I can slag on economists with the best of 'em, but there's a lot of empty criticism here. Economists spend most of their time slagging on other economists - the fact that there are so many schools that hate each other says a lot about how unsettled a discipline it is. "Most scientific of the social sciences" - Definitely an American problem (Piketty went back to France because he was uncomfortable with how "scientific" economic was judged to be in the US) and also a "thinnest fat man" descriptor. But most importantly, they can all be wrong and still be important because they're the ones making decisions about our economy. The theory that witches float is 100% bunk and it still killed a bunch of women in Europe.
Puttin' Bernanke up there's a cheap shot. He was very much a student of the Great Depression and did everything he could to forestall another one. We'll be arguing about whether his actions and decisions were good, bad or indifferent from now until the sun is a cinder but the fact of the matter is, he enacted unorthodox policies based on prior knowledge. Whether he was responsible or not for forestalling another depression is certainly debatable but using him as the frontispiece of "highly paid pseudoscience" is too snarky by half.
Especially coming from a guy with a doctor of Divinity.
Glad to read your comment because that was my observation too.
I particularly dislike the misuse of the quote ‘macroeconomics […] has succeeded: its central problem of depression prevention has been solved’. That is a comment about economic cycles - not avoiding depression due to massive banking fraud. This is like mocking meteorologists who say they have a good control on weather forecasting, but fail to include in their prediction a meteor hitting the earth and causing havoc to the weather.
Many economists had warned about the US debt problem, especially the mortgages. My own professor (one of the author's of Wiley's "Macroeconomics: Understanding the Global Economy") would regularly lecture on the topic years before the crash.
The worst thing IMO is watching the Republicans now unwind all the regulations aimed at preventing a repetition of the 2007 crisis. And I suspect the next crash too people will be blaming the economists for not doing adequate baby-sitting.
No.
The kernel of the argument I agree with is that economics, in the United States, is accorded more of a hard science reputation than anthropology, sociology, psychology etc. in no small part because economics uses more equations. It makes sense if you think about it - economics is the only soft science whose basis is numerical (money).
However, it remains a social science that largely attempts to quantify behavior. That there are more numerical inputs for economics than there are for anthropology does increase the number of equations thrown about when comparing economics and anthropology. The author's argument is that the easy availability of numbers and equations causes the "soft science" of economics to consider itself a "hard science" like physics or chemistry.
But I didn't use the term "pseudoscience" and I wasn't bitching about the remuneration of college economics departments. As far as I'm concerned, if you want the guy who ran Vanguard for 28 years to teach at your school you're bloody well going to pay him better than anyone in the dept of Divinity - when you've got four trillion dollars under management your incentive structure is a little different than when your high water mark is cardinal at some diocese.
I agree with the author that economics should not be considered alongside other branches of science that are numerically-driven. I disagree with the author that terms like "pseudoscience" and "astrology" can be casually thrown around - economics isn't as rigorous as physics, but anybody comparing anthropology to astrology would be driven out of academia.
I'm gonna guess this is one of those instances where you don't realize how antagonistic you're being.
You started this conversation by positing a position I don't hold, and then asking me to defend that position. I clarified my opinion. Now you are assaulting the validity of that opinion by questioning my education.
So I'll turn it around: why am I not allowed to have an opinion about this? Why are my arguments not sufficiently rigorous to stand on their own merits? If someone can make a valid mathematical proof, does their background matter? After all, it didn't matter for Ramanujan.
I'm not hypothesizing new forms of economics here: I'm arguing that the science of economics, much as I personally criticize it, is not worthy of the disdain being heaped upon it by the author of this article. And frankly, I'm at a loss as to why I'm under attack for doing that.
You're confusing my sincere curiosity for antagonism. You're a highly-educated person whose knowledge lies beyond what the diploma might suggest. I'd like to know how you got there.
Please, don't suggest that I'm doing something out of ill intent if I ask a question - especially of you, since you know damn well what I think about you. I'm already barely talking around here to not upset people.
This is important: people act on their perception of what you say, not on what you intend to say. In this instance, I'm informing you that my perception of what you say mismatches with what (I suspected) you intended to say. And again, in this instance I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt... but it's important that you hear me when I tell you that you're coming across more antagonistic than you intend. We've talked about this. It's not a problem that's limited to me. There are ways to ask these questions that are less likely to raise hackles and I'm simply attempting to inform you that your goals would be best served by using more neutral language.
_____________THAT OUT OF THE WAY____________________
One of the tropes of the 2008 recession was "no one saw this coming." Having followed real estate blogs since 2006 which, to a man, were predicting the impending implosion of the real estate market, I knew this to be untrue. One of the other tropes of the 2008 recession was "no one can really explain how this happened." With one trope being handily disproven, I suspected this was also untrue.
Thus began a self-guided tour of popular financial literature which led to a layman's education in economics. One of the interesting things about economics is that because it's basically "math for business majors" it's a lot more accessible than you'd think. Not only that but because many of the more recent theories in economics are contentious, the accepted stuff tends to be simple and accessible.
I have 49 books in my Audible library dealing with economics, socioeconomics, economic history, management or business. I've read 46 of them. This does not a degree make but I feel it gives me a basis to have an opinion.
...you have got to be shitting me.
I'm breaking my neck trying to just break onto the level y'all naturally reside in - just trying to be a tad more normal - and you're giving me shit because you jimmies got rustled over getting asked a fucking question about your extensive education?
"More neutral language".
Lemme break it down for you.
"You lay out quite a lot of experience". Premise. Expression of admiration for knowledge.
"Did you read about all of this?". Question.
"I seem to remember your official education being something in design and/or construction and/or engineering". Reason for questioning.
"More neutral language" my ass. Turn this more neutral - you'll end up with binary. Have to tiptoe around your landmine already just to get a fucking answer out of you - and that still ain't good enough.
Fuck this shit. Can't catch a break worth a dime for being myself.
It is interesting how people seem focused on changing the term "science" so as to exclude almost anything that isn't related engineering, mathematics and technology. That is a new trend and coincides with the rise of IT. It is, I believe, a development aimed at raising the status of the aforementioned fields by diminishing other fields.
Science is not a term linked to mathematics. Science is:
- 1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
- 2a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study the science of theology; b : something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge have it down to a science
- 3a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method; b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science
Sociology, economics, psychology, medicine are all sciences.
The term used is STEM and with the rise of STEM, other(?) soft(?) social(?) sciences are definitely being deprecated. The argument here is that economists, based on their use of math, are attempting to end up in the STEM bucket rather than the social science bucket.
Economics as a study pre-dates many STEM fields as academic study.
Alice isn't attempting to determine Bob's behavior. Alice is attempting to determine the influence of the heavens on the events that surround Bob. There is no scientific method that connects the world around Bob to Alice's observations.
If Carol studies Bob's reactions to Alice's predictions, Carol is a sociologist.
- I can slag on economists with the best of 'em
Am Econ major, please slag on my decision.
You're pointed at an MBA, right? Most of what you're going to learn as an MBA is going to be the same thing as Economics only more applicable. Do something hardcore for your undergrad, like engineering, physics or csci. You'll be much more likely to get into the grad program of your choice.