Lies, Damn Lies

Economics students of the future

Sitting in the university library you get to here a lot of conversations. One of the most amusing forms is always the group work that certain courses, generally economics and international development, it seems, have. This work seems to involve them sitting around and talking a lot while getting very little done, which is probably the very definition of a meeting (ho ho ho, office humour).

What they say can be truly disturbing, if one is bored enough with ones own work ( a situation I find myself in a reasonable amount of times a day) to listen. These include asking who the current leader of the conservative party is, something I might expect an economics student to know. Actually I'd hope that any student would know to be honest, but you can't get everything.

Then one student seemed to not, in fact, understand economics. I have never formally studied economics, but I'm pretty sure the statement "well, couldn't governments increase inflation to reduce their debt?", is one that should never be made by anyone who has studied it for any amount of time. When someone did query the gentleman who made this comment on this assertion, he pointed out that if inflation went up, the relative amount they would owe in debt would go down. Which would be true, if interest rates weren't in fact adjusted to increase with inflation.... Otherwise banks might find it quite difficult to stay in business. Glad to see the economics education is so effective....

posted by Mr K @ 4:15 pm