Are there any fiscal or monetary policies on which there is consensus among a broad range of professional economists that politicians are rejecting right now? I am referring to policies specifically related to restoring growth and jobs to the economy versus more general policies.
Thanks,
Rob
I think most tend to agree that Tarrifs = bad and that those that want to return to the Gold Standard are kinda nuts.
That paying economists more will help?
No, there’s no course of action which most economists agree on but which politicians are rejecting. Since interest rates are up against the zero bound already and can’t be cut any further, pretty much any action designed to boost economic growth right now is controversial in some way, to some group of people.
Besides anything though, economists are much more amenable to political ideology than the profession likes to make out - John Taylor, for instance, is apparently a fairly respected economist in the profession but he also tends to support, unfailingly, whatever policy the Republic party is proposing at any one time. He supported fiscal stimulus to combat recession in 2001, and he opposed fiscal stimulus to combat recession in 2009, for instance. A lot of economists aren’t as detached and objective as we’d like to think.
Economics is the sub-field of politics which uses the language of mathematics to endlessly argue the same points.
Economist all agree that more money needs to be in the hands of the public instead of the government. It’s just that they disagree vehemently about how to do this: by spending or by cutting taxes?
Looking at the problems of Greece, part of economists, currently in control, are urging saving by cutting costs. Other economists are pointing out that cutting spending elsewhere (like military* instead of official employees) would be much more effective, and that spending money on things like infrastructure would help the economy. Currently many economists are even warning that the next round of saving = spending cuts will affect negativly the slowly rising economy.
Basically, it looks the other way round: politicans suggest a certain measure and cite economists who agree with them; since both sides do that, no unified opinion of economic experts is clear.
The larger problem behind that is that economics is not a real science. They start with magical squares and suppose ideal circumstances from there on, and never adjust those assumptions to the real world.
*this was not mentioned loudly because Greece ordered military Hardware from German companies, therefore Angie was most concerned with this order not being cancelled. Shows who is really meant to be saved in this operation…
It’s a social science, not a physical science. That doesn’t make it “not a real science”.
Simply not true.
I’m assuming that by “public” you mean “not the government,” but individual actors, because in lots of contexts the public is the government.
In which case, not all economists agree. There are a lot of Keynesian thinkers out there. These guys one one side, and guys like John Taylor (mentioned above) on the other side, go a long way toward demonstrating that confirmation bias is alive and well in the field of macro- (not micro-) economics. A serious scientific endeavor would work towards eliminating that.