Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century historian, first coined the phrase. Economics, he argued, was the “dismal science”.

He had a point. Most economists are either obsessed with “black swan events”, on the lookout for “unknown unknowns”, or constantly searching for the catalyst to the next big crash.

Carlyle was particularly incensed with claims by economist Thomas Malthus that population would always grow faster than food production, thereby ensuring a future of poverty and starvation for humanity.

Mind you, Carlyle was a big fan of slavery and lobbied for its reintroduction into the West Indies as a way to fix the economy. So, his track record as a social scientist is sketchy to say the least.

But there’s

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