Over the weekend a friend asked me whether I rated George Megalogenis, a former economics writer for The Australian, as a decent economic thinker. No way. That people with Megalogenis’s low level of economic thinking get respect as economic commentators should bother anyone who holds economics in high esteem. My criticism of Megalogenis applies equally across the political spectrum. Economic arrogance and stupidity is not confined to one politically oriented group.
For example, he supported the destructive carbon tax and the daft idea that it would compel businesses to “switch to cleaner energy sources.” The idea that the tax would instead force them out of business did not occur to him anymore than the idea that the tax would lead to the dissipation of capital. But Megalogenis was not alone in this lunacy. In 2008 the Centre for Independent Studies published a monograph by John Humphreys making the same utterly absurd claims. Since then Alan Moran, Judith Sloan, Steve Kates, Sinclair Davidson, et al., have piled it on the carbon tax and also the assertion that so-called “cleaner energy sources” can support the economy.