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Economists aren't stupid, and they've thought of these things like zero lower bound. This is a well-studied issue. When people say the concentration of wealth i

Economists aren't stupid, and they've thought of these things like zero lower bound. This is a well-studied issue. When people say the concentration of wealth is increasing, they aren't saying it's increasing relative to Rockefeller's time (how far back should we go? 1492? The start of the neolithic?), but it's increasing now, such as over the last few decades.

MR4D 8y ago
I get your point, but have a couple issues. First, there are plenty of stupid economists. Just like there are plenty of stupid people in finance or politics, or many other things. But I’m not going to debate that particular thing, and I’m fine if we disagree. * That being said, the timespan question is very valid, but pinnning down the cause is really hard. If you read the research, the highest correlation is with globalization, not taxes. Let’s pretend you fully buy into that statement. If so, would you argue against globalization? And I mean that as a serious question. This is a really hard problem, and the answers are more like foggy hints than anything else. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, and the answer was yes, what should we do about it? Taxation is hard because it immediately districts the natural market and causes many second order effects. Pulling those apart to understand the root cause is really hard and few people can do it at all, let alone well. *My main issue is that economists tend to have a poor understand of statistics and cause and effect relative to what they need to really do their job. If you listen to Ed Yardeni, he basically throws out all macro-economics as being a sad state of affairs given how bad their models are compared to the reality they’re supposed to predict. Still worse, novel prize winners continue to spout their theories after they have been proven empirically wrong. Hence my general issue with the field. Some are clearly smart, but enough aren’t that gives me great pause.

MR4D 8y ago

I get your point, but have a couple issues. First, there are plenty of stupid economists. Just like there are plenty of stupid people in finance or politics, or many other things. But I’m not going to debate that particular thing, and I’m fine if we disagree. * That being said, the timespan question is very valid, but pinnning down the cause is really hard. If you read the research, the highest correlation is with globalization, not taxes. Let’s pretend you fully buy into that statement. If so, would you argue against globalization? And I mean that as a serious question. This is a really hard problem, and the answers are more like foggy hints than anything else. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, and the answer was yes, what should we do about it? Taxation is hard because it immediately districts the natural market and causes many second order effects. Pulling those apart to understand the root cause is really hard and few people can do it at all, let alone well. *My main issue is that economists tend to have a poor understand of statistics and cause and effect relative to what they need to really do their job. If you listen to Ed Yardeni, he basically throws out all macro-economics as being a sad state of affairs given how bad their models are compared to the reality they’re supposed to predict. Still worse, novel prize winners continue to spout their theories after they have been proven empirically wrong. Hence my general issue with the field. Some are clearly smart, but enough aren’t that gives me great pause.