True or false: 9 out of 10 economists are paid to say what rich capitalists want to hear

[brentspeak]

By "true or false", I mean "in general", not literally. Maybe it's more like 7 out of 10.

Here's a good example of an economist who's clearly in the employ of corporations: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/globespotting/archives/2009/05/slaughters_defe.html">Matthew Slaughter, associate dean of business economics at Tufts University School of Business. Do a Google search for his other pearls of economic wisdom. You'll find him advocate for outsourcing, advocate for insourcing (H-1B visas), defending China's manipulation of their currency, and advocate for the Fed NOT to be audited.

(I borrowed my header from another DUer's post I read the other week).

[Hippo_Tron]

1. SOME economists are employed by corporations or receive grants from them

And in those cases any good economist would tell you to be skeptical of what those people have to say since they have an incentive to say things that are positive about the people signing their paychecks.

My experience with economists have mostly been in a university setting and I have to tell you that they are pretty apolitical for the most part, at least in their work. Economics is really about understanding how people and how markets work, not about advocating any particular policy. Some economists choose to go into the policy realm and do advocate for particular policies, but most of them don't. But economics is not really about policy, it is about understanding things better.

For example, in my International Trade class we studied models that show the benefits and costs of both free trade and protectionism. Not once did the professor "advocate" for one side over the other because that's not what economics is about. Economics (in this case) is about understanding the benefits and costs of protectionism and free trade better than we already do. Economists want to make new discoveries on this front just as Astronomers want to discover new galaxies or Marine Biologists want to discover new life forms. What policymakers do with these discoveries is a different story completely.