Activities
1. Is Economics Really So Hard?
We give a last word to our favorite economist, Henry George -- from his 1877 speech "The Study of Political Economy"The discoveries of other sciences may challenge pernicious ideas, but the conclusions of political economy involve pecuniary interests, and thus thrill directly the sensitive pocket-nerve.... Macaulay has well said that, if any large pecuniary interest were concerned in denying the attraction of gravitation, that most obvious of physical facts would not lack disputers. This is just the difficulty that has beset and still besets the progress of political economy. The man who is, or who imagines that he is, interested in the maintenance of a protective tariff, may accept all your professors choose to tell him about the composition of the sun or the evolution of species, but, no matter how clearly you demonstrate the wasteful inutility of hampering commerce, he will not be convinced. And so, to the man who expects to make money out of a railroad-subsidy, you will in vain try to prove that such devices to change the natural direction of labour and capital must cause more loss than gain....Now, while the interests thus aroused furnish the incentive, the complexity of the phenomena with which political economy deals makes it comparatively easy to palm off on the unreasoning all sorts of absurdities as political economy.... But what is far worse than any amount of pretentious quackery is that the science even as taught by the masters is in large measure disjointed and indeterminate. As laid down in the best text-books, political economy is like a shapely statue but half hewn from the rock... That it is so, you may see for yourselves in the failure of political economy to give any clear and consistent answer to most important practical questions such as the industrial depressions which are so marked a feature of modern times, and in confusions of thought which will be obvious to you if you carefully examine even the best treatises. Strength and subtlety have been wasted in intellectual hair-splitting and super-refinements, in verbal discussions and disputes, while the great highroads have remained unexplored. And thus has been given to a simple and attractive science an air of repellent abstruseness and uncertainty.
Please answer the following questions:
- According to George, why is economic science more muddled and misrepresented than other sciences?
- George made this speech over 125 years ago. Do you think he would change his remarks today? Explain your answer.
- What is meant by "a shapely statue but half hewn from the rock"?
- What point is George making about people's rationale for defending protective tariffs?
- What are some questions to which the field of economics still hasn't given good answers?
2. A Crossword Puzzle
In each lesson, you have been presented with an array of economic terms, presented (in the online version) in the left-hand column on the screen. You have to know these terms, if you're ever going to be able to talk knowledgeably on the topic of economics! We've incorporated many of those terms into a crossword puzzle, to help you review!| Reading for this lesson | Teacher's Notes | Further Investigations | Economic Studies Index |