Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
Heh, austrian school is just the manifestation of the cancer of post-positivism in the body of economics (just as the post-positivist cancer struck in most other social sciences at the end of the 20th century).
Macro works because it deals in pure aggregates, whereas individuals are by no means bound to follow the dictates of microeconomics as some seem to believe. Aggregates do work through the noise and arrive at the mean actions of a population.
(edit: not trying to make it sound like i'm disparaging all other economic schools of thought, which i might disagree with but at least Chicago School and Monetarist branches have something to bring to the table. I have a very dim view of Austrian in particular and feel its very presence distracts from serious discourse in the field)
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Eh, while a lot of people would question the specific Austrian bent....
the fact that Macro works on pure aggregates is the exact problem with Macro.
People forget this because there are so many numbers in economics... but economics is a social science.
The Austrian way of analysis is actually the best as far as social sciences goes. The only issue is that so few Austrian's seem to bother to do research. Instead just sticking to past truisms. When the real truth is....
All economic theories are more or less bullshit because people change.
To look at the buying patterns and decision making patterns of people from the USA, Russia and China and assume everyone will act the same is asnine.
So is expecting the "Greatest" Generation" "Generation X" and Millenials and assume they're going to be the same is crazy.
Studies on economics should be like studies in Psychology or sociology. Made as narrow as possible for the best accuracy.
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I'd say that such unpredictability is only true of the private sector, however. Macro is ultimately about the interaction of the private sector, government controls through fiscal policy, and the central bank through monetary policy, the latter of which are quite easily controllable. You're not going to get precise results, but you can nudge the system in the general direction you want it to go.
