Street School Economics

A guest post from Dr Gail Bradbrook, an activist based in Stroud who is active in the Transition and Tax Justice movements and sees economic literacy work as a way to pull these concerns together

A few years ago I began my own journey towards economic literacy. I’ve long been concerned about enabling a more equal, sustainable world and yet how that related to changing the economy was a mystery. I had a pile of vague words and notions in my head, sound bites and ideas, half of them myths. They didn’t connect.

With that comes a sense of disempowerment. Perhaps my longings for justice were just silly in the face of basic economic theory. Perhaps the economy emerged from our human nature and wanting it to be different is an exercise in naivety. It’s certainly convenient if lots of us feel like that and if we remain so cloudy in our understanding. Perhaps it’s no accident that many of us do?

Street School Economics was borne of a personal desire to understand more. Dozens of books, hours of videos and courses later, I have pulled together information and sources on: the Street School website.

As well as looking at some of the basics in economics, such as markets, wealth and money, it also covers some key ideas such as debt, the limits to growth and inequality. A whole raft of solutions are offered, from the actions individuals and communities can take, to the policy solutions that are waiting to be actioned. I hope it’s a resource that people will find useful.

So the idea is to take economics on the streets, to listen to people’s thoughts and give information. So far we have begun to create some kind of ‘art presence’ that will catch the eye. We’ve just decorated a marketing stand we had, but you could use other structures. The presence has contained words which might reflect the kinds of ideas, queries and blockages that a person may have in their mind already, for example: ‘Why not let the banks go bankrupt?’ or ‘I’d rather keep my head in the sand’ or ‘We can deal with debt by giving everyone some money’.

We let people browse and if they want a conversation you can ask what they know about economics. Consider what is the one thing you’d like them to take away? For me it is that this economy has been chosen and there are different types available . . .   we might chose an economy that has the goal of maximising happiness and minimising harm. You can have a table with 'mini lessons' on – we laminated the pages from the Prezi on the site. We had leaflets to hand out and also include leaflets from relevant campaigns or local initiatives.

Obviously the idea of this work is to give people enough knowledge to demand something better. There are other ways to promote economic literacy and we are just starting to pull a network together of those interested in spreading this thinking- be in touch if you want more information (gail.bradbrook AT btinternet.com). We could demonstrate outside economics departments, others have run cafe economiques and lecture series. What else should we try, how do we build a movement?

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Creating New Economists

I had a very interesting experience over the weekend while attending university open days. I was enquiring from a young woman encouraging people to take economics how pluralist her course was. She really seemed unable to understand my question. She responded that they taught 'normal' economics. I asked her if this meant neoclassical or whether they also had space for classical or Marxist varieties. She was simply unable to answer.

This is the problem the discipline faces: really nice, well-motivated people who have no conception that there might be other ways of thinking about economics than in terms of supply and demand curves and the marginal analysis. To address this problem the Association of Heterodox Economics is running training in alternative methods for economics, beginning with a course of training for researchers.

The postgraduate workshop on research methods will take place at London Metropolitan University on 10th and 11th February next year. It is funded so places are available free for students. Workshop topics will include:

· Reorienting economics to match method with social material

· Open system methodology in Economics

· Grounded theory in Economics

· Mixing quantitative and qualitative data

· Qualitative data analysis

To book a place you need to contact Andrew Mearman: Andrew.Mearman@uwe.ac.uk.
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Economics Students on the Move

How our economy will be organised in the future relies heavily on how our future economists understand the world and its workings, as well as their values. Economics education is obviously, therefore, of fundamental importance. The movements to reform economics education, shifting it from the realm of theology into one of pluralism and genuine debate, have been followed with interest by this blog.

So it is with delight that I heard this morning of the revolt by Greg Mankiw's students. Manikiw is the author of one of the most widely used introductory textbooks, as described by Geofrey Hodgson:

'Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, in its five versions, has internationally been the dominant basic text for more than a decade. Also its author was chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005.'

Here is the letter his students at Harvard, paying $40,000 for the privilege of biased and distorted information, presented to accompany their walkout from his introductory economics class, according to a US blog:

'Dear Professor Mankiw

Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society.

As Harvard undergraduates, we enrolled in Economics 10 hoping to gain a broad and introductory foundation of economic theory that would assist us in our various intellectual pursuits and diverse disciplines, which range from Economics, to Government, to Environmental Sciences and Public Policy, and beyond. Instead, we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.

A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.'

The students undertook this action to express solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Mankiw is a populist, using his own blog to blandly reassure about the existing economic model, blithely ignoring its destructive impacts and its lack of connection with reality. The fact that his own students are alive to this and are following the example of students in Paris and Cambridge in calling for an economic education that takes seriously the problems of the world we live in is hugely encouraging.
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Suppertime games

One of the most depressing aspect of conventional economics is the way it reduces everything to a self-interested trade. Gary Becker, for example, suggests that women choose their husbands on the basis of the amount they earn; whereas men choose their wives on the basis of their ability to perform at dinner parties and assist the ascent up the slippery pole.

The most blatant expression of this underlying culture amongst economists is what we teach as 'game theory'. This is another jargonistic misnomer, since the situations we deal with are far from convivial evening entertainment. Whoever played games in a police station - the setting for the archetypical example of the genre: the prisoners' dilemma?

This is a game that questions whether you should trust your 'friend' when you've both been caught in some shared criminal activity. You are questioned in separate cells. If you both deny the crime you will both be let off. But if you deny it and your friend confesses, s/he will take all the penalty. If you confess and your friend denies it you will take all the punishment on yourself.

In reality, of course, all of these 'games' and their study become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you take love and spontaneity out of human relationships you can guarantee that you will be unpopular and that most of your friends will be exactly the same calculating sort of person you are yourself. You will become less sociable and be more miserable. Such games are best avoided in life and in economics.

However, I recently heard of a game strategy I liked. It is called Always Generous and is fairly self-explanatory. It fits in well with my moral inclination and is also excellent for dealing with that awkward situation at the end of shared meals in a restaurant when nobody is sure whether they should pay for what they actually consumed or their share of the total.

The Always Generous strategy suggests that you break the deadlock by putting on the table at least a third more than you could owe under either of the other strategies. I've seen this done twice recently and it works a treat. Everybody puts in too much money - the excess can either go to the less well-off around the table or the waiters. When meanness is an option, generosity is always a better bet - in economics, in the restaurant and, most importantly, in life. Tweet