This is why in order to overcome this kind of Epimenidean paradox ("All  
Cretans are liars") Marshall wrote: "Every short statement in economics is  
potentially misleading, with the possible exception of the present one".  
  
The "Fallacies" idea is an old chestnut.  It was used in the english  
translation of Bastiat's _Sophismes economiques_ (1846).  Walras, who knew  
better, and who was an economist, as opposed to the journalist Bastiat,  
cautioned against laissez faire in the Elements noting  that theorems can  
apply only if the assumptions are correct. Still we can babble about  
methodology and proton pseudos and Barbara Celarent Darii Ferio Baralipton  
and cry "the wicked witch is dead".  
  
Take minimum wages for example.  Stigler demonstrated the theoretical case  
for a minimum wage in a neoclassical framework, but he believed that labour  
markets are by and large competitive.  The main point of debate between the  
Neoclassical Revisionists and Revivalists in Labour Economics was the  
relevance of the "efficiency" or competitiveness of these markets.  When  
Card and Kruger demonstrated that there must have been a truth in the  
"fallacy" of minimum wages after all this went against the instincts and the  
prejudices of most labour economists.  It may be true however as Manning had  
shown that monopsony is more pervasive than we assume.  
  
There is an idee fixe with pareto optimal competitive equilibria. If  
Procrustes was an economist he would have invented the height fallacy.  Or  
as Bertolt Brecht put it.  
  
�Was tuns Sie�, wurde Herr K. gefragt, �wenn Sie einen Menschen lieben?�  
- �Ich mache einen Entwurf von ihm�, sagte Her K., �und sorge, da� er ihm  
�hnlich wird.�  
- �Wer? Der Entwurf?�  
-�Nein�, sagte Herr K., �der Mensch.�  
  
[Non-English characters do not translate well on many computers. HB]  
  
Nicholas J. Theocarakis