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Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

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Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#281

Post by WalterBright »

bawolff wrote: post #164
WalterBright wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say Bob insults me and I punch him in the nose. Did Bob cause me to punch him in the nose? Of course not. Just like the Terminator, I scrolled through a list of options, and selected "punch him in the nose". I could have selected "your mother is a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." I could have selected "do nothing".

What's your definition of cause here? Human agency? In that case, people could have decided to donate part of their salaries to businesses they previously frequented,or other rediculous "choices" that humans would never do. I don't think there is a coherent notion of cause and effect where both covid does not cause the recession and the lockdown does. I can see very restricted notions of cause and effect where neithe…

> has no effect on the economic downturn

I didn't write it had no effect. I wrote it wouldn't have caused a recession.

> purely caused

I didn't say "purely", either.

Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#282

Post by viburnum »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #280
learnstats2 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If a professor presents these assumptions as "truths" (as they have done, quite literally, via this article), graduate students are strongly disincentivized from thinking about challenging or contradicting them - if they want to pass their course, if they ever might want to get a job in that department, etc.

We can have an argument about the nature of scientific truth, but I think that's a big topic. What contemporary graduate macro everywhere teaches you is a set of tools. You then have to ask and answer your own questions. There isn't any "indoctrination" as you seem to be imagining. It's not different at all from doing a math PhD and taking a first-year analysis sequence, or a CS PhD and taking an algorithms class. It…

Hidden in all that math and technique are some very strong ideological assumptions. That poor people are lazy, that wages equal the marginal product of labour, that there’s an efficiency/equality tradeoff. Even just the common assumption that markets clear or that Pareto optimality has any kind of ethical basis are hugely ideological.

Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#283

Post by cambalache »

brazzy wrote: post #278
rhines wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's maybe a bit too much vested in the term "irrelevant" and the context around this. I suspect the OP meant the conditional to read something like: IF shelter is unaffordable THEN smartphones being cheap is irrelevant ASSUMING opportunities from the smartphone don't make housing affordable. Like if someone says if you're starving, being a millionaire is irrelevant - the assumption would be that that mone…

> What they're saying is that phones being cheap does not make up for housing being expensive - no matter how useful the phone is, ultimately the end goal is to have shelter, and if you can't afford shelter then it doesn't matter how cheap anything else is. I can't agree with that either. Housing is not everything. Even if you are homeless with no prospects of getting out of that situation, it still matters a lot how…

Have you been homeless? I have been. Having a place to warmly and safely spend the night is 10000 better than any piece of phone technology and the fact you cannot understand that simple proposition is a show of either shocking callousness or incurable stupidity.

Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#284

Post by uxcolumbo »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #254
rhines wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what they mean is that if you can't afford shelter, it's little comfort to be able to afford a phone. Yes, the phone may be a tool that can help you find shelter, and it may help with coping with your situation and finding other opportunities, but in the end you're still trying to get shelter. If you could afford a home initially, you wouldn't need the phone to help you get one. So no one here is arguing that…

Housing is more expensive in part because it's much more spacious than it used to be. We've torn down a million SROs (single room occupancy units). When I say that, inevitably someone argues against it and tells me it's slum housing. So we have a world in which the folks with money and the folks who have the power to create housing only want to approve upper class housing and then act like homeless people are just la…

Why is your post being down voted?

I think your post makes sense.

Land is valuable and to maximise returns, building these SROs wouldn’t make sense in our profit uber alles system.

SROs don’t have too look like concrete blocks from ex communist systems.

This is what design thinking can achieve... just one example https://nestron.house/

It seems there is no money in helping the homeless or people with low income. I guess short term thinking doesn’t consider the cost of a gradually fracturing system, it doesn’t recognise the value of a cohesive society.

It’d be amazing if there was an incentive to build a million tiny houses.

Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#285

Post by learnstats2 »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #280
learnstats2 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If a professor presents these assumptions as "truths" (as they have done, quite literally, via this article), graduate students are strongly disincentivized from thinking about challenging or contradicting them - if they want to pass their course, if they ever might want to get a job in that department, etc.

We can have an argument about the nature of scientific truth, but I think that's a big topic. What contemporary graduate macro everywhere teaches you is a set of tools. You then have to ask and answer your own questions. There isn't any "indoctrination" as you seem to be imagining. It's not different at all from doing a math PhD and taking a first-year analysis sequence, or a CS PhD and taking an algorithms class. It…

> If you can take these tools and show that any of the truths presented in this article are false

This is not the opposite of taking those as axiomatic truths.

You're also calling them truths and saying it's on me (as a novice) to show them false? This only proves my point that they are not properly examined.

Like I said, it bothers me.

Re: Four Basic Truths of Macroeconomics

#286

Post by arcticbull »

phabora wrote: post #276
arcticbull wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I also wonder if it has to do with folks in high school and college just not having money, so why bother paying attention to ECON material? It's all abstract. It's like the Futurama joke from Future Stock: “Oh my god! I’m a millionaire! Suddenly, I have an opinion on the capital gains tax!”

That’s the stupidest theory I’ve heard this week. This is a forum hosted by a startup accelator where programmers and founders (as well as other professionals) gather. It’s not exactly a hippie resort. Libertarians are also the most ideologically pro-capitalist people that one is likely to meet.

> That’s the stupidest theory I’ve heard this week. This is a forum hosted by a startup accelator where programmers and founders (as well as other professionals) gather. It’s not exactly a hippie resort.

True, though I suspect that happened after they left high school.

> Libertarians are also the most ideologically pro-capitalist people that one is likely to meet.

A study shows a quarter of libertarians don't know what libertarianism is heh. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_S...

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