EPISODE · Jun 22, 2026 · 53 MIN
In Defence of Economists #148
from The Western Bubble · host Balder Hageraats & Dario Hasenstab
This week Balder defends his own people. A YouTube video titled "Economists are full of shit" and the hundred-plus likes underneath it sparked this episode, and the underlying complaint is understandable: a generation that was promised growth has watched that growth show up everywhere except their own bank accounts. But the target of that anger is wrong. Economists study economic behaviour. Politicians decide what to do with that knowledge. The neoliberal consensus that dominated policy from the 1980s onwards was a political choice, not an inevitable conclusion handed down by the discipline of economics itself.The data makes the disconnect impossible to miss. GDP and median household income moved together until the 1990s, then diverged sharply. Productivity and hourly compensation tell the same story from 1970 onwards. Nearly 40 percent of Americans could not cover an unexpected expense without significant strain on their savings, despite a quarter century of consistent GDP growth. None of that is a failure of economics as a science. It is a failure of politics to ask economists the right questions, namely how do we improve human wellbeing, rather than how do we maximise growth and assume the rest follows.We also dig into Gary Stevenson's viral critique of how economics is taught, which gets the methodology problem mostly right while building an oversimplified enemy out of an entire profession, and a Novara Media clip on China that shows exactly the same instinct from the opposite political direction: reaching for a tribe instead of an analysis. Economics is a soft science. It will sometimes get things wrong. That does not make it worthless, and confusing the discipline with the politicians who misused it is its own kind of Western Bubble thinking.This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at [email protected].
What this episode covers
This week Balder defends his own people. A YouTube video titled "Economists are full of shit" and the hundred-plus likes underneath it sparked this episode, and the underlying complaint is understandable: a generation that was promised growth has watched that growth show up everywhere except their own bank accounts. But the target of that anger is wrong. Economists study economic behaviour. Politicians decide what to do with that knowledge. The neoliberal consensus that dominated policy from the 1980s onwards was a political choice, not an inevitable conclusion handed down by the discipline of economics itself.The data makes the disconnect impossible to miss. GDP and median household income moved together until the 1990s, then diverged sharply. Productivity and hourly compensation tell the same story from 1970 onwards. Nearly 40 percent of Americans could not cover an unexpected expense without significant strain on their savings, despite a quarter century of consistent GDP growth. None of that is a failure of economics as a science. It is a failure of politics to ask economists the right questions, namely how do we improve human wellbeing, rather than how do we maximise growth and assume the rest follows.We also dig into Gary Stevenson's viral critique of how economics is taught, which gets the methodology problem mostly right while building an oversimplified enemy out of an entire profession, and a Novara Media clip on China that shows exactly the same instinct from the opposite political direction: reaching for a tribe instead of an analysis. Economics is a soft science. It will sometimes get things wrong. That does not make it worthless, and confusing the discipline with the politicians who misused it is its own kind of Western Bubble thinking.This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at [email protected].
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In Defence of Economists #148
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