Larry Elliott has a piece in the Guardian today discussing Patrick Minford, the economic adviser to both Thatcher and Truss. He notes:
The left-leaning economist Richard Murphy says: “Minford has three strengths. He has been willing to think outside the constraints of prevailing economic models that restrict most other economists' thinking. He has been willing to talk about his thinking, which far too few economists do. And he has stuck to his guns.
“He also has three weaknesses. His outside-the-box thinking is based on market fundamentalism, and that has casualties. His ability to forecast has been much worse than that of the average economist, and that's saying something. As a result he has consistently been on the wrong side of events and political need.”
The original quote had another paragraph that did not reach the paper:
Minford's critics need to do three things. They need to create a new box to think in that reflects reality. They need to talk about it. And they need to show they are addressing the public interest. So far, most refuse to do any of those things. That's why Minford is still getting a platform.
In summary, Minford fell out of the wrong side of the box, and we need a new box in any case.
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Accept what you say about Minford, but I also found this comment – also in Larry Elliott’s article – of potential significance (although I accept that for a monetarist what constitutes a ‘Keynesian’ is not necessarily what the rest of us would believe):
‘For his fellow monetarist Tim Congdon, Minford’s views amount to heresy. He says: “It is no secret Patrick and I don’t get on. We go back a long way. I’m in favour of strong public finances and making sure governments can pay their bills. That’s part of what monetarism is about. Patrick has managed to get himself known as a monetarist without believing any of this stuff. Patrick is basically a Keynesian.”’
Weird use of the term
Although Geoff Tily at the TUC wrote a book arguing Keynes was a monetarist
I was not convinced
Well, I know what I’d like to do on Patrick Minford, that’s for sure!
Don’t all laugh at once by the way.
As for Minford, from what I’ve read and seen of him recently, he’s out of date and out of his mind. If only he’d realise it and shut up.
Truss seems to turning No.10 into a Thatcherite memorial theme park!
Larry Elliot’s puff piece on Patrick Minford provided no serious analysis, of Minford’s arguments.
And it seems excessively indulgent (or polite?) to say that his willingness “to think outside the constraints of prevailing economic models . . . to talk about his thinking, which far too few economists do [and to stick} to his guns” constitute “strengths”.
These are characteristics of cranks throughout the ages.
I found this article explaining some economists’ thinking about Minford helpful for understanding what is wrong with his thinking:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/06/02/britain-alone/
To some extent these are strengths. Galileo Galilei, and, more recently, Alfred Wegener (continental drift) and Lynn Margulis (the eucaryotic cell) all had these characteristics and all turned out to be right. I suppose the difference between them and cranks is the point at which they would be willing to give up their ideas. For the crank there is no such point. There is no way of telling whether any of these historical examples would count as cranks by this criterion. If so, it only goes to show that even cranks can be right sometimes.
In all of these cases, it comes back to the scientific method. Make some observations and deduce a hypothesis of an underlying truth, use that hypothesis to infer what might or might not happen next in various cases, and test those predictions from the observed reality,
Any true scientist is cautious about what the “correct” position may or may not be, and willing to change their view if new facts come to light. It is a strength to think for yourself and reach your own conclusions. It is a weakness to persist in beliefs against the evidence.
Galileo was right, not because he was a maverick and contradicted almost everyone else, but because his position was supported by the facts, while his opponents were relying on received wisdom and ideology.
That LSE page says, in effect, that Minford makes bad assumptions, uses bad data, feeds both into bad models, so his predictions cannot be believed. It would be like a climate scientist insisting that his models from the 1970s are still right to show that the world is on the edge of a new Ice Age.
Keynes “when the facts change I change my ideas”. Minford et al are incapable of such change – ideologues/quasi-religio fanatics to a man.
I find it odd that the likes of Elliott needs to attach a dog-whistle label in this case “left leaning” to a discussion on economics. Why not label Minford & his economics right-wing or
quasi-fascist?.
& this was odd: “Patrick has managed to get himself known as a monetarist without believing any of this stuff. Patrick is basically a Keynesian.”…..if true surely that would make him … a hypocrite? Ditto Redwood in the Tory party who apparently buys into MMT as a description of gov finance – but then supports policies which deny the reality.
Lastly, I notice that Elliott did not mention the end result of Minford’s economics – 3 million unemployed by 1981 and the destruction of a large part of UK industry. That in and of itself should have destroyed Minford’s reputation – but Minford and Elliott are part of “the in-crowd” & as such only half-baked mild criticism is allowed.
The problem, of course, is that the claim that ‘monetarists were right’ and the ‘lefty economists were wrong’ in the early 1980s is still being promulgated, pretty much every time that a right-wing politician says something stupid about what their policies will do. The myth that the 364 economists who wrote the letter to The Times were wrong about Thatcher’s policies in the early 1980s is something still believed to this day (good run-down of this in the link) and it wouldn’t surprise me if Truss was an adherent to this through ignorance of what actually occurred. She’s known for railing against the conventional wisdom again and again and this incident is the perfect example reinforcing a ‘lefty economists are wrong’ narrative which has been pushed by the media since then. See also ‘expansionary austerity’ under Osborne where they realised they’d got it completely wrong and quietly increased spending without admitting as such, claiming that we had a strong recovery after the financial crisis when we clearly hadn’t.
@Mariner
One is unpleasantly reminded of “men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. However as Minford is not actually dead, that may be an exaggeration. At least Truss is unlikely to raise taxes in a recession.
Unfortunately I cannot identify the link you refer to which sets out how amistaken view of the 364 arose/ was perpetuated.
The link should be in my username. It’s an article by William Keegan in the Guardian from 2004!
@Marriner –
Thanks