61–70 of 116 posts
If economists did come to a broad consensus, many politicians would still ignore that consensus if it didn't happen to fit their worldview or the interests of their major donors. See: climate science.
One could scarcely call the field of Economics a science though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what he's suggesting is that paying down debt through austerity can be more costly than growth, since austerity hurts growth. The trick is, where does growth come from?
The mistake there is thinking printing money brings you growth. Where has this worked?
So if some investment, say a new airport or funding for the National Science Foundation increases future growth even just slightly, it's perfectly fine to finance it with debt.
Two things in our universe that are impossible: Modeling chaos and knowing the future. Economists model chaos and use that model to predict the future.
And forecasts in that realm have improved tremendously over the last years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Gosh, that is an extremely salient and DEEPLY DEPRESSING point. I've been drawn to question what to do about that quite often, but I havent happened across an acceptable answer as yet.
My hope would be that the problem isn't "major donors" but rather uneducated and misrepresented citizens. The question about donors or deep states or any other conspiracy type scheme is both how they might affect the purpose of the education system and the integrity of the democratic machinery. These should be questioned, but fixing them might be more achievable than eliminating "major donors" which is certainly tied…
It seems that people are too hurried to read the article and are commenting the title and economics on general level. Basic macroeconomics did fine. Austerity side Alesina/Ardagna/Reinhart/Rogoff camp was utterly wrong. Spreadsheet errors in their studies that became basis for political action etc. Even after the austerity approach has been shown to be baseless in academia it continues to live in politics. Politician…
Unfortunately, politicians and the general public often inject philosophy and morality into their view of finances and Economics. Beyond austerity, another example is drug testing and work requirements for entitlements. This is particularly problematic if automation permanently reduces the demand for actual human labour.
It seems that people are too hurried to read the article and are commenting the title and economics on general level. Basic macroeconomics did fine. Austerity side Alesina/Ardagna/Reinhart/Rogoff camp was utterly wrong. Spreadsheet errors in their studies that became basis for political action etc. Even after the austerity approach has been shown to be baseless in academia it continues to live in politics. Politician…
It seems that people are too hurried to read the article and are commenting the title and economics on general level. Basic macroeconomics did fine. Austerity side Alesina/Ardagna/Reinhart/Rogoff camp was utterly wrong. Spreadsheet errors in their studies that became basis for political action etc. Even after the austerity approach has been shown to be baseless in academia it continues to live in politics. Politician…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could scarcely call the field of Economics a science though.
Since politicians don't observe the consensus in a more rigorous science (climate), there's even less reason to think they'll observe it in economics.
Because economics has always been utterly useless in any practical sense. It makes no testable predictions and is no more scientific than any theology. Only because it clothes its dogmas in symbolic notation is it accorded even the slightest bit of respect. The sooner we jettison it from our epistenic frames, the more quickly we will return to something that at least partially resembles sanity.
That's not true. There are, for example, GDP growth forecasts published by almost all central banks and many other institutions. They are pretty wrong, most of the time. But they are made, and falsifying them has been pretty easy in the past.
There are many more theories in economics that are, in principle, testable and falsifiable. The problem is that it's difficult to run controlled "experiments" on interventions. You never have a control group in the strict sense, and everything is connected to everything else.