[QUOTE="jetpower3"][QUOTE="Barbariser"] Not to echo or support that Zionist guy who seems to be a rapid libertarian trying to seem more intelligent and awesome than everyone else, but the fact that economics is less precise and more divisive a science than hard sciences doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the time, economics works. We have perfectly functional theories for why communist nations are poor and capitalist ones are rich, why the U.S. recovered from 2008 and Europe is going through multiple dip recessions, what an optimal tax policy is, .etc. Also, economics is hardly the only field that gets "data shocks", revisions and refinements based on new evidence happens in all sciences. Look at chemistry and how many times they had to update their atomic models, I've yet to see economic theories being disproven and recreated as much as the model of the atom. Point is, economics only seems more divisive and uncertain because there are a lot of schools of thought and economics is highly tied in to politics, allowing heretodox economics schools to easily gain traction like what Zionist is spouting. Barbariser
And there lies the rub. If you truly believe that economics is highly tied to politics, than anything beyond the most observable and basic postulates of economics is almost useless in the long run. Even those are increasingly useless in post-industrialized economies and those with dominating financial systems, which are not as tied to tangible or observable goods/services and manufacturing. The difference between atomic models and economic models is that regardless of what Dalton, Rutherford, Bohr et al have theorized, the composition of the atom has most definitely not changed. We have just gained further clarity and improved observation into it. Economics, on the other hand, is based on constantly changing variables. Economists seem to like to say "all other things being equal", but the truth is that nothing in an economy is ever that. You claim that there is such a thing as an optimal tax policy, and that there are explainable reasons why Europe is stagnating under the shadow of long term austerity and why the U.S. has recovered better than most, but those are only post hoc explanations. Ditto for your comment on communist nations (BTW, why did no one seem to foresee the demise of the Soviet Union? Many smart people even thought the iron curtain would never be lifted). In the face of such fluxing variables and politicised agenda, I find it very hard to believe any of the fitted narratives that economists seem to give. Which is why I find the thesis of this thread to be bunk no matter who you slice it. Fiscal and monetary policy might be important to at least try to get "right", but it's impossible to know what is optimal. Even if it seems to lend causality to better (or worse) economic times, it's not scientific to hold other things equal and say that it was a main factor in whatever happens, or that it was the most optimal thing that could have happened.
Nope, these explanations have actually been around for a very long time. We've known that reduced government spending and budget balancing damages short term growth since the Great Depression, the problem is that many politicians in the E.U. and U.S. are ignorant of this very basic macroeconomic fact. Predictions of the Soviet Union collapse have technically been around since the 1920s, and it's hard to predict the collapse of a nation which heavily restricts information about themselves to the outside world. What we have known about their econometrics confirms every our economic theories about communism vs capitalism, they were consistently poorer than almost every First World nation with about 1/3 the per capita income of the United States, they had slower economic growth in the long term, they were very economically inefficient in all measures, .etc. Being tied to politics doesn't damage the credibility or usefulness of economics at all, anymore than the existence of creationists or climate change deniers makes geology and astrophysics unreliable. Why does "changing variables" make economics unreliable? Part of economics is about using maths to predict the effects of "changing variables" and how to respond to them. The composition of the atom doesn't change, but neither do basic micro economic laws. Holding other factors constant is done so that we can mathematically define the effects of changes in one variable, physicists and other hard sciences do this too. Stating "ceteris parabus, rising income leads to rising demand for a good depending on the income elasticity of demand" is no different from stating "assuming all else is constant, the pressure of a gas is directly proportional to its absolute temperature". Using complex math or computer models to predict the changing nature of the variables on a macro economic scale is the whole problem. Stating rising income leads to rising demand might be good as a general rule of thumb, but it's much more difficult to measure an accurate elasticity of demand, especially when changing nonmonetary factors are involved in the goods/services or those involving goods/services that have no direct or long term precedent. The difference between stating that and properties of a gas is that the latter can be effectively tested. Unlike in hard sciences, or even fields like psychology, there is no way to test specific economics theories in a controlled experiment in the real world, and making predictions and observing the economic effect post hoc leads to the narrative fallacy I mentioned earlier. Even if you are think you are right, you have no way of knowing how right, how much variables you couldn't control for or observe played a part, and without extending your observation period into the indeterminate future, you still don't know the total effect of a specific policy or economic decision since even small deviations from expectations (or unobserved variables) can compound over time.
Again, I still hold that basic economics, the ones that have stood the test of time (and for more than a few hundred years at that) can be good as a rule of thumb, but it is not scientific and anything too complex/specific and tied to the times is going to cause problems.
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