Not a cabal but there’s ideological groups preaching different models that aren’t necessarily based on good empirical data, which are then used to create economic policies that affect people’s lives. When you have groups that offer polar opposite opinions on what would happen when say the interest rates lever is moved, and therefore how it should move. Moving the lever in one of the advised directions might cause the proletariat to lose their shirts vs the other. It may not have been intentional, evil-hands-rubbing advice, nevertheless the effect could still be the same. Heck we very well know that increasing interest rates is supposed to result in inflation reduction via a proportion of people losing their jobs and homes. You can probably see how Joe might see this as someone wanting to actively harm them. Especially when 2/3 of the inflation was driven by Joe’s boss, some economists’ advise that Joe’s expected to take even more hurt to compensate. If that advice was based on engineering-level rigor that’s proven to work beyond doubt, it would be easier to swallow. But it isn’t. It feels like the field has an outsized effect on people’s lives for its standards of rigor. And so there’s plenty of room for ideology or opinion in the gaps and that ideology can and does tilt towards favoring different people in the economy. I think this is what people see and given their state conclude economists bad.
BTW, I’m not even sure economics even can reach high predictive accuracy. The system might be too complex for that. 🤷 Or not.
Not a cabal but there’s ideological groups preaching different models that aren’t necessarily based on good empirical data, which are then used to create economic policies that affect people’s lives.
Ah, I see you’ve met the Austrian cult of ‘economics’
In general, I would agree that predictive economics is… dicey at best. But economics is at its best when it’s making an effort to understand why things happen, and how to correct them - the value judgements of whether they should be corrected are a different matter entirely.
Like an engineer who’s asked to draw up plans for a dam - they realize and must sketch out the benefits and expenses, but ultimately, it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the engineer making the final decision. The expert, ideally, is there to inform the decision makers of the possible options and what they mean.
I was implying something else, which you might disagree with but I’ll restate just in case using your analogy. I’m implying that economists are like two engineers each drawing up their own plan for the dam, where building according to one of the plans results in a sound dam, whereas the other results in a dam wall collapse a couple of years down the road and catastrophic downstream flood. And often there’s no good way to tell which plan is the sound one until the you build it and see if you get a flood or not. I’m not even entering the should we build the dam area or not. 😅 I’ll give you that I feel like there’s more empiricism today than 50 or 100 years ago but it’s still far from where I’d like it to be, given how influential it is to people’s lives. Again this is my opinion based on my observations which you don’t have to agree with. I did not downvote.
That’s not entirely wrong, I’d say. Like I said, predictive economics are dicey. But one thing economists have made significant progress on in the past century is understanding why things happen and what effects they have. They can tell you what will happen if the dice come up snake eyes - just don’t put too much stock in when they predict you’ll roll it, or how to get it.
Not a cabal but there’s ideological groups preaching different models that aren’t necessarily based on good empirical data, which are then used to create economic policies that affect people’s lives. When you have groups that offer polar opposite opinions on what would happen when say the interest rates lever is moved, and therefore how it should move. Moving the lever in one of the advised directions might cause the proletariat to lose their shirts vs the other. It may not have been intentional, evil-hands-rubbing advice, nevertheless the effect could still be the same. Heck we very well know that increasing interest rates is supposed to result in inflation reduction via a proportion of people losing their jobs and homes. You can probably see how Joe might see this as someone wanting to actively harm them. Especially when 2/3 of the inflation was driven by Joe’s boss, some economists’ advise that Joe’s expected to take even more hurt to compensate. If that advice was based on engineering-level rigor that’s proven to work beyond doubt, it would be easier to swallow. But it isn’t. It feels like the field has an outsized effect on people’s lives for its standards of rigor. And so there’s plenty of room for ideology or opinion in the gaps and that ideology can and does tilt towards favoring different people in the economy. I think this is what people see and given their state conclude economists bad.
BTW, I’m not even sure economics even can reach high predictive accuracy. The system might be too complex for that. 🤷 Or not.
Ah, I see you’ve met the Austrian cult of ‘economics’
Might have heard of them. 🙉
In general, I would agree that predictive economics is… dicey at best. But economics is at its best when it’s making an effort to understand why things happen, and how to correct them - the value judgements of whether they should be corrected are a different matter entirely.
Like an engineer who’s asked to draw up plans for a dam - they realize and must sketch out the benefits and expenses, but ultimately, it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the engineer making the final decision. The expert, ideally, is there to inform the decision makers of the possible options and what they mean.
I was implying something else, which you might disagree with but I’ll restate just in case using your analogy. I’m implying that economists are like two engineers each drawing up their own plan for the dam, where building according to one of the plans results in a sound dam, whereas the other results in a dam wall collapse a couple of years down the road and catastrophic downstream flood. And often there’s no good way to tell which plan is the sound one until the you build it and see if you get a flood or not. I’m not even entering the should we build the dam area or not. 😅 I’ll give you that I feel like there’s more empiricism today than 50 or 100 years ago but it’s still far from where I’d like it to be, given how influential it is to people’s lives. Again this is my opinion based on my observations which you don’t have to agree with. I did not downvote.
That’s not entirely wrong, I’d say. Like I said, predictive economics are dicey. But one thing economists have made significant progress on in the past century is understanding why things happen and what effects they have. They can tell you what will happen if the dice come up snake eyes - just don’t put too much stock in when they predict you’ll roll it, or how to get it.