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Hypothetical economic studies and analyses are almost worthless. In normal science, you need something to be testable, verifiable, and reproducible. I'm quite

by pdq 8y ago

Hypothetical economic studies and analyses are almost worthless. In normal science, you need something to be testable, verifiable, and reproducible. I'm quite sure none of these are possible. Just as a counterpoint, the US public primary school education is state run and funded, and has both poor outcomes and is the most expensive in the world [1]. Just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education-spending-finland-south-korea https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education...

api 8y ago
America seems to have a huge problem with everything it does being incredibly costly. It's definitely true in the public sector and universities and also in large areas of the private sector. American healthcare being more expensive than anywhere else fits the pattern. It also apparently costs more to build a rail line or any other work of infrastructure here than anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure why this is, but health care is not exceptional.
- darawk 8y ago
  America has high costs anywhere that government is involved. Healthcare, infrastructure, etc...The pure private sector is quite efficient here.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    How about internet access or cell phones? Is that the government's fault too?
    - slg 8y ago
      In a word, yes. Those industries already have a high barrier to entry which stifles competition and can lead to high prices. However the governments response to that has not been to try to innovate or subsidize new competitors to lower barriers. Their response has been to establish rules that make it harder or even impossible for new competitors to enter the market.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Yes, those are excellent examples. Telecoms are heavily, heavily regulated.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Hypothetical economic studies may not be "normal science". But if we're talking about a massive new government program that is going to cost X gazillion dollars, I'd kind of like to know what X is before deciding that we should support it. I'd especially like to know whether X is greater than the actual benefits. And who am I going to trust to decide that? Not a politician. Not someone who strongly favors one side or the other, either. And not just somebody at a bar, nor even a media personality. I want someone who actually knows some economics, and actually is attempting to be impartial. In fact, I want several independent ones of that.
fcarraldo 8y ago
Just as the state taking control of something doesn’t magically fix it, it doesn’t magically break it. The article you sourced even posits that the systemic problems could be fixed by increasing funding to improve teacher salaries and make the job competitive with industry jobs, not by privatization. These are apples and oranges comparisons, and there are countless examples of both state-run efficiency and inefficiency to support any position. If you’re asking for scientific rigor to back up economic policy opinions, perhaps that should apply to both sides of the argument.
VikingCoder 8y ago
Quick question: What if America's education problem is that the children don't have parents who can nurture them? Because we have stagnant or decreasing real wages? Because the cost of daycare, housing, health, and advanced education have all gone up? Because we're making it harder to declare bankruptcy? Because we're criminalizing activities, and ripping families apart? Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that our education is ranked poorly. And pointing to education, as though it's a system we can study in isolation, and claim that it's a failure, therefore other state-run systems must also be failures, isn't really being honest? And maybe it's worthwhile to look at other countries with the economic conditions we're proposing. Like single payer healthcare. Because we can look at them. You're absolutely right that "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality." But people like you seem to delight in using that as an argument against government programs that have been shown to be effective, again and again, in country after country. So then I can say, "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will be either inefficient or low quality." And we've both said something completely meaningless, and now can we please get back to looking at examples from other countries, and try to learn from them?
- beginningguava 8y ago
  US education is top notch based on international PISA scores if you break it down by race and compare them to europe, latin america, africa, etc https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_3f.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights... Singapore almost always takes 1st in international test scores and their long time leader didn't pull punches https://imgur.com/a/a8nCQUO https://imgur.com/a/a8nCQUO and it's not an income thing, the poorest whites and asians score as high as black students from families making 200k+ a year https://i.imgur.com/PD9hz9b.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PD9hz9b.jpg So in a way you're right, US government does run their education system very well, it just seems to be a racial thing which can never be spoken about politically so it's just ignored as the elephant in the room
  - VikingCoder 8y ago
    Since people were treated separately based on their race (slavery, no right to vote, no civil rights, redlining, segregated schools), it's not a surprise you can still measure the impacts of that decades later, based on race. It takes a long time to undo damage like that.
godelski 8y ago
As a scientist: WHAT? You're saying that science is useless without experimentalists? (my side) Theorists do a lot of great work and I don't think any experimentalist would say they are useless. Sure, there is the playful banter of who's more important, but when it comes down to it we all know everyone is an important part of the system and that we need both. Theorists set the groundwork. They come up with a lot of vague notions and then move to work with experimentalists to figure out how they can test these notions. How to "prove" it. But saying they are "worthless"? That's just hogwash. Even if wrong, they aren't worthless. (Hint: most of the time they are wrong) And yes, economics isn't as rigid as something like physics. But it is pretty complicated stuff and they don't have as much of a history and basic principles. They may not be a hard science (or some might say not even a science), but calling an analysis worthless is just bad. And saying that in "normal science" (it's just science) things need to be testable to be useful is also just wrong. I'd call string theorists mathematicians, but what they do isn't worthless. If this is really the way people think science is done, we've got a big problem.

by pdq 8y ago

api 8y ago

America seems to have a huge problem with everything it does being incredibly costly. It's definitely true in the public sector and universities and also in large areas of the private sector. American healthcare being more expensive than anywhere else fits the pattern. It also apparently costs more to build a rail line or any other work of infrastructure here than anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure why this is, but health care is not exceptional.

darawk 8y ago
America has high costs anywhere that government is involved. Healthcare, infrastructure, etc...The pure private sector is quite efficient here.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  How about internet access or cell phones? Is that the government's fault too?
  - slg 8y ago
    In a word, yes. Those industries already have a high barrier to entry which stifles competition and can lead to high prices. However the governments response to that has not been to try to innovate or subsidize new competitors to lower barriers. Their response has been to establish rules that make it harder or even impossible for new competitors to enter the market.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Yes, those are excellent examples. Telecoms are heavily, heavily regulated.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

Hypothetical economic studies may not be "normal science". But if we're talking about a massive new government program that is going to cost X gazillion dollars, I'd kind of like to know what X is before deciding that we should support it. I'd especially like to know whether X is greater than the actual benefits. And who am I going to trust to decide that? Not a politician. Not someone who strongly favors one side or the other, either. And not just somebody at a bar, nor even a media personality. I want someone who actually knows some economics, and actually is attempting to be impartial. In fact, I want several independent ones of that.

fcarraldo 8y ago

Just as the state taking control of something doesn’t magically fix it, it doesn’t magically break it. The article you sourced even posits that the systemic problems could be fixed by increasing funding to improve teacher salaries and make the job competitive with industry jobs, not by privatization. These are apples and oranges comparisons, and there are countless examples of both state-run efficiency and inefficiency to support any position. If you’re asking for scientific rigor to back up economic policy opinions, perhaps that should apply to both sides of the argument.

VikingCoder 8y ago

Quick question: What if America's education problem is that the children don't have parents who can nurture them? Because we have stagnant or decreasing real wages? Because the cost of daycare, housing, health, and advanced education have all gone up? Because we're making it harder to declare bankruptcy? Because we're criminalizing activities, and ripping families apart? Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that our education is ranked poorly. And pointing to education, as though it's a system we can study in isolation, and claim that it's a failure, therefore other state-run systems must also be failures, isn't really being honest? And maybe it's worthwhile to look at other countries with the economic conditions we're proposing. Like single payer healthcare. Because we can look at them. You're absolutely right that "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality." But people like you seem to delight in using that as an argument against government programs that have been shown to be effective, again and again, in country after country. So then I can say, "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will be either inefficient or low quality." And we've both said something completely meaningless, and now can we please get back to looking at examples from other countries, and try to learn from them?

beginningguava 8y ago
US education is top notch based on international PISA scores if you break it down by race and compare them to europe, latin america, africa, etc https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_3f.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights... Singapore almost always takes 1st in international test scores and their long time leader didn't pull punches https://imgur.com/a/a8nCQUO https://imgur.com/a/a8nCQUO and it's not an income thing, the poorest whites and asians score as high as black students from families making 200k+ a year https://i.imgur.com/PD9hz9b.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PD9hz9b.jpg So in a way you're right, US government does run their education system very well, it just seems to be a racial thing which can never be spoken about politically so it's just ignored as the elephant in the room
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  Since people were treated separately based on their race (slavery, no right to vote, no civil rights, redlining, segregated schools), it's not a surprise you can still measure the impacts of that decades later, based on race. It takes a long time to undo damage like that.

godelski 8y ago

As a scientist: WHAT? You're saying that science is useless without experimentalists? (my side) Theorists do a lot of great work and I don't think any experimentalist would say they are useless. Sure, there is the playful banter of who's more important, but when it comes down to it we all know everyone is an important part of the system and that we need both. Theorists set the groundwork. They come up with a lot of vague notions and then move to work with experimentalists to figure out how they can test these notions. How to "prove" it. But saying they are "worthless"? That's just hogwash. Even if wrong, they aren't worthless. (Hint: most of the time they are wrong) And yes, economics isn't as rigid as something like physics. But it is pretty complicated stuff and they don't have as much of a history and basic principles. They may not be a hard science (or some might say not even a science), but calling an analysis worthless is just bad. And saying that in "normal science" (it's just science) things need to be testable to be useful is also just wrong. I'd call string theorists mathematicians, but what they do isn't worthless. If this is really the way people think science is done, we've got a big problem.