GREG MANKIW is rich. [...]

I just find the effect of this column particularly interesting. In terms of the economics, I can't find much in it with which to disagree. And yet it seems like a woefully incomplete model of the actual decisions made by those setting tax rates and those responding to them. For better or worse, people care about fairness and they work for reasons other than money. And one of the biggest shortcomings of economics, I think, is the extent to which the field struggles to incorporate such realities into its models. It's amusing to me that in a piece laying out the maths behind his choice to write an additional piece on economics Mr Mankiw demonstrates how incomplete the picture painted by economists frequently is.

Read the whole thing. Mankiw's blinkers are gigantic.