The president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is set to end tomorrow. It came together two years ago, to generate ideas and policies for accelerated job creation. I asked economist Gary Burtless at the Brookings Institution what he thought about the president's jobs council calling it quits.
"Well, as probably more than one economist would remark to you, I didn't even remember we had one," he says.
Most of the American public would answer the same, though the 26 members of the council did include some big names, mostly CEOs from companies like GE, Intel and DuPont. Burtless says the general idea was to have leaders in the business community offer advice to the president on how jobs could be created more quickly with government help.
But he says those leaders had a hard time seeing past their own interests. Their insights and suggestions mostly applied to their own companies.
The lesson here is that business leaders have no special insight into the macroeconomy. This is not, of course, news, but it bears repeating because the fallacy that the economy is solely composed of businesses, and therefore business leaders are the great sages of the economy as a whole, is ruthless and persistent.
Obviously, most business leaders are smart people, so it makes some sense that they are included in discussions of the macroeconomy. Their precise expertise is microeconomic in nature, however. That is, they can tell us something about the decision-making of individuals and firms. But, while a nuclear biologist could tell you something about the composition of muscle cells, you wouldn't ask her to perform your heart surgery.
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