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richardhutnik on 27 April 2012
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Kasz216 said:
richardhutnik said:

Obama won the prize for not being Bush.   Unlike the Peace Prize, other disciplines have something behind them.  It is still political, but people get it for usually more sound reasons.  Hayek won it also, so I wouldn't go and discount the prize for economics.

The thing about economics is that it ends up more times than not, justifying one's biases.  One can lie with statistics also, and makie it say a lot of things.  One can argue for the Laffer curve, as a reason to cut taxes, and then forget that it could also be used to justify raising taxes.  Of course, this is presuming one can figure out what the heck the optimal tax rate is.  No one knows at all.

On the "it is good for jobs" front, I find this is a whole pile of B.S at this point.  It seems any politician wanting their pork will argue about job creation.  Industries also argue this, as now, non-renewable resource production needs to be pushed through for jobs.  Yes, you see the coal industry arguing it would create jobs.  Al Gore argues that green creates jobs.  What the heck does any of this really have to do with jobs?  Well, nothing, but it is nice to argue it to get your agenda through.

And then, when you end up running everything through the filter of economics, you end you not figuring out how to deal with externalities.  Economic models only work when you get rid of externalities.  Economics also doesn't inform regarding the end a society would want to have, or the direction it heads.  And then, on a predictive side, look how abysmal things get when they end up either doing centralized planning with interest rates, or Wall Street goes off and develops formulas for quantitivate analysis and ends up leveraging like mad with it.

Then you have economists who can't even agree on base premises on things, and starting points either.  To worship economics like it is some sort of holy device that can inform properly on political ideology is folly.

You missed my point... which was essentially the Hitler "Time man of the Year" arguement.

I'd also argue that economics isn't really about confirming ones biases.  Well no more then any other sceince.  They all CAN be used that way with numbers....

but there are accurate ways to use the numbers and to actually see what has happened everytime you've done something.

I will agree though that the main problem with economics is people trying to find a general unifying theory behind it.  Largely because people are the basis of the economy and different peoples and times have different cultures.

Have identical problems in different parts of the world, and try and fix them with the same solution and your results will likely change DRASTICALLY based on the culture of the people.

Some people may react to government spending as a good sign.  Others may take it as a sign of how bad the economy is and wait for things to improve etc.

TIme's Man of the Year isn't even in the same category as winning a Nobel Prize, unless you count significant enough impacting events good or bad is the same as being competent in a given area.

Thing about science is you can replicate it via experimentation normally.  You really can't do that with economics.  I would even be hard pressed to call economics a science.  There are claims of laws, which are kinda laws, but not in the same way physics has laws.  And I am not even bringing up wha the Austrian school of economics has to say about economics either.