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Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

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Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#51

Post by gonational »

sideshowb wrote: post #38
gonational wrote: post #25

If you can find me economists that have predicted economic activities/results with any level of accuracy (e.g., greater than 50% even), then I will find you ~10 times as many prominent economists who have predicted the opposite. Economists probably predict things accurately at a rate lower than throwing a 20 sided die into the air and guessing which number will be facing up when it lands. Does that matter? Well, if t…

> TBH, why do we even care what “economists” think at all, given the above? Economists are no better, from an objective value perspective, then tarot readers Because the people with data to prove this are themselves economists. Yes, economics has had a lot of failures (I often find myself informing people of these) but anything you replace it with is ultimately going to be another form of economics. For every success…

I think it’s pretty core to my thesis that economics is a practice/study that provides little to no value to anyone, so why would it need to be replaced?

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#52

Post by airstrike »

tuberelay wrote: post #23

The official US inflation measure is garbage. It doesn't include enough of the big 3 costs in people's lives : housing, education and healthcare. It includes whacky stuff like "oh your cellphone is faster now than 5 years ago, we're going to say that you're getting 10x the phone for roughly the same price and use that to disprove inflation". It ignores asset inflation (stocks, real estate, venture capital, everything…

I'm no CPI expert, but I don't think this statement is really accurate.

Rent is including in CPI; home prices are not. See https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/4779. The sidebar should provide links to multiple other questions asking why that is the case.

Tuition and fees are included in the CPI as well. See https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm and https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/elementary-and-high-schoo...

Finally, some measure of healthcare is also part of the CPI. See https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm.

It includes "out-of-pocket" expenses which in the BLI's definition means:

* patient payments made directly to retail establishments for medical goods and services;

* health insurance premiums paid for by the consumer, including Medicare Part B; and

* health insurance premiums deducted from employee paychecks.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#53

Post by qubex »

Mirioron wrote: post #36
qubex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi got it extremely wrong, to the point that if he had any economic background at all I’d suspect the first wave of crypto currencies to be a sick joke: artificial scarcity (and more generally, inflexible money supply) of the kind engendered by bitcoin and its ilk are the exact embodiment of what money must not be if one is to not artificially crimp the economy’s growth. There’s a very good reason why we came of…

> There’s a very good reason why we came off the so-called Gold Standard (bimetallic standard, actually), and why coming off it heralded the greatest period of economic growth in Western history. How sure are we that this was a good idea in the long run? Politicians and their appointees aren't always the most responsible people. If it's possible for them to obfuscate some of their spending without upsetting people th…

> The US already has a big debt problem

I’m going to stop you right there. You see a large public debt and you presume, because you view debt as all household agents do (i.e., as something that needs to be repaid and that limits future discretionary spending). It’s not necessarily that way for a nation-state that (as the article seems to recount) can literally print money to make good on the debts it is running up.

The US has a big debt. A debt is, for households/firms/private individuals usually a “problem”, so a big debt would qualify as a big problem. But that doesn’t apply here.

Who would be most alarmed by a true “debt problem”? The bond-holders, one presumes. And yet there’s apparently no limit to the willingness of market participants to lend money to the US and, judging by the yields on those bonds, no suspicion of default.

There is no debt problem. There is just a big debt, because lots of money needs to be in circulation to support the massive amount of economic activity going on.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#54

Post by airstrike »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #30

I'm not a subscriber so I can't read the article but I have a personal hypothesis about this. Developed economies have begun to enter a post scarcity state. Daily goods like food and household items are not responding to inflation because they are no longer scarce. The combination of economies of scale, automation and cheap foreign labor have brought many goods to this point. Meanwhile, things which are still governe…

https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/economists-got-the-decade-a... ;-)

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#55

Post by logicchains »

mc32 wrote: post #26
larrysalibra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we" came off of the gold standard because Nixon was having trouble paying for the Vietnam war. Printing money doesn't create wealth, it redistributes it to the printer: this is seigniorage and it is a tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

Whatever the case, it’s bit of odd bedfellows when extreme conservatives and some people on the left see the bi-metallic standard as something to go back to. What’s the case for it?

It takes power away from the government. Printing money is a wealth transfer from currency holders to the printer (hence why counterfeiting is illegal), and the government has unlimited ability to do this, which in the case of a bad government can result in hyperinflation and mass impoverishment, like happened recently in Zimbabwe and Venezuela. It's harder for the government to do this with gold.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#56

Post by nathan_compton »

Excel_Wizard wrote: post #21

a savings glut is the thing that Krugman has suggested, and is the thing which makes sense to me. Which stinks because I hate Krugman.

Can you elaborate? Intuitively, no one I know has a "savings glut." If anything, people in my generation are saddled with debt.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#57

Post by drcode »

doublement wrote: post #35
drcode wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi used his/her economic theories to create a 100 billion market cap asset from literally zero... what would they have to do to convince you folks that they were on to something with their ideas? Also cure cancer?

Bitcoin isn't used for anything except to transfer dollars from regular buyers to miners and/or large early adopters.

Nobody is forced to buy Bitcoin.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#58

Post by mrep »

gonational wrote: post #51
sideshowb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TBH, why do we even care what “economists” think at all, given the above? Economists are no better, from an objective value perspective, then tarot readers Because the people with data to prove this are themselves economists. Yes, economics has had a lot of failures (I often find myself informing people of these) but anything you replace it with is ultimately going to be another form of economics. For every success…

I think it’s pretty core to my thesis that economics is a practice/study that provides little to no value to anyone, so why would it need to be replaced?

Just because it is not perfect does not mean it is useless. Just look at the countries trying to endlessly print money to see what happens when you ignore it.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#59

Post by doublement »

drcode wrote: post #57
doublement wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin isn't used for anything except to transfer dollars from regular buyers to miners and/or large early adopters.

Nobody is forced to buy Bitcoin.

Yet they do it anyway.

Re: Economists’ projections of interest rates and unemployment have proved too high

#60

Post by sideshowb »

gonational wrote: post #51
sideshowb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TBH, why do we even care what “economists” think at all, given the above? Economists are no better, from an objective value perspective, then tarot readers Because the people with data to prove this are themselves economists. Yes, economics has had a lot of failures (I often find myself informing people of these) but anything you replace it with is ultimately going to be another form of economics. For every success…

I think it’s pretty core to my thesis that economics is a practice/study that provides little to no value to anyone, so why would it need to be replaced?

Your thesis is an economics thesis. Congratulations, you are now a failed economist.
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