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Laugh while you can, number boy.
Any “scientific” field that produces Art Laffer is a fraud.
99% of the time it’s just astrology for men.
Economics is just applied statistics with a little sociology mixed in
And simplified until linear relationships appear.
To be fair, my engineering degree also did this.
Good thing I learnt that linearity in my chosen specialty only breaks down in the exotic circumstances of air, room temperature, 1 atm pressure, and distances of <0,5 m or >30 m.
In college - Assume everything is linear
Later - Everything is not linear
Economics is a funny one as ultimately it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many) that people often incorrectly lump in with maths.
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments on an actual economy though beyond models and simulation. And as anyone who has watched a Gary Stevenson video or two will know, your average academic economist is pretty bad at models and simulations.
Though I guess even bad experiments are still experiments
Edit: typo
Most of them are pretty bad at anthro too tbh lol
If they were good at stuff they wouldn’t be economists
Source: I’m an economist
it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many)
…
Anthropology, as in what cultural arts are like in different groups of humanity? How is that a science? I even wanted to go into this field
Of course it is! We’re just animals, after all. Is documenting the behavior of different species of beetles a science? The only difference is that we can replicate behavior through culture, not just genes.
Economics is the fakest science ever. It’s just perpetuating the capitalist scheme. Don’t waste your time learning it. It’ll all be irrelevant in the end anyways.
Economics brings the spherical cow issue to its logical extreme with “efficient markets”
Math is doing the heavy lifting, economics is just borrowing the muscles and hoping no one notices. 😄
Son of math and sociology
Most of the time it’s just people working backward from whatever conclusion suits their politics.
By dubbing econ “dismal science” adherents exaggerate;
The “dismal”'s fine - it’s “science” where they patently prevaricate.I’m so tired of this flack that economics gets, that it is somehow “lesser” because it is a “soft science.”
Economics does run randomised control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
You how sometimes grants/government programs are randomly allocated? Those are live, randomised control trials, and if you read the fine print you’ll find a project number for researchers studying the effects of rental subsidies, health insurance, etc, one of which being the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Those cancerous recommender algorithms, which are the culmination of millions of live A/B tests? Developed by the Econ PhDs poached by Big tech.
Oregon Medicaid health experiment - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experiment
It is true that many hypotheses cannot have experiments run. But this makes it even more impressive when economists find natural experiments. For example, the 2021 Nobel Laureates Card, Angrist, and Imbens studied the effects of minimum wage by looking at the towns on the border of New Jersey/New York, which had implemented different minimum wages. They found that increasing minimum wage did not increase unemployment, completely contrary to ahem conservative wisdom.
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2021 - Popular science background - NobelPrize.org - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/popular-information/
In contrast, many of the supposed “hard” sciences cannot run experiments either, or also adhere to untestable simplifying assumptions. Ecology, physics, geology (just to name a few) all study systems which are too large and complex to run experiments, yet the general public does not perceive them as “soft”.
The difference is that economics is unfortunately one of those fields where lots of unqualified people (read politicians) have lots of strong opinions about, and in turn has a disproportionate influence on everyone. Those criticised austerity measures in the wake of the GFC? That was due to politicians implementing the policies of the infamous “Growth in a Time of Debt” by Reinhart-Rogoff paper, which was published as a “proceeding” and hence not peer reviewed. During the peer review process was found to contain numerous errors including incorrect excel formulas. It didn’t matter - policymakers liked the conclusion, and rushed its implementation anyway.
Growth in a Time of Debt - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt
If you look into any awful policy, you will see a similar pattern. Even Milton Friedman, as an ultra hard libertarian for advocated for lowering taxes and abolishing all government benefit programs, recognised that poor people need some assistance, and so actually advocated for replacing benefits with a universal negative income tax (an even more extreme version of UBI). It didn’t matter - policymakers of the Reagan Thatcher era heard the lowering taxes and cutting welfare part, and didn’t do the UBI.
It’s a field full of grifters that get lifted up because they tell rich people what they want to hear.
The Chicago School is the driving force behind the rise of neoliberalism, the movement right of Western democracies, and the return of fascism in America.
Yes, there’s good work done in the field. But economists could prove definitively that capitalism is killing us all and that socialism is the only solution to organizing civilisation, and the only economists being platformed would continue to be neoliberal shit heels.
True if your too much of a flunky there’s still the Austrian School
Oh don’t get me started on the I’m afraid of math Austrian school
Its to economics what flat earth is to physics
Economics does run randomised Control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
Psychology too mate. Both use the scientific method, but the premise that all experiments are under full control doesn’t apply to them.
it’s 90% lobbying and propaganda, 10% math
Economics is the math of political science.
ITT: People who have never studied economics incorrectly diagnosing all of its problems
I actually would like economics more if I didn’t have dyscalculia.
