Three things you thought you knew about economics

Great post by Robert Vienneau who correctly claims that the three propositions below are well-established, namely :

"1. Adam Smith did not use the phrase "The invisible hand" to refer to the optimality properties of a static general equilibrium supposedly brought about by the workings of competitive markets. 

2. Thomas Carlyle did not coin the phrase "The dismal science" to refer to Thomas Malthus's anti-utopian theory of population. According to that theory, human population responds endogenously to increased prosperity, thereby making impossible any rapidly established, long-lasting general rise in per capita income beyond the custom and habits of mankind. 

3. John Maynard Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, did not explain widespread and persistent unemployment by sticky, rigid, or slowly adjusting money wages and prices - a pre-Keynesian theory that, in fact, he opposed. Many economists, I claim, teach the opposite of these propositions. 

(...) 

It seems to be a quixotic and never-ending task to oppose demonstrably false statements about economics, often made by economists."

It is absolutely true. I would even say the majority of economists teach the opposite. I have insisted more on 3 here, but 1 and 2 are equally true, and 1 at least as important as 3. I should probably use this in my history of thought lectures from now on.