| The dismal science is another, often derogatory, name for economics. It
is generally thought that economics got the nickname 'dismal science' as a response to economist Robert Malthus's grim predictions that starvation would result as projected population growth exceeded
the rate of increase in the food supply.
However modern research has discovered that the phrase was originally used in an 1849
tract entitled Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question by the historian Thomas Carlyle in which he was arguing for the reintroduction of slavery as a means to regulate the labor
market in the West Indies that was morally superior to the market forces of supply and demand
suggested by economists.
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