Inequality and Stagnation by Policy Design: Mainstream Denialism and Its Dangerous Political Consequences

This chapter argues that the mainstream economics profession is threatened by theories of the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing stagnation which attribute those outcomes to the policies recommended and justified by the profession. Such theories are existentially threatening to the dominant point of view. Consequently, mainstream economists resist engaging them as doing so would legitimize those theories. That resistance has contributed to blocking the politics and policies needed to address stagnation, thereby contributing to a political vacuum which is being filled by odious forces. Those ugly political consequences are unintended, but they are still there. They show the dangerous consequences of the intellectual failure of economics. The critique of mainstream economists is not about "values" or lack of "change": it is about academic practice and lack of pluralism that suppresses ideas which are existentially threatening.