I started studying economics already when I was in high school. It was part of an advanced curriculum at the boarding school in the UK where I spent my last 3 years of schooling.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I picked economics other than for the fact that I was kind of nerdy and liked numbers... and it seemed to have more practical applications than just theoretical mathematics. As it turned out I did fairly well in my classes — two years worth — but ultimately found it to be somewhat dull.
Subsequently, I studied economics again as part of the business curriculum when I was at university. In this second instance it wasn't so much because I liked economics, as for the fact that most of the material covered I had already visited in high school so the economics classes offered up what seemed like an easy way to get an A.
At the same time, I was also taking quite a number of psychology courses and what struck me — and what started me arguing with quite a few of my professors in the Business School — what's the fact that all the economic theory we kept covering seemed to completely ignore human nature. It was like the numbers and the theories existed only in a bubble that could not be applied in the real world even though sensible experts all over the place seemed to be doing precisely that.
I suppose the biggest fallacy I kept running into — and kept arguing with professors about — was this concept that sits at the core of much economic theory that there is this "rational and well informed consumer" that drives economic systems. This individual even has a name: "Homo Economicus."
If there is anything I have learned about human beings is that most are neither rational nor well informed! Which, in turn, means that much economic theory is based on a core fallacy about how people behave in the real world.
I think the broader public in the USA became more aware of economics during the period when Ronald Reagan was president. The term "voodoo economics" came about, which we also ended up hearing as "trickle down economics."
Which leads to yet another fallacy which is this notion that as long as companies and corporations are left alone to maximize profit and maximize shareholder value everybody in society will become better off. Which, of course, we've now had 50 years to prove is not true. Profitable companies do not invest in people and modernizing plant, they invest in stock buybacks to drive up the stock price.
Of course, that was a gross generalization, but it is representative of the dominant paradigm.
But it's part of the "mythology" of the economics we've had in the USA since the early 1970s; we have the myth that raising wages is bad, as well as taxes are bad, and companies should be free to do whatever they want to do.
Whether I agree or disagree with that, it represents a narrative that is so thoroughly embedded in the financial world that anybody who dares to challenge it — even with thorough evidence and documentation — will automatically be escorted out of the building because it does not fit the ”desired narrative.”
For example, researchers Card and Krueger’s now (in)famous 1994 study showing that in an area of New Jersey that increased minimum wages the economy actually got better, employment increased was all but banned from all academic and government publications. Moreover the two researchers were all but "excommunicated" from financial circles… until Card was eventually awarded a Nobel Prize in economics for that same work in 2021. Go figure...
Which brings us back to the problem with economics which is that we have a particular narrative that is so deeply entrenched that all alternatives are automatically excluded... even when those alternatives prove that there are better solutions than the ones we currently have.
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