to place their trust in the experts is a powerful tool for promoting your own agenda and has been used to further Friedman Economic Theory and de-regulation for some time now.
Please don’t put your trust in the experts. There is a strong chance that the experts are completely wrong. Empower yourself and get informed about the economic theories that have gotten us where we are now.