An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
That’s a more academic look. But if you want the barebones answer, it’s basically because the statists needed a (seemingly) “scientific” excuse to proceed with their statist policies that furthered their elitist agenda. Tom DiLorenzo gave a talk at the Mises Circle in Houston yesterday about “Why the Constitution Had to Be Destroyed” that covers the same concept, but from the political angle. It should be up at the Mises TV archive soon, but the gist of it was, for the nationalists to further their Hamiltonian agenda of basically recreating the British monarchy here in the States, the Constitution needed to effectively be destroyed.
It’s the same thing with economics…for the elitist agenda to be furthered, there needs to be a “scientific” (read: plausible…at least in the eyes of the general public) explanation for why their wealth needed to be siphened away from them. And given enough time, and enough control over the education of the people, it is not hard to convince them of anything…no matter how ridiculous. (North Koreans literally believed their dear leader was a super-human being. One refugee explained in an interview that until he escaped the country, he didn’t think the dear leader even urinated.)
This is what has happened in our own education system. Of course it’s nowhere near the same degree, but it’s the same concept. I went into this a bit here.