Dangerous Economists
Although economists are generally a fairly harmless group there’s the ever present danger that they’ll get someone or other with some real power to actually listen to their beliefs. Once that happens we’re all potentially in trouble as the subtlety of the real-world gets lost in an economic miasma. A case in point was Selective Employment Tax (SET).
Introduced into the UK in the 1960’s it was a levy so self-evidently stupid even most of Britain’s notoriously supine representatives recognised its imbecility. Yet, backed with the imprimatur of one of the foremost economists of the day, the government went ahead and implemented it anyway in the quaint, old-fashioned belief that money earned through manufacturing is somehow “good” and that through services “bad” – just in time to miss the growth of the knowledge economy. Thus proving that the only thing worse than a politician with an idea is an economist with a Big Idea.
Although economists are generally a fairly harmless group there’s the ever present danger that they’ll get someone or other with some real power to actually listen to their beliefs. Once that happens we’re all potentially in trouble as the subtlety of the real-world gets lost in an economic miasma. A case in point was Selective Employment Tax (SET).
Introduced into the UK in the 1960’s it was a levy so self-evidently stupid even most of Britain’s notoriously supine representatives recognised its imbecility. Yet, backed with the imprimatur of one of the foremost economists of the day, the government went ahead and implemented it anyway in the quaint, old-fashioned belief that money earned through manufacturing is somehow “good” and that through services “bad” – just in time to miss the growth of the knowledge economy. Thus proving that the only thing worse than a politician with an idea is an economist with a Big Idea.
