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Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#291

Post by lonelappde »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #231
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like what I heard Tyler Cowen say a long time ago: a degree in economics is a great way to learn about a lot of ideas that sound good but don't work. (I'm paraphrasing, of course) I thought his point was great. There's some well-trodden ground in economics. If you learn nothing more but where the alligators are, you're probably going to do a lot better on that trip through the swamp you plan on taking. If nothing e…

Let's be a bit more specific here before people get the wrong idea. Economics doesn't work for predicting the stock market. Other than that, it works just fine. The principals of supply and demand and huge host of other issues are just fine and work great. It just doesn't translate to predicting equities.

All of macroeconomics is also what economics doesn't work fine at modelling.

Economists are famously bad at preventing or predicting recessions.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#292

Post by sanderjd »

jazzyk wrote: post #285
sanderjd wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't your thesis that this situation changed in 2015? I don't know for sure, but I always assumed the Economist has always been run by a bunch of Sirs and Ladies... I have read and quite liked the magazine for a couple decades and they have seemed consistently elitist, pro-market, and globalist during that time. It is something I like, that they have a strong identifiable editorial perspective, unlike newspapers tha…

Whether it is the Sirs/Ladies, or the Elkanns or the Rothschilds, they are interested in continuing the current status quo, enriching the 1% that they belong to, at the cost of everyone else. The Economist used to be pro-small-business free market. At some point they started justifying outsourcing as "free trade", which benefited big companies like Apple, etc. and stagnated or starved small businesses (and the produc…

You are missing my point: this has always been their editorial stance. It may have always been a reason not to read them if you're not into it, but it's not a new reason.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#293

Post by jazzyk »

sanderjd wrote: post #292
jazzyk wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it is the Sirs/Ladies, or the Elkanns or the Rothschilds, they are interested in continuing the current status quo, enriching the 1% that they belong to, at the cost of everyone else. The Economist used to be pro-small-business free market. At some point they started justifying outsourcing as "free trade", which benefited big companies like Apple, etc. and stagnated or starved small businesses (and the produc…

You are missing my point: this has always been their editorial stance. It may have always been a reason not to read them if you're not into it, but it's not a new reason.

As I mentioned I had been a subscriber for 30 years.

And no, I am not missing your point. There was a clear change in direction a few years ago - as I mentioned, I sensed it, but was not aware of the ownership change at the time.

You either did not notice or you just started reading them - good for you. Enjoy.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#294

Post by octodog »

marcosdumay wrote: post #265
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be a bit more specific here before people get the wrong idea. Economics doesn't work for predicting the stock market. Other than that, it works just fine. The principals of supply and demand and huge host of other issues are just fine and work great. It just doesn't translate to predicting equities.

> The principals of supply and demand and huge host of other issues are just fine and work great. The principals of supply and demand are vague and flexible enough to be completely devoid of meaning.

Perhaps I am just dim, but I find your comment to be vague enough to be lacking meaning.

The principles of supply and demand are not vague at all, but they have limitations. They are necessary to understand economic behaviour, but rarely in the real world are they sufficient.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#295

Post by lonelappde »

fartcannon wrote: post #127
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #57

Making sense in what fashion, to what end? Investment opportunities? Proposed public policy changes? Where to look for a job? To a large degree the economy is unknowable. That's why you can get two economists in a room and receive seven opinions. Don't get me wrong; there's good value there. It's just that economics is an odd mix of philosophy and math. On my more cranky days I call it astrology for people who know c…

I just call it history. All these models describe what happened before. And that's all they do.

No they don't. They guess at what happened before.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#296

Post by TheColorYellow »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #263
fanzhang wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Austrian School seems to have been wrong about the last 15 years' money printing causing inflation. In particular, the general Austrian school would have predicted a lot more inflation by now. The prediction on this has fared so poorly that the last 15 years has given rise to a school nearly diametrically opposite to the Austrian school: modern monetary theory. (My understanding of the Austrian response to this i…

Krugman's going to supply your steelman? Sorry, no. Krugman has a Nobel, but when he writes (at least for the last decade or two), he does so primarily as a propagandist, and secondarily (if at all) as an economist. There's plenty of actual mainstream economists that can give you steelman responses to Austrian Economics. Don't go get them from Krugman. You won't get good steel from him; it will have too much straw in…

Who would you point out as a steelman? I'd love to find a proper, thorough critic of the Austrian school.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#298

Post by AnimalMuppet »

TheColorYellow wrote: post #296
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krugman's going to supply your steelman? Sorry, no. Krugman has a Nobel, but when he writes (at least for the last decade or two), he does so primarily as a propagandist, and secondarily (if at all) as an economist. There's plenty of actual mainstream economists that can give you steelman responses to Austrian Economics. Don't go get them from Krugman. You won't get good steel from him; it will have too much straw in…

Who would you point out as a steelman? I'd love to find a proper, thorough critic of the Austrian school.

Ah, um, well... I don't actually have one in hand. There have to be some (I assume), but I can't point you to one. My point was, Krugman may have a response, but don't think of it as a steelman response.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#299

Post by jonahbenton »

jotakami wrote: post #146

Where to begin? I’ve been reading about economics for about 15 years, and I have to say that this crisis has brought a level of clarity about certain economic truths that I never would have seen otherwise. First: accounting. I got an MBA five years ago and accounting was my favorite subject because it is behind everything that a business does. Accounting is the instrumentation that allows humans to organize their act…

Should be the top comment. Accounting is everything. It is the physics of the economy.

There is a common fiction to money matters that everyone has to share- whether or not they know it- and the language in which that fiction is written is accounting.

Re: Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

#300

Post by eru »

zabana wrote: post #165
eru wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read the blurb and summary on the page you linked to. It might be an interesting read, but the main thesis seems false? Globalism has done just fine. > Elsewhere, the world looks for answers to African debt. the AIDS epidemic, the return of fundamentalism and terrorism. all of which perversely refuse to disappear despite the theoretical rise in global prosperity. Most of these don't look so intractable any mor…

> Most of these don't look so intractable any more, even if we haven't solved them, yet. who's we ?

Humanity.
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