Just goes to show how much of a pseudo-science economics is, which more often than not is co-opted by all kinds of different ideologies to push their agenda (more so macro Econ than micro)
For a long time, political economy was synonymous with economics. Once a broad political consensus was reached, however, politics was dropped to emphasize the economics based on that consensus.
Seems to me that no matter which political party the poor voted for, their economic agenda was always thwart by corporations need for cheap labor in countries near and far.
I vaguely remembering President Obama giving a rather technical explanation why nothing can be done to bring back the job for a laid off Midwesterner.
As for the Republicans, this new Yorker political cartoon[1] says it all: I am going to eat you. He tells it like it is.
And the one constant is that the college of economics (and business in general, but they don't claim to be a science) will have a definite political slant depending on who the most major donor is. And I feel that I need to clarify - not the faculty. Faculty in every department tend to wear their politics on their sleeves. I mean the classes and content has a definite political slant.
It's disgusting. When people talk about how higher education is nothing but an indoctrination for the youth into whatever liberal value is currently the most hated thing among conservatives, they really hit the nail on the head for the colleges of economics. But they tend to lean hard right, instead of left.