I recently read a book called Economic Ideas You Should Forget, a collection of short essays (never longer than the average RI) pitching why some common idea in or about economics is either wrong or at least not very useful. Whatever one thinks about the book itself, the concept seems pretty genius. Be they right or wrong, who doesn't want to run through some short pitches about why everything from capitalism to the capital asset pricing model to bias against surveyed happiness measures to labor productivity (in macro) should be tossed in the dust bin?

So, the book got me thinking: what are the economic ideas r/badeconomics thinks we should forget?

To find out, we're going to have a contest! Through the end of July, you can submit (in the top level comments of this thread) your very own 5 paragraph essay about an economic idea you think we should forget. Feel free to be as broad or specific and wonky as you wish. But in the spirit of the book, please keep your essays readable at least at the senior undergraduate economics class level and please don't go much past 5 moderate sized paragraphs in length.

At the end of July, the r/BE mods¹ will get together in a smokey room and vote on a winner, whom I will award reddit gold plus a $50 donation in their name (or pseudonym) to the charity of their choice. There will also be a reddit gold available as a gorbachev's choice award for the best RI submitted about an idea-you-should-forget essay that gets posted here.

As a note about moderating this contest thread, I'll try and generally prune (maybe with some very topical exceptions) the top level of this comment thread of things that are not ideas-you-should-forget essays, so please take any meta discussion of the contest to the fiat thread. That said, please feel free to discuss any essays that do end up posted here in the comments below them!

Good luck!!!

^{1 Mods are encouraged to enter the contest as well, but are not allowed to vote for their own pieces. Votes will be sealed before tabulation to minimize strategic voting.}