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Economists versus the Economy

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Re: Economists versus the Economy

#111

Post by webmaven »

cmdrfred wrote: post #94
sprafa wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controlled experiments (by behavioural psychologists) could probably do very well

Testing on human subjects is limited and I don't think you can build a sample size that is large enough. Single payer is a great example, Californian or NY voters will likely vote in such a system while Texans would likely opt into a free market approach. Wait a few years and see the outcomes of each policy. Now you can make an evidence based decision rather than a political one.

Unfortunately, you then have to contend with assymetric information effects such as self selection, where sick people who are faced with increased expenses under a free market approach move to CA and NY, while healthy people who would pay more under a single-payer approach would move to TX.

Re: Economists versus the Economy

#112

Post by webmaven »

spangry wrote: post #109
cmdrfred wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testing on human subjects is limited and I don't think you can build a sample size that is large enough. Single payer is a great example, Californian or NY voters will likely vote in such a system while Texans would likely opt into a free market approach. Wait a few years and see the outcomes of each policy. Now you can make an evidence based decision rather than a political one.

Well, after arguing that it's impractical to run RCTs I guess it's time for a bit of a 'climb-down', because this is a really great idea. I could definitely see this working in a place like the USA, where you have lots of big States with diverging political views. I wonder what would be the best way to implement something like this? Just spitballing, but what about Federal grants to partially fund the 'treatment' Sta…

> lots of big States with diverging political views.

The thing is, political views don't diverge quite as much as it is being made to seem. Gerrymandering scrambles the signal[0] quite a bit and the Electoral College then magnifies[1] the apparent differences.

[0] http://theweek.com/speedreads/541955/howgerrymandering-works...

[1] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/

Re: Economists versus the Economy

#113

Post by iopq »

dragonwriter wrote: post #88
iopq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation causes the value of your investments to increase, so it hurts the people who rely on cash more than people with stock portfolios

Inflation doesn't cause the real value of investments to increase, because the real value is the nominal value relative to general prices (and inflation is increase in general prices.)

That's true in the general sense, but low interest rates lead to higher inflation AND better stock market performance. So having lower interest rates benefits people with stock market portfolios and hurts people who have mostly cash.

Re: Economists versus the Economy

#114

Post by digi_owl »

rvern wrote: post #40
stephen_g wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Economics is a fairly big outlier though. There's quite a good book by Economics Prof. Steve Keen called Debunking Economics, which is very accessible and goes over how most of the core tenants of neoclassical (mainstream) economics have been known to be flawed for decades, yet it's all still taught as fact. It's not a scholarly work, but references a great deal of scholarly work. It's fascinating to read and…

Neoclassical synthesis is still taught because, even though it's flawed, we have nothing better. Economists know that the assumptions behind neoclassical models aren't always fulfilled. All science is always done with models and we just use the best models we have, while taking into account their limitations. People don't usually object to this in other fields, but in economics they do because they have stronger Opin…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60__fqFjLMw

Re: Economists versus the Economy

#115

Post by angry_octet »

chongli wrote: post #75
spangry wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all sounds very clever and all, but there's still a rather important question being left unanswered here: on what basis should a government make decisions? Coin flips? Gut feelings? The phase of the moon? Let's say you're the King of the United States. One of your noblemen comes in to your palace and says 'Your majesty, I suggest we eliminate corporate taxation and replace the lost revenue with a tax on consumpt…

Coin flip sounds good to me. If you honestly don't know how to solve a problem, inventing a discipline for the express purpose of having an authority to point to sounds like the worst possible idea. It makes it much harder to change course if you can't merely say "oh, we should try tails instead due to xyz" because now you've got another institution fighting to justify its own survival.

We need a reason to sound Certain. We should do away with the Fed, etc and systematise on the Oracle. That way when things go wrong we can still say it was the will of the Gods without needing to have an inquiry about it.

Though we would probably just have one about who offended the gods.

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