Whatever else they are, they are not economists. Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, and the other 350 signatories of an anti-poverty manifesto have given up on any claim to that name.

An economist is someone who studies the production and distribution of goods and services, someone who analyzes the voluntary transactions we make in pursuit of happiness. These campaigners are not interested in “growth” (which they made a point of putting in scare-quotes in their launch article last week. They want to halt it, to cap incomes, to grind down living standards in the name of eco-tyranny. They assert that “our economies must be redesigned around the fulfillment of rights and collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries, rather than maximizing output at any cost.”