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Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

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Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#91

Post by Gibbon1 »

taffer wrote: post #86
Gibbon1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you poke at economists you get the exact same arrogant rage that you get when you poke at fundamentalist religions. Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Compare with poking at Einstein (never accepted quantum mechanics) or Linus Pauling (alternative medicine nutter), Shockley (racist). Poke all you want the physics community doesn't care.

> Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Who is them ? Do you think economics hasn't made any progress sice the 1970s and everyone is a paleomonetarist?

Oh I think progress has been made, retrograde progress. Economists as less competent now than they were back then.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#92

Post by pytester »

coldtea wrote: post #54
geezerjay wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populism is a major problem, and one which is based on unscrupulous politicians taking advantage of the ignorance and prejudice while promissing unrealisting and outright impossible solutions to problems that they missrepresent and even invent. And that has absolutely zero to do with science in general and economic models in particular. Time and again we see populist politicians fanning up the masses with anti-capita…

> Populism is a major problem, and one which is based on unscrupulous politicians taking advantage of the ignorance and prejudice while promissing unrealisting and outright impossible solutions to problems that they missrepresent and even invent. Isn't that also what the elites (say, the 10%-ers) have historically also said for realistic and entirely possible solutions (like beheading the King and building a democrat…

Exactly. Margaret Thatcher epitomized this with her famous catchphrase:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

The politburo in the Soviet Union probably employed a similar style of propaganda.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#93

Post by jacques_chester »

mcguire wrote: post #19
jacques_chester wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Alternative hypothesis: they disagree. Disagreeing isn't ignoring. It isn't a conspiracy. It's just disagreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...

" But perhaps the greatest rebuke of Piketty to be found among academic economics is not contained in any of these overt or veiled attacks on his scholarship and interpretation, but rather in the deafening silence that greets it, as well as inequality in general, in broad swathes of the field—even to this day. You can search through the websites of several leading economics departments or the official lists of workin…

This is still not evidence of conspiracy (but has the structure of classic conspiracy theories). It just means the mainstream looked at it and disagreed.

Nobody is owed attention from any discipline of study. Absence of attention is not conclusive evidence of anything.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#94

Post by jacques_chester »

coldtea wrote: post #58
jacques_chester wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Alternative hypothesis: they disagree. Disagreeing isn't ignoring. It isn't a conspiracy. It's just disagreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...

> Disagreeing isn't ignoring. It isn't a conspiracy. It's just disagreement. I've read a lot of those "disagreements". Most of them are thinly veil-led attacks and facile dismissals, the kind that pass for criticism in mass media today.

This is not a meaningful sample. The mass media is not "Economists", as an academic discipline.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#96

Post by Gibbon1 »

closeparen wrote: post #81
Gibbon1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you poke at economists you get the exact same arrogant rage that you get when you poke at fundamentalist religions. Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Compare with poking at Einstein (never accepted quantum mechanics) or Linus Pauling (alternative medicine nutter), Shockley (racist). Poke all you want the physics community doesn't care.

The physics and math communities get plenty agitated at ludicrous pop-sci and Hollywood depictions, cranks who think they are oppressed geniuses with important answers, etc. Approach just about anyone with arrogance and contempt for the methods and body of knowledge they spend their life on, and they won’t be happy about it.

Difference between annoyed/amused/slight despondency and narcissistic rage.

It's kinda of like this, a mechanical engineer doesn't feel threatened by some guy selling a magnetic doohickey you put in series with your cars fuel line to increase MPG. He just thinks it's stupid. He's not mad though.

Economists get angry.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#97

Post by Gibbon1 »

pytester wrote: post #87
Gibbon1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd agree with me that the problems with post WWII "social science", "political science", "psychology", "architecture" are precisely that they're trying to ape the physical sciences and not just be art. And this is utterly true of Economics more than anything. And actually while a lot of arts have been pulling themselves back from that rat hole economics just keeps digging deeper.

The problem with economics is the money riding on it. If one day the consensus becomes "raising the minimum wage by $5 only impacts profit; it doesn't impact employment" then a lot of very rich people stand to lose a lot of money as it becomes more politically palatable. Economics is the most highly paid soft science for a reason. Climate science has the same issue but fortunately they have managed to resist the corr…

Yeah 1960-80's post modern literary criticism is just embarrassing and no cares. Modern architecture is merely ugly. But economics enabled real harm to people and communities.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#98

Post by atq2119 »

taffer wrote: post #83
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics as used in policy seems to be mostly about using outrageously nonsensical arguments to justify tax cuts and increase corporate power by cutting regulations that enforce corporate responsibility. The results are predictably grim for everyone who isn't a 0.1%er - sometimes fatally so. There's a side-field of purely academic economics which includes heterodox ideas like MMT, but they - currently - have almost…

And that is exactly what so called climate sceptics say about climate science or what antivaxxers say about conventional medicine.

You can take a look at track records of predictions and policy interventions to compare those fields. Vaccine did in fact significantly reduce or even eradicate some diseases. The track record of predictions out of economics is a lot spottier.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#99

Post by yakubin »

taffer wrote: post #80
yakubin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something isn't science, doesn't mean that it is art. Social "sciences", psychology and the like are neither. It is true however that they get more and more ridiculous when they try to dress their ideologies in a scientifically-sounding language to get a piece of the cake which is credibility that the hard sciences cooked for themselves, at the same time having remarkably little to do with any science at…

Who are you to decide what is science and what isn't? What is your model of what a science is anyway? As long as you can't answer that, the only thing unscientific is your comment.

I understand science the way Popper wrote about it. Yes, my comment is unscientific. I've never claimed otherwise. Just because something is unscientific, doesn't mean it doesn't have value. E.g. I study mathematics and I do not consider mathematics a science (I know many other mathematicians who share this attitude) and yet I consider the study of mathematics to be one the best ways to spend my time.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#100

Post by blunte »

taffer wrote: post #86
Gibbon1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you poke at economists you get the exact same arrogant rage that you get when you poke at fundamentalist religions. Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Compare with poking at Einstein (never accepted quantum mechanics) or Linus Pauling (alternative medicine nutter), Shockley (racist). Poke all you want the physics community doesn't care.

> Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Who is them ? Do you think economics hasn't made any progress sice the 1970s and everyone is a paleomonetarist?

It is exceptionally difficult to prove economic theories because experiments cannot be repeated. The variables are always changing, and there is far from complete control over them.
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