Forum Post: Economic Law vs. Occupy Wall Street

Harvard students are upset that not all of their economics professors are yet a bevy of Occupy Wall Street–following whores. Citing Professor Greg Mankiw's classical analysis of the minimum wage as one of their grievances, a group of students recently walked out of Mankiw's introductory micro course to join an Occupy protest in Boston. (Apparently spoiled Harvard kids who can't stand even listening to an opposing view are the 99 percent.)

The protestors probably should have stayed in class, though, because their open letter to Mankiw betrays a formidable level of economic ignorance. When they write, for example, "There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith's economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory," they expose themselves as blissfully unaware that the modern neoclassical economics that Mankiw teaches owes far more to Alfred Marshall than Adam Smith, and that Keynesianism is a school of macroeconomic thought, unlikely to be covered in their microeconomics course. It's highly doubtful, therefore, that any of these students have actually taken the time to understand the logic behind the laws of supply and demand and how this logic applies to labor markets.

But that doesn't matter to radical leftists. Logic in economics is irrelevant to them. As Mises explained, to defend their irrational theories they "attack logic and reason and substitute mystical intuition for ratiocination."[2] That's why they protest viewpoints they don't like instead of engaging with and critiquing them. And that's why they shout down dissenters in their creepy chanting assemblies. Independent thought is a threat to them.

http://mises.org/daily/5807/Economic-Law-vs-Occupy-Wall-Street