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A lot of legislation cannot be approach scientifically, e.g. the right taxes rates, etc. Other legislation can be very scientific, e.g. is marijuana dangerous?
by pcrh 12y ago
A lot of legislation cannot be approach scientifically, e.g. the right taxes rates, etc. Other legislation can be very scientific, e.g. is marijuana dangerous?
- im3w1l 12y agoWe may not be able to decide the right tax rate scientifically. But what we can do is determine very accurately the consequences of the choice. If we increase the tax rate x%, innovation will suffer y% but n less people will have to starve in the streets.
- jessaustin 12y agoEven this is grossly overestimating the powers of current economic analysis. Many economists will give you this sort of ridiculous precision in advance, but in retrospect all they'll say is "we can't run a controlled experiment so you have to believe me that if we had done more of what I recommended, the results I promised would have occurred."
- im3w1l 12y agoFair enough. I should have said "what we could theorethically do" rather than "what we can do".
- jessaustin 12y agoOther legislation can be very scientific, e.g. is marijuana dangerous? Yet somehow, for this question, the science upon which legislators have relied has been completely wrong for many decades.