So you've seen enough to qualify to have an opinion on whether economists know what they're talking about. Many of us haven't, and "acknowledge that you don't know what the hell you're talking about" is pretty good advice for us. Somehow I don't think this article is aimed at the kleinbl00s of this world (all one of him). The older I get, and the longer I don't get significantly better informed about economics, the more political questions I find myself answering with "I don't know". We humans aren't exactly great at holding off on opinions until we are well enough informed, or at least holding our opinions provisionally, so I see this as a step in a healthy direction.Bitch, I made it all the way through Piketty, read Reinhart and Rogoff before it was cool and can tell you why Currency Wars is a stupid book. That doesn't make me an expert on economics, but it allows me to say that the reason everyone thinks they know more economics than they do is that Economists don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
No, the article is intended to make you equate the mysteries of economics with mutherfucking medicine. Check it out (again): Because medicine is an evidence-based scientific study of cause and effect while economics is a loosey-goosey empirical curve fit that gyrates through 360 degrees of thought every 50 years, that's why.Somehow I don't think this article is aimed at the kleinbl00s of this world (all one of him).
Why is it that we are comfortable letting experts tell us what is best when it comes to medicine but when economists are telling us something, we largely ignore it and assume that we know better?
I thinks it's telling also how distinctly askew the two fields are in terms of 'progress'. Economics (after checking wikipedia really quickly) was practiced by multiple ancient civilizations including the Mesopotamians and the Greeks. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 and he's apparently called by some the founder of "scientific economics". To contrast, penicillin was discovered in 1928. The germ theory of disease goes back to 1546 at the latest but more reasonably could be dated to 1808. When you compare the amount of time that people have spent thinking about these respective fields to the number of concrete answers a specialist could give to questions one might ask, there can be little doubt about who is coming from a place of knowledge and who chose to study a system of inherently irreducible complexity and would like you to believe they have the answers you seek.
Whose researchers and practitioners are nearly as confused about as economists. Both fields feature a lack of experimental verifiability that should give us perpetual pause. The fact that we can't put people or societies in a box and poke them at will to verify hypotheses does mean that economists (and often doctors and medical researchers) do no know what the fuck they are talking about. But, the mere fact it is hard doesn't mean everyone is an equal. You can understand some things about economy or medicine through study. That's tough and a valuable result, so I agree with the author of the article that this deserves soelme respect. No, the article is intended to make you equate the mysteries of economics with mutherfucking medicine.
I went to school for economics. When I asked any practical question about the economy my professors would talk about the problem for a bit. They would almost always do the "on one hand this on the other hand that" economist thing. Then they would usually tell me I should go ask some other professor who specialized in the pertinent subject if I wanted to know more. If I then went to the specialist they would usually end up doing the two handed economist thing again and conclude that they strongly suspected things went one way or the other but that the whole question would be well served with more data and study if we wanted to understand it better. Even professors who held strong opinions would often admit that they might be wrong and that different economic conditions could render their position on correct policy untrue. Hearing politicians say anything about economics usually sickens me. They talk with such certainty. Ask an honest labor economist the ramifications of rasing the minimum wage you'll walk away realizing shit is tricky. Any one who says otherwise is full of shit. Looking back I can only think of one professor who didn't preface most conversations with a phrase like ”the data suggests that..." and he was a bit of a crazy old dude.
He picked a poor analogy with medicine. Psychology would have been a much better comparison, or even neuroscience. In these disciplines there are things that we can talk about with a great deal of confidence, but some of the most important questions are difficult to even frame. How do you feel about your education in economics? Worth the while? I think another reason why people love to talk about it, is because it is so fascinating. It's like social math weather.
I think it's a valuable thing to study. I think taking just micro and macro is generally bad for people. A little bit of economics gives people a simple framework upon which to hang their bias and a whole lot more unmerited confidence in that bias. If you go a little deeper you can't avoid the fact that almost any policy position will have winners and losers. Most people can only see the benefits of the policy choice that leans toward their bias and refuse to acknowledge that it could have any downside. I helps you really understand opportunity costs. Cost Benefit Analysis was one of the best classes I took. People bag on it as a discipline soooo fucking hard and it's often used for evil but if it's done rigorously and ethically it really can lead to better outcomes. The psychology of economic decisions is pretty interesting. Peoples fear of loosing something being so much more powerful than their desire to gain something. The way hot button issues distort our valuation of policy choices. Stuff like spending on health vs spending on terrorism. Game theory makes you look at the world a bit differently. If you study the history of economics and still believe that this is the best system that could ever be you're an idiot. I have to imagine that it enriches my understanding of the world more than any hard science would have. Biology and Physics may be interesting but I don't know that undergraduate study in either would brush up against the world as consistently as economics. Maybe philosophy or literature could be enlightening on the same level but I rarely found academic analysis of books anything but tiresome and philosophy generally pissed me off. Here is the kind of thing that an extremely rigorous professor concluded a semester of study about international trade with "We can say, with a high degree of confidence, that international trade increases GDP by at least 1/2 of a percent". She was a true believer in the value of free trade and markets, Had some reservations about FDI that were way above my head. That's a semester of theory about why trade was good and when it came down to econometric truth she could confidently tease out a measly half a percent if she was only going to accept the most rigorous and ethical analysis. I found the rigor impressive even if the power of economics to foretell the future or confidently tell us anything useful about our world a little bit less than what the general public thinks it can do.He picked a poor analogy with medicine. Psychology would have been a much better comparison, or even neuroscience. In these disciplines there are things that we can talk about with a great deal of confidence
One of my favorite statistics professors decorated his office in fortune telling memorabilia. He said it was to remind people he consulted with not to trust him too much.I found the rigor impressive even if the power of economics to foretell the future or confidently tell us anything useful about our world a little bit less than what the general public thinks it can do.
To test many hypotheses, sure. However, when it comes to matters of consciousness and intelligence in neuroscience, things can get sloppy and there is disagreement about what even constitutes a meaningful question, much less what is measurable. The same goes for psychology. I'm not saying that there are perfect analogies, but are far better than making one to medicine. But even then, It would be fabulous to hear an amateur discussion about bioprosthetic valves at a dinner party. The very premise of Glover's argument is insulting. As you mentioned, a liquidity trap is not particularly opaque idea, and the worst thing that can happen is that a few people debate over the definition of a 'liquidity trap' and walk away better for it.