Skit 1990

[ A couple is eating breakfast at a table. Both are reading newspapers. B is Glenna and A is Fred]

Announcer: Our scene opens with Fred and Glenna eating breakfast on their farm near Dunkerton, Iowa.

B:I guess you would like the Economics section? The latest 10 year projections are out.

A:You know it! I've been dying to know the soybean price in 1997.. .. Say, honey. Here is an interesting story about progress in modelling the demand for pork in a dynamic, stochastic framework. It says that within three years, the demand elasticity controversy will be resolved.

B:And what controversy is that?

A:The one about whether the elasticity is .35 or .4. It will be a lucky day for humanity when they pin that number down.

B:Yes indeed!

A:Gosh! I wish I could have been a major-league economist. I'd get to work on problems like these that have plagued mankind for centuries. I can just see myself helping society find its Pareto optimal resource allocation in a two good world.

B:Now, dear! Don't you go worrying yourself over what's done. You do a perfectly good job at what you do. Lord knows the world needs hopelessly in debt farmers with evil brothers-in-law from 'thirty something' who want to buy farmland for faceless corporate shills more than the world needs another economist.

A:True enough. It's just that my father always assumed I'd be an economist. All those hours we spent playing 'Monetary Authority' in the backyard. I can still hear him yelling, "Constant Money Growth--Constant Money Growth,". Yup! The old man really stressed the fundamentals.

VOICE:IF YOU BUILD IT, HE WILL COME

A:Did you just hear something?

B:No.

VOICE:IF YOU BUILD IT HE WILL COME

A:There it is again.

B:What does it sound like?

A:It sounds like Kevin Costner with an electronically altered voice saying, "If you build it, he will come".

B:It's the oat bran again. You're hallucinating. Let me get the cholesterol pills and I'll fix you some eggs and bacon. I swear you should eat real food for real people.

A:But it seemed so real....

Announcer:The next scene opens in front of ..........

DS:Hot damn! It's about time we did an outdoor show.

Announcer:What's up Dennis?

DS:I heard you were doing a take-off on Field and Stream.

Announcer:It's Field of Dreams.

DS:Field of Dreams?

Announcer:Yes.

DS:Not Field and Stream?

Announcer:Nope

DS:Does Field of Dreams have any duck hunting in it?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Skeet shooting?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Bass Fishing?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Trap shooting?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Field trials?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Unshaven men in a wood shack on a frozen lake, half-crazy from the cold, drinking Wild Turkey while catching walleyes through a hole in the ice?

Announcer:Nope.

DS:Damn! I thought we were going to do something cultural for once.

Announcer:The next scene opens in front of a large hole in the ground in the middle of a cornfield. There are workmen and heavy equipment all over the place. Fred's neighbor, Ben, has come over to find out what's going on.

C:Howdy, Fred. I see you're building something out here in the middle of your cornfield. New manure lagoon?

A:No. I'm building an economics department. It just smells like a manure lagoon sometime.

C:Why are you building an economics department?

A:Well! I had this vision out there on the tractor while I was applying ammonium nitrate to the groundwater. It was a large four--no wait-- make it five story building, rising out of the cornfield. The building had a sign out front that said "ECONOMICS".

C:Who is going to be in the building?

A:I don't know. I just know I had to build it. The voice said, "If you build it, he will come".

C:Who?

A:Kevin Costner.

C:Kevin Costner's going to be in this building?

A:No. Kevin Costner said, "If you build it, he will come". I'm not sure who is going to be in the building.

C:This has to be pretty expensive. How can you afford this?

A:Well, to tell you the truth, I'm making more out of this deal than I did farming. First, the building is in the Conservation Reserve Program. Then the Iowa Legislature gave me two million dollars in lottery revenues because I told them the building would keep the land underneath from eroding. Then, I got this guy in political science to loan me the rest if I promised to pay him one percent of my income for the rest of my life.

C:Well aren't you curious about who is going to be in the building?

A:Well sure. I mean, at first I thought it would be filled with economics graduate students. But then this voice said, "send all the graduate students into the dimly lit, converted warehouse units across town". Now, I think it is going to be filled with hundreds of famous economists.

C:Oh really? Like who?

A:Like Keynes, Marshall, Smith, Robinson, Wicksell, Pigou...

C:But they're all dead. Why do you want to bring a bunch of dead economists from all over the world to a cornfield in the middle of Iowa.

A:Well, for one thing, you don't have to pay a dead economist nearly as much as a live one. You'd be amazed at how much live economists make.

C:But this is ridiculous! What is a department with hundreds of dead economists.

A:I'm not sure, but it sounds a lot like the University of Missouri.

VOICE:EASE HIS PAIN.

A:Did you hear that?

C:Now what?

VOICE:EASE HIS PAIN.

A:That! It sounds like Kevin Costner with an electronically altered voice saying, "Ease his pain."

C:Ease whose pain?

A:I'm not sure.

C:Then how can you ease his pain?

A:I think I'll recommend oat bran. Say, I've got to run. I have to drive all night to get to Fenway Park in time to meet James Earl Jones in the bleacher seats so that we can discuss a dead economist from Minnesota whom I've never met.

C:Why?

A:Oh, just a hunch.

Announcer:Our next scene opens several months later inside the newly built Economics Department in the middle of the cornfield. The room is filled with the ghosts of economists long-dead. All are writing feverishly in note pads. Fred, Glenna, and Ben are watching them.

A:Amazing isn't it?

B:Yes.

A:All those dead economists coming to Iowa just to take the qualifying exams in economic theory.

C:How are they doing?

B:Well Karl Marx is amazing. He's turned into a Libertarian. He's been ranting about how socialism is the opiate of the masses, and he keeps quoting Ayn Rand left and right.

C:What about the others?

B:Keynes keeps screwing up money neutrality.

A: And Viner can't handle the envelope theorem, Veblen still insists that demand curves slope upward, and you'd think Adam Smith never saw a derivative in his life.

C:[pointing] Now who is that dead economist over there along the wall?

A:Art.

C:And who is the dead economist on the front porch?

A:Matt.

C:Who is the dead economist I saw in the swimming pool?

A:Bob.

C:And who was the dead economist who was holding up the pick-up truck?

A:Jack.

C:[pointing to Z] Who is that guy?

A:That's the guy I told you about from Minnesota. He got an exemption in macro and micro and went to his grave regretting that he never got the chance to take a qualifying exam.

Z:[looking up from his paper] Is this heaven?

A:No....It's Iowa.

Z:[nods and pauses] So... Then this is hell.