I find it more sad that economists think they know anything when their theories are so useless and almost always wrong.
Modern economics are more like sports commentary or religion than a science.
Would you like to provide some reasoning? Your conclusory statements ain't true jest 'cuz yew sez so.
Their "theories" explain human behavior and the choices that humans make. Well, at least the honest economists do.
One good example: "2% inflation a year is good for the economy" every mainstream economist will spout this but I have NEVER heard them cite a single study, they just pulled it out of their ass.
- Why 2% and not 0.5%, 2.5%, 3% or 10%?
- Typical justfications are "deflation is BAAD" or "keeps people employed", which may or may not be true, but you can't SAY stuff like that without some hard goddamn evidence.
Another good example is often they will cite a SINGLE data point and use it to justify insanely wide generalizations - examples that they often get wrong too:
- The great depression was caused by a bunch of bad investments that collapsed, this caused people to pull out their money and the value of money rose temporarily. Economists will often blame the deflation rather than the actual down to earth cause of bad investments.
This is by the way their ONLY example of why deflation is bad - and its wrong.
Finally science is actual a VERY simple protocol and economists do simply NOT follow it:
- Positivism is the core methodology behind science, without it you are simply not doing science.
- It states that a theory should be logically self consistent (ie if 2+2 equals 4 on mondays it should do so aswell on tuesdays, unless the theory specifies otherwise of course) AND a theory must be disprovable.
- So: 1. Make a theory. 2. Make a prediction (it can be statistical). 3. Test if true. I have NEVER heard of an economist theory developed or tested like this and hence per DEFINITION economics is NOT a science.
- You can see this often in the excuses economists make up on the fly as they are wrong again and again - it sounds a lot like religious people justifying their beliefs with weird exceptions and phrases.
Bonus stuff:
- Complete failure to include the physical world in their calculations, acording to economic theory you would probably have a swell economy if you had 2% inflation a year even if all energy sources in the world suddenly disappeared or "demand" would magically materialize the disappeared/used up energy.
- Complete amateurs often make better predictions, I remember Resilience.org documented a significant correlation between energy (oil) consumption and economic activity - wheras economic theory would make you believe energy prices should crash at increased supply.
They also showed that if economists idea of infinite growth held true, the planet surface would BOIL in 1-200 years from simply the activity going on (not global warming).
- I recently heard an economist say that economists assume 100% employment OVER TIME... and I could not believe how stupid it was.. its been millenia and hello not everyone is employed! There are COSTS to employing people and the retarded, handicapped and unwilling will NEVER be employed.
- I could literally just keep going.
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