2010-11-14
Explanation
This comic mocks the trope of the naive undergraduate who thinks they can overturn an entire academic field with a simple moral observation. A student in an economics class stands up and declares that none of the "genius" economists account for the fact that their equations are "fucking over the poor." The professors initially appear devastated, saying "My God... he's right" and "All these years... how could we..."
The punchline comes in the final panel, when a professor calmly opens a textbook to page 862 and reveals dense equations and analysis -- implying that economists have, in fact, studied distributional effects and poverty extensively. The joke is that the student's passionate but uninformed objection is not the revelation he thinks it is; the field has already grappled with these questions in rigorous detail. The comic skewers the Dunning-Kruger confidence of students who assume that their introductory moral intuitions have somehow been overlooked by an entire discipline of researchers.