Found this to be a timely reflection. As someone studying economics, I’ve felt the tension between technical rigor and intellectual depth — especially when writing becomes a mere vessel for models, not an exploration of meaning. The loss of narrative, historical context, and even curiosity in how we present and engage with economics isn’t just stylistic — it weakens the discipline.
I see writing to be a process that forces, and even requires, clarity. It is the perfect proxy for thinkings. I share your optimism — if more young economists embrace literacy and mathematical fluency, the field has room to evolve meaningfully.
Illiterates turning a dismal science into a banal solipsism? Reading is an art; not reading is anarchic, of the character of banality. Do the illiterates actually have any utility, marginal or otherwise, as economists? https://aworldeofwordes.substack.com/p/reading-is-an-art?r=5d7dmx
Very good article. I think you hit the nail on the head with respect to what you mentioned about individuals possessing required discipline to write yet obstacles arise that may deter them from engaging the paper. However, there' been such a distortion in our educational system in this country, one that has only gotten more and more corrosive. Everything went down - hill after Kennedy, the saying goes. You discuss it in another one of your articles pertaining to the degradation of education within Gen Z and how students today are hyper-focused not on the material but on marketing themselves as people who understand the material via grades, internships, and other extracurriculars. That mindset has just been compounding the further and further we have progressed into the Digital Era and now into an AI era of sorts.
Gaining a strong foundational understanding of macroeconomics first required me to fail Intermediate Macroeconomic theory my jr. in college. I switched my major to finance and it worked out, I guess, but it was interesting when I took Applied Macro and Micro, the classes after the basic Introductory economics classes for Finance majors, whereas the "intermediate" titled ones were for Econ majors. The Applied Macroeconomics class was a wonderful experience for me, as were all the core finance classes I took, because I had a strong foundational understanding after I tried and got my ass kicked, I'd work relatively hard to pass stuff like Calc 2 and Econometrics, and then I was done with this teacher for Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory. Anyway, most people in the Applied Macro classes didn't know much, I felt. I felt I spoke up one of the most in the class and it was like 60 - 80 students in the lecture hall. Finally, these classes I took from 2012-2014, but I always tried to keep the knowledge I gained in my macroeconomic classes close and build upon it, which why I'm reading your stuff along with books like Creature from Jekyll Island and Freedom and Capitalism, but there's no respect for old school learning today. The foundation in mathematics, writing, reading and critical thinking, overall, has been completely been eroded in contemporary education. We've been fighting poverty since the 60s and all we have is more poverty. We'll apply that that thinking to education issue.
Wow. Enjoyed reading your article! Very interesting perspective on hurdles in combining both quantitative and theoretical, i.e., the history of economic thought in our research as young scholars.
Found this to be a timely reflection. As someone studying economics, I’ve felt the tension between technical rigor and intellectual depth — especially when writing becomes a mere vessel for models, not an exploration of meaning. The loss of narrative, historical context, and even curiosity in how we present and engage with economics isn’t just stylistic — it weakens the discipline.
I see writing to be a process that forces, and even requires, clarity. It is the perfect proxy for thinkings. I share your optimism — if more young economists embrace literacy and mathematical fluency, the field has room to evolve meaningfully.
Illiterates turning a dismal science into a banal solipsism? Reading is an art; not reading is anarchic, of the character of banality. Do the illiterates actually have any utility, marginal or otherwise, as economists? https://aworldeofwordes.substack.com/p/reading-is-an-art?r=5d7dmx
Very good article. I think you hit the nail on the head with respect to what you mentioned about individuals possessing required discipline to write yet obstacles arise that may deter them from engaging the paper. However, there' been such a distortion in our educational system in this country, one that has only gotten more and more corrosive. Everything went down - hill after Kennedy, the saying goes. You discuss it in another one of your articles pertaining to the degradation of education within Gen Z and how students today are hyper-focused not on the material but on marketing themselves as people who understand the material via grades, internships, and other extracurriculars. That mindset has just been compounding the further and further we have progressed into the Digital Era and now into an AI era of sorts.
Gaining a strong foundational understanding of macroeconomics first required me to fail Intermediate Macroeconomic theory my jr. in college. I switched my major to finance and it worked out, I guess, but it was interesting when I took Applied Macro and Micro, the classes after the basic Introductory economics classes for Finance majors, whereas the "intermediate" titled ones were for Econ majors. The Applied Macroeconomics class was a wonderful experience for me, as were all the core finance classes I took, because I had a strong foundational understanding after I tried and got my ass kicked, I'd work relatively hard to pass stuff like Calc 2 and Econometrics, and then I was done with this teacher for Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory. Anyway, most people in the Applied Macro classes didn't know much, I felt. I felt I spoke up one of the most in the class and it was like 60 - 80 students in the lecture hall. Finally, these classes I took from 2012-2014, but I always tried to keep the knowledge I gained in my macroeconomic classes close and build upon it, which why I'm reading your stuff along with books like Creature from Jekyll Island and Freedom and Capitalism, but there's no respect for old school learning today. The foundation in mathematics, writing, reading and critical thinking, overall, has been completely been eroded in contemporary education. We've been fighting poverty since the 60s and all we have is more poverty. We'll apply that that thinking to education issue.
Excellent article. I’m seeing this happen in other disciplines too.
Wow. Enjoyed reading your article! Very interesting perspective on hurdles in combining both quantitative and theoretical, i.e., the history of economic thought in our research as young scholars.