Like money, power and empires, economic theory and practice have a short half-life. Joan Robinson remarks: “It has generally been the fate of economics to run a losing race against the course of history, and never to have completed the analysis of one phase of economic development before another takes its place.” 57 She was speaking of the discipline, of course. Like other disciplines, economics is incarnate in human flesh, contrary to public rumour. Whether, with Keynes, in the long run economists are all dead, their dogmas die seasonally, like flies. The Proverbs are with us always; economics comes to pass
