Fergus Finlay: We are paying a high price due to cruel and absurd economics

'There was a time where things I thought I understood, like the law of supply and demand, were stood on their head. We built thousands of houses back then. And yet the more we built, the more expensive the houses became.'

I admit to being slow. I have a degree in economics. It’s pretty old, and it sure wasn’t a highly distinguished degree in the first place. And it has slowly dawned on me that I haven’t a clue what economics is really about.

That’s despite the fact that I’ve done stuff in my life. A lot of that stuff demanded a working knowledge of some of the basic rules of economics. At least I figured out, over the years, what kind of questions to ask — and I definitely learned that there is no such thing as a stupid question.