HOW CAN WE TRUST PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT TO TELL THE TRUTH?
Few express opinions different from what they are paid to say, and such is equally true for those who work for government. On an almost daily basis, the world is treated to presidential spokespeople denying what most people understand to be true.
Last week, Jason Furman, President Obama's chief economic adviser, who used to have a reputation as a competent economist, embarrassed himself by trying to deny - in response to a Congressional Budget Office report - that the president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would cost jobs.
All too many professionals are willing to ignore empirical evidence when it conflicts with their beliefs or those of their employers. Perhaps in no place do we see greater evidence of this than in the field of climate science.
If the climate scientists who produced their grossly defective, predictive models had been employed by private companies that depended on the accuracy of their predictions, they would have been fired.
Private economic forecasters who are consistently wrong tend to lose their credibility and at least some of their income. There is one group of economic forecasters, though, who suffer very little loss of prestige or income, even though they may often be wrong. They are those who work for the Federal Reserve and other government agencies.