Their technocratic vision ignores the private wealth crowded out by state spending and the inflationary transfer of resources to the politically connected, and worst of all, they overlook the incentive problems faced by state actors.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

Every generation produces its slew of mouthpieces for state power at the expense of freedom. Statist economists are some of the most sophisticated of these, for three reasons.

First, they appear to criticize the current crony capitalist system, when in reality they defend it and want it reinforced in different ways. Second, they usually rely on statistics and mathematics to make their cases "scientifically," making it more difficult for the layman to see through the flaws in their thinking. Third, they couch their argumentation in "feel-good" moral values, to which superficially the public can feel drawn, such as the fight against inequality.

Using these three devious methods, such macroeconomists have managed to strongly influence public opinion over decades in favor of more state involvement in society. Their policies justify the concentration of even more power at the hands of the state, which harms society as it reduces individual freedom and impedes the natural market process. These statist economists must therefore continually be exposed.

In 1959, Henry Hazlitt dealt a significant blow to the popular post-war Keynesian system with his bestselling book The Failure of the New Economics. Today, the critique should be directed at well-known Western economists like Stephanie Kelton, Mariana Mazzucato, Thomas Piketty, and the up-and-coming Gabriel Zucman.

Piketty and Zucman are probably more easily debunked than the intellectually-savvier and more-attuned Kelton and Mazzucato. The Frenchmen Piketty and Zucman develop their ideas from a more standard socialist analysis of "capitalism." But, being American academics, Kelton and Mazzucato's arguments are more subtle since they push for an "entrepreneurial state" model that does drive wealth and job creation and that does not ideologically disqualify capitalism to the same extent.

Sharp Ladies on a Statist Mission

Kelton and Mazzucato are less tin eared in their statements regarding the benefits of the market economy than Piketty and Zucman. They put the efficient, managerial state in the center of a state-directed economy, fueled by unlimited money printing from the central bank. There are precedents for this economic policy: Germany, Italy, and the US in the 1930s and 1940s. If Piketty and Zucman are socialists, Kelton and Mazzucato are fascists.