10 ms·

Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions. The 'science' is seldom predictive, nor does it even attempt to be.

by arcanus 10y ago

Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions. The 'science' is seldom predictive, nor does it even attempt to be. It has more in common with augury. This blurb, for instance, openly admits their expert opinions are for sale, 'Economists have an “incentive to get a reputation as someone who will make a certain type of argument. People will hire you because they know what testimony you will give,” said Robert Porter, an economist from Northwestern who has never testified on behalf of a corporation in an antitrust matter.'

cmdrfred 10y ago
Indeed I suspect a great number of people who scream on TV never actually read The Wealth of Nations or at least not this passage: "It is but equity...that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."
- btilly 10y ago
  The Wealth of Nations should be understood as the attempt of someone whose cultural tendencies (from Scotland) were socialist, to explain the wealth of a rabidly free market society (England). Nobody from inside of England could have written the book - it would be like a fish trying to explain water. But his underlying sympathies emerge in numerous places.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Any particular examples? Is this your interpretation or based on Smithian scholarship? I've studied a fair bit of that and not run across this particular view.
    - btilly 10y ago
      That's a personal interpretation based on my knowledge of the times, ongoing economic changes, and the cultures involved. Smith was born not long after England (whose per capita wealth was around 5x that of Scotland) took over Scotland. He lived during a period where England was building a worldwide trading empire, Scotland was benefiting from exposure to England, and the Industrial Revolution was just starting. Oh right, and two civil wars (the Jacobite rebellions) about whether Scotland wished to continued to be united with England. A definite intellectual challenge for the Scots of the day was how it was that England, in every way seemingly worse than themselves, should be the ones in charge. Smith provided part of the answer.
      - JetSetWilly 10y ago
        This is completely inaccurate. England did not "take over" Scotland. There was no invasion or conquest, as in Ireland. The two countries voluntarily merged, scotland was represented in the British parliament and so on. The Wealth of Nations is not weitten about England. Smith was describing the society around him, in Scotland, many of the examples given in the book are directly taken from his everyday observations in the central belt of Scotland. At that time Scotland was in a tumult of intellectual and socialrevolution. Smith coukd look around and see the beginnings of an industrial society on his doorstep. A better explanation for why Smith and other enlightenment figures were in scotland and not so much England would be local cultural factors, such as scottish presbytereanism making for an incredibly high literacy rate in scotland as compared to england, or the great abundance of universities in scotland compared to England.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        Interesting, but really not consistent with either Smith's own writings or multiple biographies. Dugald Stewart's memorial is among the shorter versions, if you care to compare notes. Others are John Rae (1895), Edwin Cannen (1896), Francis Wrigley Hirst (~1910), Bagehot, and Emma Rothschild (various, ~1970s to present).
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Marx was born in 1818. Calling Smith "socialist" implies he had a time machine.
    - GFischer 10y ago
      "Socialism" is one of those nebulous words. Most modern socialists don't think the word comes from or implies Marxism. Also, Wikipedia: The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies that originated amid the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 1700s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - bobwaycott 10y ago
      Marx did not invent socialism.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        Sure, but I don't think issues such as 'the socialization of the means of production' existed in the 18th century.
        CalChris 10y ago
        Adam Smith favored progressive taxation. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-spending/adam-smith-and-progressive-taxation https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-spending/adam-smith-and-p...
        edblarney 10y ago
        I'm well aware. Progressive taxation is not socialism. Moreover, in his day, common taxes were very, very low. Nobody had ever conceived of 20% 50% 60% taxation. The plebes would riot with only a few % tax hike. The USA was born out of a tax revolt of a measely few % that was frankly needed, for the protection of their own trade.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    So, that makes his statement wrong? I don't really see getting a portion of your own labor sufficient enough for survival as socialism.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    The Wealth of Nations was not written by a 'socialist' by any means. It describes Supply and Demand in a mechanical way, illustrates the power of comparative value, the 'invisible hand' etc.. Smith was a Ethicist and a heavy duty Christian, and so he also realized how the system could be imbalanced, and definitely took the concerns of the plebes to heart etc.. But by no means was this a social treatise, or an attempt to validate social theory or 'socialism' (which didn't really exist). And I think your comment about Scotland/UK is not true at all. The 'Supply and Demand' bit that Krugman said 'all econs agree on' is really from Adam Smith. Marx basically evaluated that in the context of the fact that some small group apparently had all the capital, while others had none, which creates an inherent power/class struggle and so it turns into a political issue. Smith and Marx probably would have agreed on 'the problem' though almost surely not the solution :)
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      This was always my understanding. I am a free market proponent, but a Adam Smith style free market proponent. In that I believe in a market that is actually free, not one with thickets of patents, generous subsidies for corporations, and bailouts while all at the same time a laissez-faire stance on workers rights. You don't get to scream free market while cutting wages and then cry for regulation because a union committed an "illegal strike", or an important worker failed to give you 2 weeks notice and is headed to your direct competitor with knowledge of "your clients". Nobody owns a worker or client in a true free market system. I've always thought the problem with the major economic systems isn't that either of them is inherently flawed, just that they haven't really even been implemented in a large enough scale for any decent period of time. In America we pay socialist taxes and get capitalist benefits, that's the problem. We have to pick one and commit to it.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        Regulations and taxation are essential. There used to be a 'free market' it was called 'feudalism'. Not quite, but almost. If you believe in 'Adam Smith' then you understand under a totally free system, one person would end up with all the wealth. Adam Smith was not a libertarian, or a 'laissez faire' kind of dude. He was an Ethicist and heavy duty Christian and to him capitalism was a moral issue. Unlike the 'Chicago School' and Libertarian types who really state that corps exist for the shareholders, that's it, end of story. As noted above, Smith invented progressive taxation. Get this - do you know what Smith said the #1 quality of a CEO is? Get this: 'Benevolence' Not something you'd hear too often in America. Onerous regulation is obviously a problem, and wasted taxation inefficient government is also a problem. But there's no doubt they have to exist. There's a 99.9% chance you'd be a serf were there to be a truly free and open, 'laissez faire' market. You wouldn't even have a chance at going to a good Uni. You know Trump's son-in-law, Kushner? He only got into Harvard after his parents gave $2.5M to the school. Maybe 1/3 Harvard students buy they way in. In a totally capitalist system, 100% of top spots would be 'bought' - industrialists want to ensure their legacy, and that their kids get into the top schools, and that would guarantee the longevity of their Empire. Anyhow, that taxes can be too high and spent inefficiently does not mean they should not exit.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that all economists agree on supply and demand, but disagree on everything else. I think you're right in your assertion that the "dismal science" is cherry-picked to support a perspective, not unlike using hard science in the same way, but without the ability to reliably reproduce results.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  The trouble is that economists, of whatever theoretical school (well, except Marxians who are rather different) usually are asked to weigh in on the issues that are not well-investigated and where considerable disagreement exists. Basic concepts like supply and demand, and subjective value, are taken for granted by economists, even though they're the things that the average layperson does not understand and really should. The genuinely important insights of economics are too rarely discussed, while the controversies get all the airtime - so of course what we hear is the non-reproducible, opinion-driven stuff.
- bjourne 10y ago
  > Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that all economists agree on supply and demand, but disagree on everything else. That's why it is hard to take economists seriously. If economy is a science, then facts should establish themselves and economists should agree on more and more things. That does not seem to happen. Take the statement "Lowering income taxes causes people to work more and in the end generates more revenue for the state". That theory has been put to test in many countries (like in the US during Reagan's presidency) but they still can't agree on if it is true or not. So how can economy be a science when empirical evidence doesn't cause facts to accumulate?
  - michaelkeenan 10y ago
    I searched for that Krugman quote and found nothing. I think he never wrote it. I think that is exemplary of the problem here - not that economists struggle with facts, but that most people struggle with facts, including facts about other people struggling with facts. I recommend this article at The Atlantic about what economists agree on. It has citations to surveys of economists: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/4-politically-controversial-issues-where-all-economists-agree/255600/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/4-politi...
chimeracoder 10y ago
> This blurb, for instance, openly admits their expert opinions are for sale, This has nothing to do with economics - that's how expert opinions work in law. It happens with all kids of expert opinions presented as testimony, from economics to medicine to cryptography. Take a look at the way the expert opinions presented from both sides of the Newegg trial worked if you want to see jaw-dropping expert testimony action - Whitfield Diffie's own testimony on RSA (which he co-invented) was, a priori, given equal weight to the testimony of an expert hired by TQA. It was up to Newegg's and TQA's respective legal teams to convince the jury that Diffie's testimony was more mathematically sound than the other expert's testimony.
myowncrapulence 10y ago
Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions. This is the most poignant statement about "economics" as I've ever read. It's entirely too accurate.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  It's quite possibly the least poignant and lowest-common-denominator populist cliche I've ever read. It's like describing Computer Science as the study of how to make Flappy Bird clones and To Do apps.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    It's like describing Computer Science as the study of how to make Flappy Bird clones and To Do apps. In practice? It's a little bit true. How many CS grads work at companies roughly in the sectors you mention? How many want to?
    - rifung 10y ago
      > How many CS grads work at companies roughly in the sectors you mention? What a field is or is not about is not determined by what graduates of said field do or want to do post graduation.
      - metaphorm 10y ago
        so what determines what a field is, or is not, about if we cannot consider what the practicioners of that field do in their professional lives?
        icebraining 10y ago
        They are not practitioners of the field, they're just people who happen to have a degree in that field. One of my coworkers has a degree in chemistry, yet she works in accounting, does that mean that the field of chemistry is defined by accounting? Yes, SW development is closer to CS, but it's still a separate endeavor.
bpodgursky 10y ago
You're operating off of an observability bias. The ones who spend all day writing op-eds in the NYTimes or WSJournal are more likely to be using a thin veneer of economics to shill for a particular policy. The ones doing actual actionable economics are publishing and working on policy in non-sexy journals you're never going to stumble across. Or working in invisible, non-controversial advisory roles. So yes... the economists spend their lives _not actually doing economics anymore_ are probably pushing politically motivated actions. Shocking! Scandal!
- BipolarElsa 10y ago
  Yeah, but there's no diversity of economic opinion in America. Just capitalist ones. You'd have to move to China to get a top-tier PhD in Marxist theory. Why is that?...
cheald 10y ago
This theory would make a lot more sense if political tradewinds adhered a little more closely to economic consensus. Economists broadly want to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, corporate interest deductions, and reduce the corporate income tax, want employers to stop providing health insurance as an employment benefit (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform, http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/healthcare http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/healthcare), and broadly disfavor rent control (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control). Yet before we go off accusing economists of being right-wing shills, they also broadly want carbon taxes over income taxes (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/carbon-taxes-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/carbon-taxes-ii) and favor open immigration policies (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/high-skilled-immigrants http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/high-skilled-immigrants). None of these are particularly politically-fashionable positions to take, with the possible exception of the CIT issue, which plays well with one half of the electorate and is broadly viewed as liquid evil by the other half.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  Exactly. It's like how I keep seeing people accusing "economists" (usually as an undefined group) with being concerned with "justifying the status quo". This, despite most economists having frequent, major disagreements with common current policies in many areas. What it tells me is that they're probably not really looking at the field as a whole. It's the trouble with people making equivalences between "a particular person calling themselves an economist" and "economics". There are hundreds of thousands of people with economics degrees, it is trivially easy to find one who says what you want to hear. But then, that economist's words are often taken to reflective of economics as an entire field of study - regardless of the reasoning behind it, or how many other economists actually agree. So most economists may have totally sensible reasons for supporting Policy A, but when one dissenting economist supports Policy Not-A, the "consensus view" gets ignored. I don't know why this is. Maybe because people feel competent to judge economic reasoning in a way that they don't with other fields (and which might lead them to seek more opinions.)
  - tcfunk 10y ago
robotresearcher 10y ago
There's an important difference between "This is my opinion. You may contract me to express it at your venue" vs. "You may contract me to express any opinion you wish at your venue". The former seems completely legit to me. The lawyers just need to look around for a witness that already has the opinion they prefer. It's up to the people receiving the testimony to judge the credibility of the witness. No scandal here.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > There's an important difference between "This is my opinion. You may contract me to express it at your venue" vs. "You may contract me to express any opinion you wish at your venue". > The former seems completely legit to me. The lawyers just need to look around for a witness that already has the opinion they prefer. I agree with you, but think that it's important to distinguish "No scandal here" (your words) from "no problem" (an easy apparent synonym). Getting paid to espouse your honest opinions is (almost by definition!) not dishonest, but lending the lustre of academic support to fringe positions can lead to bad policy and decision-making. (The general public is, or even just non-academics and non-specialists are, not in a position to evaluate whether the paid opinion is representative of the academic consensus, or a fringe opinion held by a few; and, though the latter opinions have every right to be heard, it may be important to be aware of their status.)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
metaphorm 10y ago
for this reason I've always held that the term "political-economy" is a more accurate and appropriate name for the field than "economics".
edblarney 10y ago
"Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions" This is completely unfair. 'Most of economics' is just academic, and has little to do with policy. Moreover, there's absolutely nothing wrong with companies hiring economists to build models for things that interest them. AT&T's acquisitions are mostly their business, and so long as the government does it's job, then there should be little concern. The 'issue' should be the competence and ability of those green-lighting M&A.
turc1656 10y ago
Absolutely. In fact the original name of what we call Economics today was actually "Political Economy" and has its roots in moral philosophy. Rest assured, there is very little of anything resembling science going on. It's all agenda. There is something that they want to push and they are trying to find a way to justify it and make it palatable to the rest of society. If science had anything to do with it we would eventually see a consensus form after a sufficient amount of time regarding issues of monetary policy and other topics that are currently contested.

by arcanus 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago

Indeed I suspect a great number of people who scream on TV never actually read The Wealth of Nations or at least not this passage: "It is but equity...that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."

btilly 10y ago
The Wealth of Nations should be understood as the attempt of someone whose cultural tendencies (from Scotland) were socialist, to explain the wealth of a rabidly free market society (England). Nobody from inside of England could have written the book - it would be like a fish trying to explain water. But his underlying sympathies emerge in numerous places.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Any particular examples? Is this your interpretation or based on Smithian scholarship? I've studied a fair bit of that and not run across this particular view.
  - btilly 10y ago
    That's a personal interpretation based on my knowledge of the times, ongoing economic changes, and the cultures involved. Smith was born not long after England (whose per capita wealth was around 5x that of Scotland) took over Scotland. He lived during a period where England was building a worldwide trading empire, Scotland was benefiting from exposure to England, and the Industrial Revolution was just starting. Oh right, and two civil wars (the Jacobite rebellions) about whether Scotland wished to continued to be united with England. A definite intellectual challenge for the Scots of the day was how it was that England, in every way seemingly worse than themselves, should be the ones in charge. Smith provided part of the answer.
    - JetSetWilly 10y ago
      This is completely inaccurate. England did not "take over" Scotland. There was no invasion or conquest, as in Ireland. The two countries voluntarily merged, scotland was represented in the British parliament and so on. The Wealth of Nations is not weitten about England. Smith was describing the society around him, in Scotland, many of the examples given in the book are directly taken from his everyday observations in the central belt of Scotland. At that time Scotland was in a tumult of intellectual and socialrevolution. Smith coukd look around and see the beginnings of an industrial society on his doorstep. A better explanation for why Smith and other enlightenment figures were in scotland and not so much England would be local cultural factors, such as scottish presbytereanism making for an incredibly high literacy rate in scotland as compared to england, or the great abundance of universities in scotland compared to England.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Interesting, but really not consistent with either Smith's own writings or multiple biographies. Dugald Stewart's memorial is among the shorter versions, if you care to compare notes. Others are John Rae (1895), Edwin Cannen (1896), Francis Wrigley Hirst (~1910), Bagehot, and Emma Rothschild (various, ~1970s to present).
- pjc50 10y ago
  The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. Marx was born in 1818. Calling Smith "socialist" implies he had a time machine.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    "Socialism" is one of those nebulous words. Most modern socialists don't think the word comes from or implies Marxism. Also, Wikipedia: The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies that originated amid the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 1700s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    Marx did not invent socialism.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      Sure, but I don't think issues such as 'the socialization of the means of production' existed in the 18th century.
      - CalChris 10y ago
        Adam Smith favored progressive taxation. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-spending/adam-smith-and-progressive-taxation https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-spending/adam-smith-and-p...
        edblarney 10y ago
        I'm well aware. Progressive taxation is not socialism. Moreover, in his day, common taxes were very, very low. Nobody had ever conceived of 20% 50% 60% taxation. The plebes would riot with only a few % tax hike. The USA was born out of a tax revolt of a measely few % that was frankly needed, for the protection of their own trade.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  So, that makes his statement wrong? I don't really see getting a portion of your own labor sufficient enough for survival as socialism.
- edblarney 10y ago
  The Wealth of Nations was not written by a 'socialist' by any means. It describes Supply and Demand in a mechanical way, illustrates the power of comparative value, the 'invisible hand' etc.. Smith was a Ethicist and a heavy duty Christian, and so he also realized how the system could be imbalanced, and definitely took the concerns of the plebes to heart etc.. But by no means was this a social treatise, or an attempt to validate social theory or 'socialism' (which didn't really exist). And I think your comment about Scotland/UK is not true at all. The 'Supply and Demand' bit that Krugman said 'all econs agree on' is really from Adam Smith. Marx basically evaluated that in the context of the fact that some small group apparently had all the capital, while others had none, which creates an inherent power/class struggle and so it turns into a political issue. Smith and Marx probably would have agreed on 'the problem' though almost surely not the solution :)
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    This was always my understanding. I am a free market proponent, but a Adam Smith style free market proponent. In that I believe in a market that is actually free, not one with thickets of patents, generous subsidies for corporations, and bailouts while all at the same time a laissez-faire stance on workers rights. You don't get to scream free market while cutting wages and then cry for regulation because a union committed an "illegal strike", or an important worker failed to give you 2 weeks notice and is headed to your direct competitor with knowledge of "your clients". Nobody owns a worker or client in a true free market system. I've always thought the problem with the major economic systems isn't that either of them is inherently flawed, just that they haven't really even been implemented in a large enough scale for any decent period of time. In America we pay socialist taxes and get capitalist benefits, that's the problem. We have to pick one and commit to it.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      Regulations and taxation are essential. There used to be a 'free market' it was called 'feudalism'. Not quite, but almost. If you believe in 'Adam Smith' then you understand under a totally free system, one person would end up with all the wealth. Adam Smith was not a libertarian, or a 'laissez faire' kind of dude. He was an Ethicist and heavy duty Christian and to him capitalism was a moral issue. Unlike the 'Chicago School' and Libertarian types who really state that corps exist for the shareholders, that's it, end of story. As noted above, Smith invented progressive taxation. Get this - do you know what Smith said the #1 quality of a CEO is? Get this: 'Benevolence' Not something you'd hear too often in America. Onerous regulation is obviously a problem, and wasted taxation inefficient government is also a problem. But there's no doubt they have to exist. There's a 99.9% chance you'd be a serf were there to be a truly free and open, 'laissez faire' market. You wouldn't even have a chance at going to a good Uni. You know Trump's son-in-law, Kushner? He only got into Harvard after his parents gave $2.5M to the school. Maybe 1/3 Harvard students buy they way in. In a totally capitalist system, 100% of top spots would be 'bought' - industrialists want to ensure their legacy, and that their kids get into the top schools, and that would guarantee the longevity of their Empire. Anyhow, that taxes can be too high and spent inefficiently does not mean they should not exit.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that all economists agree on supply and demand, but disagree on everything else. I think you're right in your assertion that the "dismal science" is cherry-picked to support a perspective, not unlike using hard science in the same way, but without the ability to reliably reproduce results.

snrplfth 10y ago
The trouble is that economists, of whatever theoretical school (well, except Marxians who are rather different) usually are asked to weigh in on the issues that are not well-investigated and where considerable disagreement exists. Basic concepts like supply and demand, and subjective value, are taken for granted by economists, even though they're the things that the average layperson does not understand and really should. The genuinely important insights of economics are too rarely discussed, while the controversies get all the airtime - so of course what we hear is the non-reproducible, opinion-driven stuff.
bjourne 10y ago
> Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that all economists agree on supply and demand, but disagree on everything else. That's why it is hard to take economists seriously. If economy is a science, then facts should establish themselves and economists should agree on more and more things. That does not seem to happen. Take the statement "Lowering income taxes causes people to work more and in the end generates more revenue for the state". That theory has been put to test in many countries (like in the US during Reagan's presidency) but they still can't agree on if it is true or not. So how can economy be a science when empirical evidence doesn't cause facts to accumulate?
- michaelkeenan 10y ago
  I searched for that Krugman quote and found nothing. I think he never wrote it. I think that is exemplary of the problem here - not that economists struggle with facts, but that most people struggle with facts, including facts about other people struggling with facts. I recommend this article at The Atlantic about what economists agree on. It has citations to surveys of economists: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/4-politically-controversial-issues-where-all-economists-agree/255600/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/4-politi...

chimeracoder 10y ago

> This blurb, for instance, openly admits their expert opinions are for sale, This has nothing to do with economics - that's how expert opinions work in law. It happens with all kids of expert opinions presented as testimony, from economics to medicine to cryptography. Take a look at the way the expert opinions presented from both sides of the Newegg trial worked if you want to see jaw-dropping expert testimony action - Whitfield Diffie's own testimony on RSA (which he co-invented) was, a priori, given equal weight to the testimony of an expert hired by TQA. It was up to Newegg's and TQA's respective legal teams to convince the jury that Diffie's testimony was more mathematically sound than the other expert's testimony.

myowncrapulence 10y ago

Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions. This is the most poignant statement about "economics" as I've ever read. It's entirely too accurate.

saosebastiao 10y ago
It's quite possibly the least poignant and lowest-common-denominator populist cliche I've ever read. It's like describing Computer Science as the study of how to make Flappy Bird clones and To Do apps.
- rhizome 10y ago
  It's like describing Computer Science as the study of how to make Flappy Bird clones and To Do apps. In practice? It's a little bit true. How many CS grads work at companies roughly in the sectors you mention? How many want to?
  - rifung 10y ago
    > How many CS grads work at companies roughly in the sectors you mention? What a field is or is not about is not determined by what graduates of said field do or want to do post graduation.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      so what determines what a field is, or is not, about if we cannot consider what the practicioners of that field do in their professional lives?
      - icebraining 10y ago
        They are not practitioners of the field, they're just people who happen to have a degree in that field. One of my coworkers has a degree in chemistry, yet she works in accounting, does that mean that the field of chemistry is defined by accounting? Yes, SW development is closer to CS, but it's still a separate endeavor.

bpodgursky 10y ago

You're operating off of an observability bias. The ones who spend all day writing op-eds in the NYTimes or WSJournal are more likely to be using a thin veneer of economics to shill for a particular policy. The ones doing actual actionable economics are publishing and working on policy in non-sexy journals you're never going to stumble across. Or working in invisible, non-controversial advisory roles. So yes... the economists spend their lives _not actually doing economics anymore_ are probably pushing politically motivated actions. Shocking! Scandal!

BipolarElsa 10y ago
Yeah, but there's no diversity of economic opinion in America. Just capitalist ones. You'd have to move to China to get a top-tier PhD in Marxist theory. Why is that?...

cheald 10y ago

This theory would make a lot more sense if political tradewinds adhered a little more closely to economic consensus. Economists broadly want to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, corporate interest deductions, and reduce the corporate income tax, want employers to stop providing health insurance as an employment benefit (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform, http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/healthcare http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/healthcare), and broadly disfavor rent control (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control). Yet before we go off accusing economists of being right-wing shills, they also broadly want carbon taxes over income taxes (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/carbon-taxes-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/carbon-taxes-ii) and favor open immigration policies (http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/high-skilled-immigrants http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/high-skilled-immigrants). None of these are particularly politically-fashionable positions to take, with the possible exception of the CIT issue, which plays well with one half of the electorate and is broadly viewed as liquid evil by the other half.

snrplfth 10y ago
Exactly. It's like how I keep seeing people accusing "economists" (usually as an undefined group) with being concerned with "justifying the status quo". This, despite most economists having frequent, major disagreements with common current policies in many areas. What it tells me is that they're probably not really looking at the field as a whole. It's the trouble with people making equivalences between "a particular person calling themselves an economist" and "economics". There are hundreds of thousands of people with economics degrees, it is trivially easy to find one who says what you want to hear. But then, that economist's words are often taken to reflective of economics as an entire field of study - regardless of the reasoning behind it, or how many other economists actually agree. So most economists may have totally sensible reasons for supporting Policy A, but when one dissenting economist supports Policy Not-A, the "consensus view" gets ignored. I don't know why this is. Maybe because people feel competent to judge economic reasoning in a way that they don't with other fields (and which might lead them to seek more opinions.)
- tcfunk 10y ago

robotresearcher 10y ago

There's an important difference between "This is my opinion. You may contract me to express it at your venue" vs. "You may contract me to express any opinion you wish at your venue". The former seems completely legit to me. The lawyers just need to look around for a witness that already has the opinion they prefer. It's up to the people receiving the testimony to judge the credibility of the witness. No scandal here.

JadeNB 10y ago
> There's an important difference between "This is my opinion. You may contract me to express it at your venue" vs. "You may contract me to express any opinion you wish at your venue". > The former seems completely legit to me. The lawyers just need to look around for a witness that already has the opinion they prefer. I agree with you, but think that it's important to distinguish "No scandal here" (your words) from "no problem" (an easy apparent synonym). Getting paid to espouse your honest opinions is (almost by definition!) not dishonest, but lending the lustre of academic support to fringe positions can lead to bad policy and decision-making. (The general public is, or even just non-academics and non-specialists are, not in a position to evaluate whether the paid opinion is representative of the academic consensus, or a fringe opinion held by a few; and, though the latter opinions have every right to be heard, it may be important to be aware of their status.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

metaphorm 10y ago

for this reason I've always held that the term "political-economy" is a more accurate and appropriate name for the field than "economics".

edblarney 10y ago

"Most of economics is an intellectual veneer to justify politically motivated policy actions" This is completely unfair. 'Most of economics' is just academic, and has little to do with policy. Moreover, there's absolutely nothing wrong with companies hiring economists to build models for things that interest them. AT&T's acquisitions are mostly their business, and so long as the government does it's job, then there should be little concern. The 'issue' should be the competence and ability of those green-lighting M&A.

turc1656 10y ago

Absolutely. In fact the original name of what we call Economics today was actually "Political Economy" and has its roots in moral philosophy. Rest assured, there is very little of anything resembling science going on. It's all agenda. There is something that they want to push and they are trying to find a way to justify it and make it palatable to the rest of society. If science had anything to do with it we would eventually see a consensus form after a sufficient amount of time regarding issues of monetary policy and other topics that are currently contested.