3 ms·

I had the realization that economists only look at identities that hold in the "steady state" after a shock to a system, like the printer going brrr for a while

I had the realization that economists only look at identities that hold in the "steady state" after a shock to a system, like the printer going brrr for a while, and don't consider transitory states because they are difficult to model and calculate. That's why you have smart people going around saying inflation doesn't matter and other dumb stuff like that. There's no steady state, people! The system takes longer to reach steady state than the time between shocks! Am I wrong?

mrtranscendence 5y ago
You're only wrong in one respect: economists don't only look at steady states. Keynesian macro looks at frictions, for example. Economists are quite aware that inflation propagates through the economy unevenly; they are not that naive as a rule. I did learn general equilibrium in grad school, but we were not told that it was a precise description of reality.