4 ms·

Economics is basically the ideology of the upper class.. it is not a science, it is ideology.. I would suspect that this cost disease thing is driven in large p

Economics is basically the ideology of the upper class.. it is not a science, it is ideology.. I would suspect that this cost disease thing is driven in large part by modern monetary theory and increased liquidity through printing money, driving up asset prices and causing inflation by financial speculation.. the increase in asset prices such as housing causes the increase in wages.. the upper class would have us believe that the wage increase causes inflation. Maybe in the past but in the last 100 years or so and increasingly in the last 20 or so inflation and the cost disease that is basically described in this linked article above is probably driven mainly by inflation caused by asset price increases caused by financial speculation fueled by hyper liquidity... Edit.. those who vote me down take a look at inflation before the rise of central banks.. yes of course there were periods of inflation but then they were followed by periods of deflation.. this evidence of that take a look at the wages for an average man from 1700s all the way through the early 1900s it was basically the same.. whoever wants to central banks came into play inflation crept upward and upward

tomrod 4y ago
> it is not a science, it is ideology Hello, economist here! You are half correct. It's not a science, it is a social science. As far as methods go, it's quite imperialistic and has been the source of a lot of methodology improvements in many fields over the last several decades (especially in mechanism design and econometrics, IMHO). Though, there are certainly ideological branches of economics. A good example is the "Austrian school," which claims to be the "mainline" of economics instead of mainstream per Pete Boettke.[0] There are also pretty dead arguments around Institutional Economics and similar that aren't really active fields anymore. However, this notion that standard economics is somehow lost is more reactionary and prosaic than it is sublime -- mainstream economics tends to do quite well in the marketplace of ideas and in evaluation, though subject to the same replication concerns all social sciences face. Recent work in causal inference (which ML enthusiasts celebrate) has absolutely upped the bar for economists' output. As for your hunches, they aren't really on point or based in reality. Modern Monetary Theory came a long time after Baumol's elucidation of sectoral cost disease. Recall that macroeconomic theory is only a small part of economics as a whole, even when considering its associated fields of inquiry. [0] https://www.peter-boettke.com/mainline-economics https://www.peter-boettke.com/mainline-economics
- BigCryo 4y ago
  Academia is fraught with fraud... Once the establishment has settled on a narrative regarding some subject, professors will be falling over themselves to present studies based on Cherry picked data that will support the establishment narrative.. very few studies are actually reproducible..
  - tomrod 4y ago
    The world is fraught with fraud, which is why we should encourage replication in academia.
rguillebert 4y ago
You're only saying this because you don't like the outcome of economic research. So called "soft" sciences are the best way to get close to the truth in those fields even if it's harder to get undeniable answers.

tomrod 4y ago

> it is not a science, it is ideology Hello, economist here! You are half correct. It's not a science, it is a social science. As far as methods go, it's quite imperialistic and has been the source of a lot of methodology improvements in many fields over the last several decades (especially in mechanism design and econometrics, IMHO). Though, there are certainly ideological branches of economics. A good example is the "Austrian school," which claims to be the "mainline" of economics instead of mainstream per Pete Boettke.[0] There are also pretty dead arguments around Institutional Economics and similar that aren't really active fields anymore. However, this notion that standard economics is somehow lost is more reactionary and prosaic than it is sublime -- mainstream economics tends to do quite well in the marketplace of ideas and in evaluation, though subject to the same replication concerns all social sciences face. Recent work in causal inference (which ML enthusiasts celebrate) has absolutely upped the bar for economists' output. As for your hunches, they aren't really on point or based in reality. Modern Monetary Theory came a long time after Baumol's elucidation of sectoral cost disease. Recall that macroeconomic theory is only a small part of economics as a whole, even when considering its associated fields of inquiry. [0] https://www.peter-boettke.com/mainline-economics https://www.peter-boettke.com/mainline-economics

BigCryo 4y ago
Academia is fraught with fraud... Once the establishment has settled on a narrative regarding some subject, professors will be falling over themselves to present studies based on Cherry picked data that will support the establishment narrative.. very few studies are actually reproducible..
- tomrod 4y ago
  The world is fraught with fraud, which is why we should encourage replication in academia.

rguillebert 4y ago

You're only saying this because you don't like the outcome of economic research. So called "soft" sciences are the best way to get close to the truth in those fields even if it's harder to get undeniable answers.