And who made the chaos?
Economist jokes
The butt of jokes
Perhaps few sciences and professions are made so much fun of as economics and economists. Often reflecting exasperation, desperation, ignorance, or unwillingness to face the issues, howlers are contributed by the poor souls who need to deal with economists. Herbert Hoover whined: “Please find me a one-armed economist so that we will not always hear ‘On the other hand ..., on the other hand ...’”
Some witticisms are more discerning than Hoover’s. Said John F. Kennedy, “if you have one foot on the hot plate, and the other in the freezer, on average, you are doing just fine.” Averages like that make for great fun: if Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk earn all income in America, and if you and I earn nothing, then, on average, we’d be doing just fine. Average family income is high in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world but it is also much more unevenly distributed. Kennedy’s quip had a point.
Here is a line attributed to former U.S. Senator Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and soon you are talking about real money.” Right! Some wisecracks are more crack than wise: Laurence J. Peter opined that “an economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.” A recent Wall Street Journal (May 5, 2026) front-page story investigating 1.6 million Polymarket accounts found that 67% of profitable bets go to just 0.1% of the accounts and that 70% of all accounts lose money. And on Kalshi—another “prediction” market—about three out of four bettors lose money (75%). I think economists do much better than that.
Some jests are feeble-minded: Business man Kirk Kerkorian declared that “if economists were any good at business, they would be rich men instead of advisers to rich men.” I say if business men were any good at thinking, they wouldn’t need advisors. In fact, a number of U.S. dollar billionaires are PhD economists. Further back in time, David Ricardo (d. 1823) and J.M. Keynes (d. 1946) were very wealthy men, too. The examples can be multiplied.
A billion here, a billion there, and soon you are talking about real money. —Sen. Dirksen
Some one-liners are plain funny. “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” That’s from the inimitable Oscar Wilde (take that, too, Mr. Kerkorian), and Josh Billings advises you to “live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.” An anonymous writer chimes in that “inflation means that your money won’t buy as much today as it did when you didn’t have any.” Some bon mots are wise beyond their words: “There have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking” (Will Rogers). And some are childishly silly: “Saving is a very fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you” (Winston Churchill).
Some jokes turn on phrases: “GDP should really stand for grossly deceptive product” (The Economist newspaper), which it is.
Then there are the so-and-so doesn’t die jokes. Preachers don’t die; they get called. Orthodontists don’t die; they get embraced. Likewise, economists don’t die, they get economized. (Or my version: economists don’t die; they just get lost in thought.)
The oldest profession in the world
Among the best jokes are those contributed by economists themselves. Rare among the professions, economists enjoy to poke fun at themselves. Here is a joke told by Lord Eatwell (John Eatwell is a well-known, and ennobled, Cambridge economist.) A surgeon, a lawyer, and an economist muse about what is the world’s oldest profession. “Surely,” cries the surgeon, “it must be surgery, for the Bible tells us that God made Eve from Adam’s rib!” For the sake of the lawyer, he commences to quote Genesis 2:21: “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.”
“Ha,” cuts in the lawyer, “but Genesis 1:3 begins to tell how God created order out of chaos, and order is what the law is about. Therefore,” he smugly continues, “the law and the lawyer form the oldest profession in the world.” “Yes, yes, yes,” interjects the economist dismissively, “but in the first place: who made the chaos?”
Economists’ highly valued brains
An economic anthropologist visits a remote island. To his horror he discovers that the islanders practice cannibalism. In fact, they have established an active market in foreign brains. The brain of a musicologist who once studied indigenous music is offered for the equivalent of $10; that of a missing researcher on tropical diseases goes for $30. But to the anthropologist’s utter amazement an economist’s brain can be had for $250. “Why,” cries the anthropologist, “is the economist’s brain so valuable?” His guide replies: “Because it’s unused.”
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