The title of this post, which is admittedly the lead-in to a lame joke, is inspired partly by the news headlines today and partly by an essay, “Laughter: Better Than a Sharp Stick in Your Eye,” I found on The University of Iowa’s Well-Being at Iowa website. The author, Megan Gogerty, MFA, BA has some pretty sharp opinions about laughter being the best medicine. It’s not always the best.
Anyway, Reuters carried the story “China raises duties on US goods to 125%, calls Trump tariff hikes a ‘joke’,” by Joe Cash and Yukun Zhang, accessed April 11, 2025.
China is pretty upset. So, why did China tell President Trump his tariff strategy is a joke? Because they don’t get it.
Just half-kidding there; actually, I think that might be President Trump’s reply, but I really don’t understand tariffs. That’s probably why I also had trouble with the economist joke below:
Why did the Keynesian psychiatrist get fired? He told his patients to spend their way out of depression.
I found this joke on a YouTube by Jacob Clifford, an economics teacher. I didn’t get the joke, so I repeatedly replayed it because I couldn’t understand the first part. That’s because I didn’t know anything about Keynesian economics. It turns out that it’s based on the belief that proactive actions from the government (like spending) are the only way to control the economy. Get it? Neither do I but it was the only economy joke I could find that included a psychiatrist on a quick internet search.
Here’s twenty economics jokes from Jacob Clifford. They’re pretty lame, but then so is most of the political news.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 