Daniel Davies of Crooked Timber notes that Greg Mankiw is doing some serious hating on “Joe Sixpack” in his latest NYT OP/ED:

Ahh go on then, try and tell me that Mankiw’s just engaging in a little bit of humour (possibly even a self-deprecating sigh at the pomposity of the average economist). No sale. This is how the average professional economist thinks of you lot, for all that you pay his wages; you’re a bunch of mugs who are incapable of understanding anything and just react like children to whatever’s dangled in front of your nose. It’s another of the many scandals of the profession, it is taught in the universities, and you can see it in more or less every popular book entitled something like “Fu$#younomics: How Nobody In The World Knows Jack Sh&@ Except Economists”.

(Bowlderization mine)

I would note, however that this is not limited to Economics.

You find this in many primarily academic fields, high energy physics, theoretical math, literary analysis, etc.

Take String Theorists…..Please.

With economists, however, the field is literally in front of our noses, and effects us in our daily lives, so the arrogance of economists is galling for that reason