Do good economists need to be right wing?

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Economists are not naturally "right-wing". Right-wing economists are created by incompetent and dangerous central-planners who jeopardize the progress of our species.

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Part of this is because to my understanding, intro economics classes tend toward right-wing conclusions (like minimum wage & rent control are bad) whereas higher-level economics courses take a lot more variables into consideration.

What happens to some successful economists is the god-complex. They imagine clairvoyance and power they don't have, which makes them willing to gamble societies well-being to prove a point about their school and their abilities as economists.

Perhaps we have reached a point where min wage could be increased without substantial job loss, but why would we gamble with societal utility to make a pointless political statement about 1960s Keynesian economics? We have much better policy tools that require the government to insure domestic tranquility and promote general welfare, rather than lazily dumping those responsibilities on corporate America, as liberals are wont to do.

Stiglitz and Krugman have the god-complex. Some right-wing economists have a proclivity to worship free-markets as a sort of god, which creates similar societal outcomes, though the professional conceit is much different.

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but why would we gamble with societal utility

Are you a Communist, or what?

Aren't most economists utilitarians? We're not usually communitarians, though, and the dividing line between the utilitarians is Kaldor-Hicks v Pareto.

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Free trade is more disputed within the economic community than is realized by the public. Obviously, economists are averse to protectionism but "progressive" economists have a pretty nuanced view of most free trade agreements which ranges from indifference (Krugman) to staunch opposition (Stiglitz). I'd say the same thing about rent control.

On principle, economists support free trade and oppose rent control. However, the devil is in the details.

Stiglitz is against the free movement of capital. He's only against international trade, if imports are fueled by foreign direct investment with domestic capital. He think the capital should remain domestic and labor should move without limits.

It's absurd, but he likes to promote the idea.

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I'm curious why you made that a "We economists" statement, but if you were one your instinct should have associated ag's comment to a social choice problem. (Not that his response wasn't a painfully theorist one)

Is communism a legitimate economic discipline? The answer is "no", and that's why I responded with moral theory, instead.

I'm not a teacher so I have no interest in humoring theories that have virtually no merit.

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I'm not communist by any means, but to say it isn't a legitimate economic discipline is both ridiculous and inane.

I'm sure you also think mercantilism is a legitimate economic arrangement, too. I'm not interested in furthering the politically correct agenda of coddling communists.

Not even hard left economists use communist tenets as a method of modeling anything. Communism is a polemical discipline within academia, like mercantilism.