Huh? How did you get from Sowell’s comment to Objectivism?
[QUOTE=shigyu]
If so, why don’t more people believe in economic conservatism?
[/QUOTE]
Because the economists are so rarely correct? Economists always show up the day after some cataclysm to explain with charts and graphs how it came to pass, yet never seem to manage to predict anything. That’s not science, that’s voodoo.
From Mad Money, March 11,
[Quote=Jim Cramer]
No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear.
[/Quote]
Bear Stearns closed at 62.97 on March 11. On March 17 it closed at 4.81, and Jim Cramer had this to say:
[Quote=Jim Cramer]
The financials of the financial stocks cannot be trusted
[/Quote]
Of course, Jim Cramer is to economics what Oprah Winfrey is to journalism, but to the hoi polloi out there he puts a public face on a field rife with 20/20 hindsight and 20/800 forward vision.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Huh? How did you get from Sowell’s comment to Objectivism?
[/QUOTE]
He’s saying he has “information” that ranks higher than “opinions”. In other words, he’s saying his economic views are right and incontrovertible, like the laws of math. It’s right up there with Objectivism as an assertion of purportedly logical dogmatic certainty; not even Marxism approaches that level of intellectual hubris. (The Austrian School does, at least as some have presented it in this forum – see this thread.)
[QUOTE=Bill Door]
Because the economists are so rarely correct? Economists always show up the day after some cataclysm to explain with charts and graphs how it came to pass, yet never seem to manage to predict anything. That’s not science, that’s voodoo.
[/quote]
I think you’re talking about market analysts, not economists. But it is true that economics, being a social science, is not going to be as accurately predictive as physics or chemistry.
Yep, market analyst. Not economist.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
I think you’re talking about market analysts, not economists. But it is true that economics, being a social science, is not going to be as accurately predictive as physics or chemistry.
[/QUOTE]
There are plenty of economists who see themselves as something much closer to physicists than to, say, political scientists. I share your opinion that economics is social science, but one of the main complaints about economists is that they tend to present their information as objective truth rather than educated guesses based on a pretty rough model of human behavior.
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
If someone can show me an economist who makes prior predictions about economics in the real world, with the same degree of accuracy as physicists do for shaped explosive charges, then I will start actually paying more attention to economists. Until then, I regard them as just another branch of astrology. That caveat extends to economists discussing the economy. Why I should listen to one on the subject of human rights, education, ecology, etc. remains unaddressed.
[/QUOTE]
This seems strikingly seeming to the attitude of global warming deniers to me.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Economists are also prone to advance almost laughably absurd theories if they think they will help the wealthy. “Trickle down” anyone?
[/QUOTE]
Trickle down economics was a derogatory phrase coined by liberals to apply to supply side economics.
Supply side economics was a school dreamed up by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal: it maintained that tax cuts would pay for themselves. It is pure crankery, to the extent that it never went through a recognizable form of peer review.
There are serious conservative economists who espouse tax cuts: Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiew are two examples. Indeed there are whole universities whose economics departments have a conservative reputation (on the whole): two examples are U of Chicago and U of Rochester. Among insiders, they are called “Fresh water” schools (due to their proximity to large lakes) while their center-left counterparts are called “Salt water” (since they tend to cluster on the coasts of the US).
But there aren’t really any economics departments that consider themselves Supply Siders. Indeed, one of the architects of the original Kemp-Roth tax cuts (Bruce Bartlett) wishes that the term would just go away.
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
If someone can show me an economist who makes prior predictions about economics in the real world, with the same degree of accuracy as physicists do for shaped explosive charges, then I will start actually paying more attention to economists.
[/QUOTE]
Meteorologists have improved their predictions over time using careful observation and the application of physical principles. But their predictive power nonetheless falls short of ballistics, for example.
I once knew a guy who argued that macroeconomics is a nonexperimental system-science. Too bad their data isn’t as good or as copious as that used by weather forecasters.
I don’t see why Sowell’s quote is being questioned here. Read any of his books. He certainly does have information about the free market. He’s spent his life studying it and knows much more about the way humans interact in the market than most people.
That, in fact, was not taught by “supply side” economics. Of course, I think you are being loose with your terminology. The Laffer Curve, an aspect of what is termed “supply side” economics, holds that certain tax cuts will, in essence, pay for themselves because a high rate of certain taxes discourages economic activiy. It’s a matter of common sense, really, since everyone realizes that a 0% income tax rate and a 100% income tax rate will produce the same amount of revenue to the government – nothing. When Laffer and other supply side folks talked about this concept it was usually applied to marginal income tax rates and tax rates on productive activity. No one has ever held that any tax cut you can imagine will somehow pay for itself.
An interesting read would be a paper that seeks to evaluate what economists generally agree upon:
[QUOTE=DrCube]
The human benefits are wealth. That’s almost exactly how wealth is defined. Wealth isn’t just what you can measure in dollars and cents. The issue is simply that some people disagree on what is a benefit and what isn’t.
[/QUOTE]
If you want to look at things this way, then many economists have an extremely limited definition of wealth, in my opinion. The point is that there are many things that human beings generally value, which are not accounted for in economic theory.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
If you want to look at things this way, then many economists have an extremely limited definition of wealth, in my opinion. The point is that there are many things that human beings generally value, which are not accounted for in economic theory.
[/QUOTE]
Have you read much in the way of economic literature? When economists talk about “preferences” and utility, they are talking about the things human value, no matter what they are. They aren’t talking about money, you know.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
If you want to look at things this way, then many economists have an extremely limited definition of wealth, in my opinion. The point is that there are many things that human beings generally value, which are not accounted for in economic theory.
[/QUOTE]
That’s an amazing, almost staggering thing to say. It is precisely the opposite of what you will hear in the economics department of any reputable school.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
If you want to look at things this way, then many economists have an extremely limited definition of wealth, in my opinion. The point is that there are many things that human beings generally value, which are not accounted for in economic theory.
[/QUOTE]
I think that you make the rather common mistake of assuming that everybody who claims to be an economist actually is an economist. The only difference between your typical left-winger and your typical right-winger is that the left-winger is at least honest enough to admit that they don’t believe in economics.
I certainly haven’t read much of the economic literature. Besides college courses, my approach to economics and economists is built mainly on what I read in the popular media. There, I often see people arguing for a certain position based only on the financial aspects, and not the human aspects.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
my approach to economics and economists is built mainly on what I read in the popular media.
[/QUOTE]
And that’s your problem right there. That works just as well as depending on the popular media to explain the latest scientific breakthroughs to you.
It’s hardly fair to expect an average Joe like me to plough through articles filled with professional jargon and equations. The popular media is where the economists can make their case to people like me. In this thread I’m explaining why I generally don’t accept their case.
Regarding tax cuts paying for themselves, Renob states:
[QUOTE=Renob]
That, in fact, was not taught by “supply side” economics.
[/quote]
Strictly true, since supply side economics was never taught in a university: it was only put forward by cranks.
Oh. Really. Surely you are familiar with Communist states that had 100% taxes on firms – they owned them after all. Production was not zero.
So much for common sense.
At any rate, the main point is that the Laffer Curve is empirically empty: no evidence was put forth to indicate that it applied to tax rates as they existed in 1977, never mind 2008.
Oh. Really. Guilliani argued that. So did Reagan. Indeed, it’s difficult to find a Republican Presidential candidate who has not drunk from the supply side vat.
Just to be clear, let me quote Paul Krugman (1994) in Peddling Prosperity: “Not only is there no major department that is supply-side in orientation; there is no economist whom one might call a supply-sider in any major [economics] department”.
Don’t like Krugman as a source? Fine. His statement should be easily falsifiable – if false, that is. [1]
[1] There is one possible exception: Robert Mundell, who has actually done some ground-breaking work in international trade. When Krugman penned his remarks, Mundell hadn’t done much academic work since 1970. Some googling shows that he may have re-entered the field in the 1990s, though I see little work on public finance.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
It’s hardly fair to expect an average Joe like me to plough through articles filled with professional jargon and equations. The popular media is where the economists can make their case to people like me. In this thread I’m explaining why I generally don’t accept their case.
[/QUOTE]
Again, it’s difficult to understand why you seem to think the popular media is the place for economists to “make their case” to you, but you presumably would not expect a physicist, botanist or geologist to do the same. I mean, you can live you live however you see fit, but surely you can understand why someone might see your approach as being, well, kind of ignorant?
Nobody expects you (or anyone else) to be an expert in everything else, but the response is not to say “Well, I’m no an expert, so I’m going to assume the profession’s wrong based on something Lou Dobbs said.” It’s quite akin to assuming doctors are usually wrong because I don’t believe that Gupta guy.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
Again, it’s difficult to understand why you seem to think the popular media is the place for economists to “make their case” to you, but you presumably would not expect a physicist, botanist or geologist to do the same. I mean, you can live you live however you see fit, but surely you can understand why someone might see your approach as being, well, kind of ignorant?
Nobody expects you (or anyone else) to be an expert in everything else, but the response is not to say “Well, I’m no an expert, so I’m going to assume the profession’s wrong based on something Lou Dobbs said.” It’s quite akin to assuming doctors are usually wrong because I don’t believe that Gupta guy.
[/QUOTE]
I agree ITR Champion’s response was flawed, but Renob and you are both committing the basic fallacy of argument from authority. In asking how many economic texts ITR Champion has read, Renob implies that ITR Champion can’t participate in this debate, or must participate on an unequal footing, unless he has read a sufficient number of economic texts. This is, of course, bullshit. This is a message board, not a peer reviewed journal. Everyone can participate, and the way to demonstrate the correctness of your viewpoints is through logic and good cites.
If you (generic you, of course) want to claim a PhD in Economics from Harvard or Yale, fine, but you’re still basically an anonymous Internet poster (so you might just be lying your ass off) and you’ll still have to validate your position just like the rest of us who haven’t read so many economic journals.
Also ITR Champion makes his point that he should not be expected to read economics journals to hold opinions on economic theory. This is of course correct. Few of us have the time and energy to read technical materials in all fields to form our political and social opinions. How many people have read tech journals on criminology to form their opinions on law and order? Very few, I’d wager.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
I agree ITR Champion’s response was flawed, but Renob and you are both committing the basic fallacy of argument from authority.
[/quote]
It’s not a fallacy if the person you are quoting actually is an authority on the subject at hand. We would not be able to debate if we had to prove everything to each other based on first principles. Again, keep in mind that we are talking about things about which there is broad consensus among economists.
For example, I’ve posted several times in other threads how economists (real, actual working economists, not money market analysts) agree about the benefits of free trade. Saying that is argument from authority is akin to saying **JShore **is doing that when he posts about Global Warming.
No, he just needs to bring cites to back up his case. When he rejects a whole category of inquiry out of hand, then that is argument from ignorance.