Economists taking over!

What will Economists do when they take over? This is a hilarious post by Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics NYTimes - What would the World Look Like when Economists take over?
If you can, please listen to the podcast - it's funny! An abstract from interview with Russ Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Stephen J Dubner: Okay, let’s play a fantasy game for a minute and pretend that you, Russ Roberts, a creative and very bright economist come to Washington and are put in charge of the whole country. And unlike every other economist that’s ever gone to high office, you don’t start acting like a politician. You really act like an economist from day one. So you get there, you’re behind the desk, you’ve got a pen and paper. What are some of the first things you do as soon as you arrive?

Russ Roberts: I’m getting goose bumps, it’s so exciting. Well, what I would do? Let’s start with some obvious things. I would get rid of the Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce doesn’t do anything except subsidize exports, which is just a way of saying it makes certain companies rich at the expense of the rest of us. So I don’t think the Department of Commerce does anything particularly useful, I would get rid of that. I’d get rid of the Department of Education. I don’t think that the Federal Government has any productive role to play in the school system. I’d get rid of all tariffs. I’d let people be free to buy whatever they wanted from all around the world. What else? I would get rid of the minimum wage law, which I think makes it hard for low-skilled people to find work; it makes them artificially expensive. I’d change the Federal Reserve. We spend a lot of time trying to find the right interest rate. That’s a fool’s game that has contributed to the current crisis. So I would change the Federal Reserve. I would certainly at a minimum require it to only care about price stability. Right now it cares about price stability, unemployment, the health of the stock market, Wall Street salaries, evidently. So I would get all of those things out. It’s going to be hard to do legislatively, so I would probably replace the the Fed with a Friedmanite fixed growth and money supply or just abolish it entirely and let private money emerge. I’m getting out of control here.

THIS IS WHY WE ARE SO UNPOPULAR WITH EVERYONE! But I still love Economics ;)