Yesterday a friend of mine told me about economist Claudia Sahm and her blog Stay-at-Home Macro. I suspect all of you know about her blog but if you don’t you definitely should look at it. Claudia’s blog covers many topics including the Fed (her past employer), child tax credits, and inflation. Today’s post “Be the change” is a compelling statement about economics today, and is a followup to her famous “Economics is a disgrace” post of two years ago. It is a call to action, aimed particularly at those with power and those who can speak truth to power.
I admire her courage. I also criticize economics but I am an old guy who has the resources to handle the inevitable retaliation. I was a coward when I was her age. Claudia has paid a high price for speaking out on important issues. I know many others share her views and experiences. I wish more of them would come forward publicly but I understand why they don’t.
If you can’t offer public support, you can at least subscribe to her blog.
I may not agree with her on all issues, but we share the most important thing emphasized in a conversation with her first boss (as reported in today’s post):
My first boss at the Fed gave me excellent advice, “Claudia, you can’t make people care about the things you care about.” My reply to him was, “True, and you can’t make me stop caring.”
Too many people don’t care about anything other than the line items on their CV. More people have to care about more if economics is going to be what it can and should be. We owe that to the billions of people whose lives are affected by economists.
Bravo, Claudia!!