Ah, I know the answers to Mr. Higgins' funny and famous question in My Fair Lady are obvious. However, poetic license grants permission to ignore the obvious. Just like in the dismal science of economics.
And so we query, why can't economics be more like medicine?
In medicine, outdated and discredited life-sapping and wrong-headed protocols are left behind in the mistake pile, where they belong. I am here thinking of the bleeding with leeches, which hastened the end of Washington's life as he lay on his death bed.
In economics, we never seem to get past the stupidly lethal. I am here thinking of the determination to bleed ourselves back to vitality, by hemorrhaging what is left of the demand factor by choking off government spending. This is the same old conservative death spiral prescription we thought we left behind in the Great Depression.
It would be like me calling to my wife, "Honey, I rolled over my foot with the lawnmower and am bleeding massively," only to hear, "Okay, sweetheart, hold on, I'll get the leeches."
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