If there is one subject we outsource to the experts its economics. Its complex, a science, and really something best left to the people who ‘know what they’re talking about’. Rather like leaving political analysis to Rupert Murdoch’s political editors. Right?

We really don’t want to think about free trade, where our food comes from, venture capital markets, supply and demand (unless we want something in short supply), who owns the most assets, what balance of payments really means and how the International Monetary Fund is affecting our daily lives.

But economics is actually a life and death issue. It affects every part of our lives and everyone in society, and we need to reclaim it from the ‘experts’.

Unconvinced? Here’s some background.

The Classical School of economics used to be called the Classical School of ‘political economy’. That was how the discipline was described back then. With the Neoclassical School that arose after the 1870s the experts changed the description of their discipline from ‘political economy’ to ‘economics’. This signaled a new direction as these experts claimed economics as a ‘pure science’, shorn of political (and thus ethical) dimensions that involve subjective value judgments.

Ha-Joon Chang in his book Economics: The Users Guide provides a one-sentence summary of the Neoclassical School of thought: individuals know what they are doing, so leave them alone – except when markets malfunction.

One of the central guiding principles for this school of economics is the Pareto criterion, a critical theoretical development in the early twentieth century developed by Vilfredo Pareto, intended to allow us to judge social improvement in an objective way. Pareto argued that if we value the right of every sovereign individual, we should consider social change improvement only when it makes some people better off without making anyone worse off.

Never heard of the Pareto criterion? Well it is one of the key fundamental guiding principles undergirding the neoliberal economic paradigm we all live with today whether in Australia or the UK, the USA and now most parts of the western and developing world.

What does this mean in simple terms? There should be no more individual sacrifices in the name of the ‘greater good’.

The problem is in real life there are few social changes that hurt no one. So within a free market economy – where as Margaret Thatcher firmly identified there is no ‘society’, just individuals and families – the recipe is to stick to the status quo and let things be as they are.

And if there is no ‘society’ – that is no ‘system’ that organises society – just individuals who make their own way – some of whom win and some of whom lose – it is perfectly inconsistent with the Pareto criterion to talk about the common good or justice for all if that in anyway makes the current ‘winners’ worse off. The winners are entitled to their winnings. The age of entitlement is not over at all. It is still where it always was. The winner takes it all (as ABBA put it so economically).

So a ‘loser’ who has a disability for example, should not be given any type of special treatment if the cost of that special treatment makes the winners worse off. Winners already pay enough taxes. To punish them in any way in order to continue to generate jobs for the long-term unemployed through government funded projects is simply not for the good of society when the winners will be worse off.

Think this is boring economics? Ask a single mother living below the poverty line. Ask a disabled person who wants to work and for whom there is no job and who has just had their financial support reduced. Ask a long-term unemployed person how living in poverty is an incentive to get work when there is no work. Ask a carer looking after a dependent child, mother, or father who faces less support.

In every society economics is a life and death issue. It is not boring. It is not something to outsource to the experts. It is something we all need to understand and take control of across all aspects of society. It is something we need to take back from the politicians and experts.

Ha-Joon Chang identifies five things they don’t tell you about economics:

1. 95% of economics is common sense;
2. Economics is not a science;
3. Economics is politics;
4. Never trust an economist;
5. Economics is too important to be left to the experts.

To which we think there can be a sixth:

1. Economics does not have to be cruel.

(See Ha-Joon Chang 2014, Economics: The Users Guide, Pelican Books, London)