Commentary 
Many critics of mainstream economics believe that economists are in the pocket of Big Business: that they’re paid shrills who say what their corporate paymasters want them to say.
With 50 years of experience of economists—and 30 years of that as an academic economist myself, though a decidedly non-mainstream one—I can categorically say that that belief is false.
Corporate economists and consultants will say what their employers want them to say. But in general, mainstream academic economists say what they say because they genuinely believe it to be true, not because they’re being paid to knowingly state falsehoods. And not only are that, they are doing it altruistically: they genuinely believe that, if everyone believed in their vision of capitalism, and their advice were always followed, then the world would be a better place….