Firas Suqi in Elections 2012 class
Written by Firas Suqi, a junior from Chicago, Illinois, and an anthropology-sociology major at Knox.
Professor Scotton really simplified the issues surrounding the budget deficit and government spending so that an anthropology and sociology major (who has never taken an economics course) like myself could make sense of each candidate’s perspective.
It’s one thing to just stand up in front of class and give a lecture, but Professor Scotton figuratively put each of us in the Oval Office by providing us with the interactive capabilities to design our own budget, making us realize how difficult the decision-making process could be, especially when each decision affects the lives of over 300 million people.
Calling the economy “stupid” was something I definitely wasn’t expecting from an economist.
Professor Scotton argued that when the government adopts economic market strategy such as supply and demand, it begins to lose the deliberative process behind decision-making. This left the market as the sole decision maker, which some argue led to the recession of 2008.
By defining “stupid” as a non-deliberative process, the economy is therefore stupid because the theory of supply and demand calls for the economy to repair itself, instead of actual people making decisions to repair the economy. The economy is stupid because people can’t do anything to participate in a self-regulating economy.
Scotton therefore suggested that perhaps more community participation and reception would be helpful in making the market-driven economy moral and not stupid.