Economics is "not a 'gay science'," wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1849. No, it is "a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of emi-nence, the dismal science." Carlyle was a fine one to talk. He was a brooding curmudgeon who thundered against industry, progress and the young science that sought to explain them. He found economists dismal not for the obvious reasons, such as their dry arithmetic or their gloomy preoccupation with scarcity and subsistence. Instead, he took against them because they were so wedded to the idea of happiness.
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