The inflation rates reported by governments are generally, at the very least, a little lower than they actually are. And the US government is not an exception. It makes the CPI (Consumer Price Index) artificially lower (by making changes in the methodology) and benefits from it in several ways (increasing its revenues while the voters don’t realize they are being lied to and losing their purchasing power).

The decision of Western countries to punish Russia for invading Ukraine by lacing her with a wave of sanctions suggests that global leaders are failing to learn from history. Sanctions are an ineffective tool to curb the ambitions of rogue actors and they are unlikely to make autocrats think twice.  Non-democratic regimes are already blacklisted by the liberal political order so using sanctions to further isolate them often succeeds at emboldening autocrats to drum up political support.

Some healthcare providers are refusing to treat unvaccinated Covid-19 patients. But is there really an argument for doing so? The claim is that unvaccinated patients are imposing an undue burden on the health system. However, the legitimacy of this claim fails to justify withholding treatment for unvaccinated patients. If the argument is that the negligence of unvaccinated people is straining the health system, then a similar logic must be applied to other scenarios, and failing to do so delegitimates the case for discriminating against the unvaccinated.

There is an emerging consensus in policy circles that programs tailored by multilateral agencies have failed in several developing countries. This has led some to conclude that Western models of development are incompatible with the reality of politics in the developing world. Agencies – like the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund frequently encounter criticisms due to policy recommendations. So, are these programs failing because of an inability to incorporate the intricacies of culture?

Economics is the study of how humans manage their scarce resources in the face of uncertainty. The goal of a good economist is to understand the mechanisms through which people achieve this, to analyze the working of the economic order and present a comprehensive theory of how it functions. This is all economists should do and all we should expect by them. However, it is all the more common to anticipate economists to provide us with plan to fix all our economic problems as well as anticipate those that have yet to appear.