Wackonomics

Walter E. Williams takes on the job of explaining Wackonomics. Williams writes

For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.

His best example is

Wackonomics isn't just practiced by the uninitiated. This year's Nobel Laureate, Princeton University Professor Paul Krugman, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, gave one rendition of wackonomics in his column "After the Horror," New York Times (9/14/01). Krugman wrote, "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack -- like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression -- could do some economic good." He went on to point out how rebuilding the destruction in New York and Washington, D. C., would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation. For practitioners of non-wackonomics, this reasoning doesn't even pass the smell test. If Professor Krugman's vision is correct, and extending his logic, the terrorists would have made an even larger contribution to our economic well-being had they been able to fly a plane into the White House and destroyed buildings in other cities.

Broken window fallacy anyone? Such thinking is not just found in the US, how often here have you seen someone here write that greed is to blame for high oil prices or high CEOs salaries or that things like earthquakes are good for the economy? But Williams also points out that wackonomics isn't all bad,

Wackonomics isn't all bad. There's an upside to it. It spares people the bother of having to understand the complexities of the world.