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Forget Piketty's 700-Page Tome - Here Is The Shortest Economics Textbook Ever
Forget the 700-plus-page Piketty 'socialism for all' tome; here is economics that everyone can understand.
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And here they are... the 5 things they don't tell you about economics...
1. 95% of economics is common sense
You don’t need a degree to understand it
We’ve got this profession wrong; a lot of professional economists think what they do is too difficult for ordinary people. You’d be surprised how often these people are stupid enough to say things, at least in private, like ‘you wouldn’t understand what I do even if I explained it to you’. If you cannot explain it to other people, you have the problem.
People express strong opinions on all sorts of things despite not having the appropriate expertise: climate change, gay marriage, the Iraq War, nuclear power stations. But when it comes to economic issues, many people are not even interested, not to speak of not having a strong opinion about them. When was the last time you had a debate on the future of the Euro, inequality in China or the American manufacturing industry, despite the fact that these issues can have a huge impact on your life, wherever you live?
2. Economics is not a science
Despite what the experts want you to believe, there is more than one way of ‘doing’ economics
People have been led to believe that, like physics or chemistry, economics is a ‘science’, in which there is only one correct answer to everything; thus non-experts should simply accept the ‘professional consensus’ and stop thinking about it.
Contrary to what most economists would have you believe, there isn’t just one kind of economics – Neoclassical economics. In fact there are no less than nine different kinds, or schools, as they are often known. And none of these schools can claim superiority over others and still less monopoly over truth.
I accept that being suddenly asked to taste nine different flavours of ice cream when you had thought that there was only one plain vanilla can be quite overwhelming. In order to help, I attach here a simple table that will help you overcome your initial fear.
3. Economics is politics
Economic arguments are often justification for what politicians want to do anyway
Economics is a political argument. It is not – and can never be – a science.
Behind every economic policy and corporate action that affect our lives – the minimum wage, outsourcing, social security, food safety, pensions and whatnot – lies some economic theory that either has inspired those actions or, more frequently, is providing justification of what those in power want to do anyway.
Only when we know that there are different economic theories will we be able to tell those in power that they are wrong to tell us that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA), as Margaret Thatcher once infamously put it in defence of her controversial policies.
4. Never trust an economist
It is one thing not to foresee the financial crisis; it’s another not to have changed anything since
Most economists were caught completely by surprise by the 2008 global financial crisis. Not only that, they have not been able to come up with decent solutions to the ongoing aftermaths of that crisis.
Given all this, economics seems to suffer from a serious case of megalomania.
The financial crisis has been a brutal reminder that we cannot leave our economy to professional economists and other ‘technocrats’. We should all get involved in its management – as active economic citizens.
5. We have to reclaim economics for the people
It’s too important to be left to the experts alone
You should be willing to challenge professional economists (and, yes, that includes me). They do not have a monopoly over the truth, even when it comes to economic matters.
Like many other things in life – learning to ride a bicycle, learning a new language, or learning to use your new tablet computer – being an active economic citizen gets easier over time, once you overcome the initial difficulties and keep practicing it.
Unless you are willing and able to challenge the professionals, challenge the experts, what’s the point of having a democracy?
There is no excuse for complacency. If you organize and demand reforms then a lot of amazing things happen, but it won’t come easy – we have to fight for it.
And there it is - all you need to know when watching the talking head bloviation and justification day after day...
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Interesting comment, kevinearick.
Technology is certainly developed in the context of warfare. I am not so sure about stating it so simply that technology itself is war, but certain that all technology gets applied inside the context of perpetual warfare.
I thought that this article above was grossly over-simplistic. My basic view point is that economics is a science like warfare is a science. Indeed, warfare is the oldest and best developed social science. However, the oldest book on The Art of War starts by saying that "success in war is based on deceit," and therefore ends by saying that "spies are the most important soldiers." Warfare is a paradoxical science because its success depends on deceit. Economics is politics, but politics always takes place in the perpetual context that human realities are always the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies.
It was NOT an accident that our financial system ended up being fundamentally based on frauds. It was NOT an accident that the methods of organized crime developed the War Kings that made sovereign states, with the powers to tax, backed by the power to kill those who resisted being taxed. It was NOT an accident that the Fraud Kings continued to apply the methods of organized crime to dominate the political processes, so that systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, would be created.
The current foundation of real economics is the politics of warfare, which success was based on deceits, which is how and why we have developed a political economy with fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Of course, one can NOT trust professional economists inside that context, because they are intellectual mercenaries, paid by the banksters to promote the kinds of bullshit that benefit the banksters. The degree to which the banksters have been able to leverage up their financial frauds to use their profits to dominate the funding of the school systems, and mass media, means that almost everyone has been brainwashed to believe in the bullshit that the banksters approve of, in order to keep their vicious spirals of enforced frauds spinning. During that process, "common sense" has become an oxymoron.
Every technology is necessarily an extension of the human body and mind. Human minds and bodies were always inside of the context of the perpetual warfare, that exists as the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies, operating robberies. Therefore, all technologies are war by other means. Of course, every tool can be used for different purposes. However, militarism is the supreme ideology which is self-selected to be the dominating purposes which direct the develop and uses of tools. Militarism is the ideology of the murder system. The death controls are the central controls to everything else, after one has life, which comes a package deal with a set of perpetual, innate problems, built into the nature of life.
The debt controls then end up being backed by the death controls, inside the context of the combined money/murder systems. Those overall integrated functions, however, are deliberately dissociated by the dominating biggest bullies' bullshit social stories, which at the present time tend to be the bankster controlled governments, which operate the state religion monetary system, backed up by the state religion national security system.
The monetary system is the primary state religion, which is based on what are superficially absurd, enforced frauds, whereby private banks get to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, while government force the public to operate inside of that, by demanding the payment of taxes in the form of that legal tender, which enforcement makes and maintains the social habits which transformed pieces of paper, or bursts of encoded electricity, into "money."
Inside that context, the emerging cryptocurrencies are mostly parasites on top of parasites, because they are even less responsible for the ways that money is measurement backed by murder, because they continue to have the psychological habits to presume to take for granted the murder systems that were backing up the money systems that they were piggy backing upon.
Most economics is no longer "common sense" because the technologies it now operates through are not based on old-fashioned "common sense," but rather based on a history of profound paradigm shifts in basic sciences, which enabled technologies to become trillions of times more powerful and capable, on the basis of ideas which are NOT common sense. For instance, the globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed the threat of the force of atomic bombs, were made possible by physics such as quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity, which are extremely different than most "common sense."
There is some common sense left in the old-fashioned notions of money as metal coins, which manifested the conservation of matter. However, the conservation of matter, which is indeed "common sense" for most people, within their lives as animals operating on ordinary chemical energy, NO longer is sufficient, in a world where atomic bombs prove that matter is a form of energy, and that energy works in astonishing ways, radically different than common sense, on both the smallest and largest scales of its manifestations!
The paradoxical ways that technologies are developed again and again tend to demonstrate the pattern that awesome special effects are used to retell the same old stupid stories. In my opinion, the emerging complementary cryptocurrencies are good examples of more fantastic special effects, supporting the same old stupid stories being retold through those means. So far, the progress in sciences has not yet changed the basic social and political habits that people have to be dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit.
The connection between human laws and natural laws was the abilities to back up lies with violence, which has developed to become the enforced frauds, which now dominate the political economy. Ordinary people are taught to operate INSIDE of the established systems, WITHOUT being taught to understand how those systems as a whole operate. Those were the ways that politics was warfare by other means, and economics was politics, which was also warfare by other means. Those insights then return us to the last of the five points made in this "little book" article, that: "Economics is too important to be left to the experts."
I assert that everyone has some power to rob, and to kill to back up that power to rob. Those are the universal fundamentals regarding human beings as animals, operating as entropic pumps inside of the general context of energy systems, as nested sequences of toroid vortices. The same universal principles of general energy systems, and their evolutionary ecologies, apply to human civilizations. That manifests mainly in the form of that the ways humans operate as robbers in their environment (necessarily so, as soon as we define and perceive them to be separate from their environment).
Since human beings basically operate as robbers in their environment, groups of human beings are gangs of robbers. The principles and methods of organized crime are what best match the description of how civilizations operate. That is how and why we have ended up with governments being the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminally, which currently happen to be the banksters, as the biggest gangsters.
The banksters, of course, pay for the intellectual mercenaries, the economists, to develop and disseminate the kinds of social stories which benefit the banksters, in a positive feedback loop of the profits from frauds being reinvest in more frauds. Meanwhile, the established systems continue, where the vast majority of politicians are the banksters' puppets, whose job is to preform for the masses of muppets, in order to continue to be able to fool enough of those muppets enough of the time.
The deeper challenges with respect to the human sciences, such as warfare and economics, are whether their paradoxical successes, based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds, can survive being pumped up by progress in other sciences enabling technologies to become trillions of times more powerful ???
From that perspective, I agreed with most of kevinearick's take, in his comment on this article above. While that article contains some correct points, the whole thing is still presented inside of the same old-fashioned frames of reference. In my opinion, there is no doubt that economics IS a science, which is based on the oldest and best developed of social sciences, which was warfare. However, AROUND AND AROUND WE WENT, since success in warfare was based on deceits, success in financial affairs became based on fraud, because the political economy dominated the common sense view of ordinary people, who are taught to adapt to live inside of those systems, while taught to not want to understand how those systems as a whole operate.
Since everyone has some power to rob, and to kill to back up that power to rob, groups of human beings assemble and channel those powers, which tend to develop their abilities to cooperate within their groups, in order to compete with other groups. All countries, corporations, and churches, etc., are systems of organized lies, operating robberies. They all operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, with only their scale of successfulness differing between different groups, in different places, at different times.
Inside of that context, of perceiving human beings as energy systems, of course, successful economists are necessarily professional liars and immaculate hypocrites who should not be trusted. They are advancing a political economy, which is still warfare by other means. The money system is still measurement backed by murder, no matter how much more advanced the technological means may become in order to do that.
In terms of achieving sufficient intellectual revolutions in politics, and especially in the combined monetary and military systems, the magnitude of the necessary paradigm shifts go far beyond the current manifestations of oxymoronic "common sense." The political paradigm shifts that we ought to go through make all others previously achieved look like child's play in comparison. To understand human civilizations as manifestations of general energy systems, developing and directing their own evolutionary ecologies, through the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies, operating robberies, requires that ordinary people stop believing in the biggest bullies' bullshit stories.
Of course, people should not trust economists. They should understand that those economists were mostly acting as intellectual mercenaries for the banksters. However, to move past that realization more fully means moving past the basic ways of thinking using false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals, that the vast majority of people were taught, which are also the ways of thinking that most of the controlled opposition groups are still promoting, as the basis for their "solutions" to these problems.
More and more people are waking up to the facts that their governments are actually the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. However, they are not understanding that thoroughly and systematically enough. There were always be chronic political problems inherent in the nature of life. Hence, there is always a context of perpetual warfare. The best theoretical ways forward would require enough people to understand enough that, as citizens, they were members of organized crime gangs, called their countries, which should operate through a democratic republic and the rule of law, to limit the ways that other systems of organized crime operate.
Unfortunately, the ouroboros of incorporated robberies has resulted in governments chartering corporations, which have effectively taken control over the governments, while the vast majority of citizens have been reduced to incompetent political idiots, or Zombie Sheeple. The central issues are how to operate the murder systems, to back up the monetary systems. At present, those have become runaway privatizations of public powers, because the majority of people have been brainwashed to believe in bullshit, in order to enable that to happen.
Little books like the one illustrated in the article above are superficial kinds of reactionary revolutions, promoted by the Black Sheeple, attempting to lead the Zombie Sheeple backwards. There can be NO return to common sense, since what passes for common sense these days is an oxymoronic ignorance of science. In general, there can be NO return to any other old-fashioned religions or ideologies, as plausible solutions for the current runaway problems of globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs.
The better ways forward require a series of intellectual revolutions, which radicalize the basic ways that we understand general energy systems, and then apply that radicalized understanding to the human systems. All of that applies even more so to the possible understanding of the new kingdoms of life enabled by the exponential progress in science and technology manifested through the phases of the industrial revolution, which is driving the potential for the necessary emergence of industrial evolutionary ecologies.
At present we have human death control systems operating through the maximum possible deceits about themselves, which back up debt control systems which operate through the maximum possible frauds about themselves. Inside that context, the mainstream economists tend to deliberately ignore the issues that the monetary system has become a state religion, based on enforced frauds, which are driving civilization to become criminally insane, since it is being more and more totally controlled by crazier and crazier "successes" of huge lies, backed by lots of violence, which never makes those lies become true, but only thereby drives worsening social insanities.
In my view, the better resolutions would require that enough people understand enough that groups of human beings operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, as gangs of robbers, which may develop better dynamic equilibria between the different rates of social robberies. However, at present, the currently established social pyramid systems are going through their paradoxical failures from too much success. The ruling classes are getting away with too much bullshit. Those they rule over are believing in too much bullshit. That is the real context in which the issues raised in the five points of this article about "economists" are manifesting.
There are level after level of the biggest bullies' bullshit world views to transcend, where the lies are different at every level. As long as human beings are building mental models of their world, with models of themselves inside their models of their world, then all of the same old political and psychological problems will exist inside that context, where militarism is always the supreme ideology of the murder system, and the death controls will always be the central controls that back up the debt controls, and all other controls.
The only genuinely better resolutions for the chronic political problems must necessarily be better death controls. However, in order to accomplish that will require going through a series of radical changes in the ways that we understand energy systems, so that those understandings could be applied to human systems, as well as the emerging industrial systems. Those should be inspired by similarly better understanding of the natural systems, and their natural selection processes that existed long before human beings evolved.
What is basically happening is the emergence of systems of artificial selections, based upon the previous systems of natural selections. Both warfare and political economy were manifestations of those processes. However, since successful warfare was based on deceits about itself, and successful finance was based upon frauds as well, those who were most successful within those established systems, such as the mainstream economists, were necessarily professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who could not be trusted. They did not appear to be scientific, because their science was entangled in systems whose success fundamentally depended upon enforced frauds, which issue they could never address directly, but had to dance around.
As long as social success continues to be based on fooling enough of the people enough of the time, then we will continue to have the human world controlled by egregious lies, which requires the controllers to be outrageous hypocrites. As long as we cling to a frame of reference based on false fundamental dichotomies, and therefore, promote impossible ideals as the basis for the "solutions" to our real problems, then those problems will continue to get worse, faster. Rather what we need is enough radical truth, appreciated by enough people, so that they comprehend more unitary mechanisms regarding organized lies and robberies, and therefore, have more realistic ideals.
Right now, mainstream economics is trapped inside of the paradoxical ways that political economy is based on enforced frauds, which issues the mainstream economists have to deliberately ignore and dance around, in order to be employed by the banksters, or the corporations that grew up around those banks. Furthermore, as long as we perceive human beings as separate from their environment, in order to use the human abilities to name things, and assign them properties, in order to tell stories about them, then we will be perpetually stuck inside the context of there being dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, with no way to transcend that.
Due to the excessive degree that the biggest bullies' bullshit dominates our civilization, including the language that we use, and therefore, the ways that we think, we are collectively unable to respond to the runaway rates of unbalanced social robberies. As those systems become more and more extremely unbalanced, heading towards such severe situations as apparently irreconcilable social polarization, along with seemly irreparable destruction of the natural world, it becomes more and more imperative that enough people would stop believing in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view. However, so far, the opposition is still almost totally controlled, and continues to promote the same old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals as the "solutions."
The genuine solutions are to develop better militarism, to back up better monetary systems. There is no way around the central problem of how can human beings operate their murder systems. Those problems are now trillions of times worse than ever before in human history, because weapons of mass destruction have become trillions of times more powerful, within the life time of those who are still alive today, as the first generation to grow up with those emerging problems.
Since we live in a Bizarro Mirror World, where everything is backwards, such as the best organized gangs of criminals have captured control over governments, which governments have therefore become the biggest form of organized crime, the paradoxical solutions are also backwards to what the controlled opposition to that system proposes. Instead, everyone should learn to become better Wolves, rather than learn to become better Sheeple. The better solutions are a radically different understanding of energy systems, which then applies to a radically different understanding of the death controls, which then back up all the other social control systems.
At present, almost all of the progress in science and technology is still be channeled through social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence, and therefore, things like the development of computers and the Internet are rife with all the same paradoxes as always, with awesomely improved special effects mainly being employed to repeat telling the same old stupid social stories.
Economics is already a science, but a paradoxical one, like warfare. There can be mathematical accounting of the flows of energy. However, the bookkeeping now being done is through almost totally cooked books, which works due to long history of warfare, creating War Kings, that created states, whose powers were captured by the Fraud Kings. Meanwhile, all of the people still have the power to rob, and to kill to back up their power to rob. However, since they are taught to misunderstand that as much as possible, they do not use their powers as citizens, but rather act like Zombie Sheeple, to have their own powers used against them, since they constantly get fooled and tricked, not only by the established systems, but also by the controlled opposition groups.
Of course, that applies to economists, who tend to be grouped either within the mainstream, working for the banksters, or within some alternative stream of controlled opposition. The alternative streams of controlled opposition economists should not be trusted any more than the mainstream economists. Economics IS too important to be left to be controlled by those kinds of expert professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. More people should participate, but they should participate on the basis of being more realistic, rather than participate on the basis of attempting to make impossible ideals become realized, which is always impossible, and so, always backfires badly.
Personally, I blame Original Sin...
Original subtraction of parts from the Whole, resulting in the perception of entropy, and all that entails, is like the conception of "original sin," only that can become more mathematically sophisticated than the old-fashioned notions.
The conceptions of conservation and momentum are the same as the concepts of God, and all of the associated attributes of God, while the conception of entropy is the same as that of evil. Of course, the paradoxes there go as far as one is willing and able to look for them.
Taking the principle of the conservation of energy seriously leads towards a creative synthesis of post-modernizing science with ancient mysticism. Blaming original sin is the same as blaming entropy, except that the concept of entropy, as an approach to understanding evil, can be done far more scientifically than any old-fashioned religions or ideologies have previously been able to do.
Looping back through taking the conservation of energy seriously leads to perceiving that the distribution of energy in time and space, i.e., entropy, does not exist in the same way as energy exists. The paradoxes of original subtraction, or original sin, are that they were never absolute, hence salvation, or redemption, etc., through the conservation of energy that continues, no matter what the entropic processes are.
Everything in science today is understood as general energy systems, with those systems operating as entropic pumps, transforming energy. Of course, that applies to individual human beings, as well as groups of human beings. The old-fashioned religions and ideologies, some which included the idea of "original sin," may be understood more scientifically through understanding general energy systems, with various moralities related to evolutionary ecologies in different environmental circumstances.
Anyway, with those changes in perception and language, I blame "original sin" too, however, I understand that in radically different ways than those who promoted that idea in the past. After all, one can see religion as a mutation of mysticism, and then science as a mutation of religion, which may be looping back to reconverge with their origins?
I love these two guys.
A look in their brains is like a roller-coaster ride with the wheels coming off.
A never before tested roller coaster ride, starting with the grand upslope of the industrial revolution, reaching a tipping point of diminishing returns from being able to strip-mine the natural resources of the planet, causing the ride to go drastically downslope, is what we can more reasonably expect in the foreseeable future.
We are nearing the point where the ride UP of the industrial revolution is turning towards the ride DOWN, as the short-term benefits from the boom of being able to strip-mine a fresh planet changes into the bust of longer term costs of having been able to have done that.
Attempting to predict the most probable future of civilization "is like a roller-coaster ride with the wheels coming off." However, most people, especially in the more comfortable seats of that roller-coaster, do not yet perceive the degree to which the long upslope is likely to be followed by a more drastic downslope, nor do they necessarily notice, nor understand, that the wheels ARE coming off.
In French, the word to describe "roller coaster" is Russian Mountain. One could say that the world's current political economy is like playing Russian Roulette while riding on the Russian Mountain ... Meanwhile, as has been the theme of many Zero Hedge articles, in the Real World, Russia, et alia, are attempting to knock the American Dollar off to no longer be the world's reserve currency, which is one of the symbolic ways that the currently established global economy "is like a roller-coaster ride with the wheels coming off."
Personally, I do not believe that preparing for that with metaphorical seat-belts and crash helmets is going to be enough to cope with how drastic the downslope ride is really going to become, especially after the wheels come off. However, I sympathize with those who are attempting to devise strategies to maybe preserve their wealth through those events, who do not trust the mainstream economists' predictions.
Radical - You haven't noticed the CB model to sustain itself while not killing off the planet is West/East shifting of resources? 1/2 the world get to be slaves for 40 years followed by 40 years of "light at the end of the tunnel".
Mankind could channel competitive nature into one unified goal we all can agree on: the process of death itself. Look at trust and hertigage funds. They are an attempt to keep a part of oneself alive even if the name only. Robberies are survival mechanisms.
Operation Eternity is the answer.
The lie every human (original sin) tells themselves is they won't die. Yes you will. But we are evolving so the choice is transformation at will rather than transition in death. Either way whatever way I have looked at it be it religion or quantum physics change is constant, we all must go through the process but entering a new plane of existence or building one to exist for billions of years to the next evolution is a goal every person can share or does one want to argue about living 90 years getting decrepit and shitting your pants is awsome?
Raging Debate, I agree with you: "whatever way I have looked at it be it religion or quantum physics change is constant, we all must go through the process" ...
However, that does not mean that I like being in the phases towards the end of this particular incarnation. Life tends to be a package deal, with the best parts at the beginning, while the worse parts are more towards the end.
I can not imagine that "Operation Eternity" applies to me, except transcendentally, the same as it always did. Otherwise, my little life seems that, when I look back, that it was almost always better the younger I was. Now, I have nothing to look forward to, other than getting older, eventually getting sick and dying. Indeed, like most older people, I personally hope that the established systems keep on hanging together for a little longer, while I am still here, because I can not imagine how I am supposed to personally cope with all the bad news that appears to be on an exponential growth curve during the next few decades.
As a Canadian, I am particularly insulated, because all the statistics indicate that Canadians are still in the BUBBLE, which has already popped for many Americans, and even more so for other people around the world, like the Greeks, etc. ... Therefore, none of the financial crises that I read about on Zero Hedge have ever made any real difference in my own little life, but only made an intellectual difference, in the sense of inspiring nightmares regarding where we are actually headed!
"Operation Eternity" is always there, for the drop of water, or the whirlpool, in the ocean, from a philosophical perspective, as a transendental truth. However, in the real world, what I wonder about is how or when might the various kinds of ways that the cost of living getting higher, and higher, may well cross the threshold where it becomes unaffordable for me.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2014/06/09/dont-like-global-warming-how-about-global-rioting/
Don’t Like Global Warming?
How About Global Rioting?
"The Fahrenheit 210 hypothesis, to coin a phrase, was posited not by FAO but by the New England Complex Systems Institute. Its concerns were based on two things; the diversion of staple crops to biofuels production, and manipulation of staple-food prices by speculators."
So far, that has mostly hit poorer people on the periphery of the global systems, however, those pressures are working their way towards the center, and may well eventually impinge upon me. While I enjoy transcendental poetry as much as anyone, I probably will not be able to enjoy that as much if I live long enough to discover that I cannot afford to pay my bills any more, and especially that I no longer can afford to pay for enough food.
As you wrote, Raging Debate "Robberies are survival mechanisms." However, as one gets older and older, survival gets more and more problematic, until it finally become impossible. I have been keenly aware of the train on the track of unsustainable exponential growth headed towards a train wreck for several decades. Meanwhile, the only thing that has changed is that I have tended to have to shorten the expected amount of time that train wreck would take to happen. I used to think it would take several more generations. Then I found I started to think it would take several more decades, BUT, NOW, I AM BEGINNING TO THINK IT MAY BE WITHIN MY LIFETIME!
I have more and more discovered that the mainstream economists were wrong, and wronger! I have tended to trust them less and less. Therefore, this kind of article above, as I now usually find, is something I tended to mostly agree with, except I thought it was still too optimistic. Mainstream economists are turning out not merely to have been wrong, but to have been spectacularly wrong, in ways which may well impact upon me personally, in ways that more transcendental truths about "Operation Eternity" are not going to assuage!
Ranks right up there in my own personal library with, 'Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford'.
Hey ZH, send this message to your friends from the Messianic Von Mises miserly institute.
The only thingie I feel needs that to be highlighted is that economic ANALYSIS is based on fact like for Piketty; whereas Economic THEORY or DOGMA is based on delusion like "the invisible hand of market" that restores equilibrium between supply and demand....Hahaha, Joan Robinson killed that fallacy when she demonstrated that markets were Oligarchic by NATURE and historical trend. (Need I repeat that the next thirty years proved her right).
The rest is just literature like the 100 seconds of explanation provided by your contributor about how to explain the Sunni Shia divide. I'll drink to those 100 seconds, which could not explain why Clinton said : I never had sex with that woman, before he said : TBTF have open range as I have revoked BW and my friend Sandy Weill can buy Citi all for himself.
Oligarchs are soooo predictable in their HUBRIS and their silly, shoddy lies.
FP, are you flashing a, dare I say, a nasty side?
nasty for whom?
Mises is fulll of theory and psychorigid dogma.
As for Bill Cliinton... he made more money selling himself to those who paid for his elections than he should have.
ZH does not edit the content of its contributors.
Any other nasty ghosts around?
All science is theory, even soft ones like economics.
It displayed a level of snark above and beyond your usual level...
well at least it created some sparks out of a book about nothing all the while ZH snarks about a book about something which will go down in history as its full of facts and its not just face value as it relates the swan song of American financialization. The demise of American exceptionalism is correctly portrayed in the Piketty book and causality explained from a statistician's angle, with a sense of history. There is a lot of historical analogy explained in simple terms in that book.
Amazing how ZH agrees with all the premises of Piketty's book; its the time line of all analysis presented here; aka that the Oligarchs have ripped off the economy and that the rip off has been magnified by the Lehman collapse and the shenanigans that have followed; all the while ZH keeps singing the song of people obsessed by the power of the financial markets as if they did God's work.
Now this piddling book and the cynical conclusion : all economics is BS and reflects the ideology of the age. What sort of duck soup is that that ZH serves us?
My snark is based on fact as presented here by ZH's mostly excellent analysis and the regressionary trend in ZH postings when it comes to SYNTHESIS and opinions.
You're talking to the most dogmatic group of people on the planet (Austrians) falak, so I'd say don't waste your time.
These idiots cannot even understand that what Chang is saying also applies to their beloved Mises, and their fetish about efficient free markets despite a century of evidence against this dogma. Let's see how many minutes it will take one of these idiots jump in the conversation and start whinging that there have never been free markets (stereotype Austrian nonsense).
As you said, almost everyone here says exactly what Piketty has said in his book, but of course they have not read a single page of it, because it recommends something these dogmatic idiots oppose in principle..That's why I stopped commenting on this website, the average ZHer is more dogmatic and illiterate than an orthodox marxist dreaming of Soviets. Two sides of the same coin.
Thank you my friend, I like your soviet analogy which also propagated nothing more than the prolongation of dogmatic religious obscurantist ideology of the feudal age in the name of historical "determinism".
And to make matters worse a lot of these guys are Reaganista age neo-cons, died in the wool warmongering supremists now trying to shed their soiled snake skins; some bible toters; anyways a lot of false noses who drink tea but who looked for sympathy with the Oligarchs of Dick Cheney's ilk during the pre 9/11 "halcyon" NACP age.
Difficult to make a leopard change its spots. Even when its dream hunting ground burns to dust.
Lol, I love this gem from the thread : "Austrian economics is a SCIENCE."
Care to use a grammar filter? This is not even remotely coherent. I think you may have a point, but how can I be sure?
its not grammar its logic filter that you need.
Coherency : The Piketty book is the most relevant and detailed analysis of the current crisis's origins. Fact.
This posted booklet says nothing profound just evident truths. Its a good joke to compare it with Piketty. (A bit cynical or tongue in cheek IMO on ZH's part).
Von Mises keeps plugging the same irrelevent line here at ZH..IMO.
My remark about Clinton follows another one I made on a previous thread. Its about 100 seconds...and a video that said nothing about why Shia Sunni divide has been instrumentalised since the US/SAUD sent their hit man Saddam to go fight the rogue state IRAN post 1978 reversal of SHah.
That is what started the Saddam vs US saga. The point man, despot and ex CIA agent in his youth, turned rogue against his paymasters, those who financed his 10 year sterile war with IRan with arms (including french exocets). Thats what started the destruction of Iraq in the fight that became Saddam vs the Bush neo cons.
Wow.
And here I thought is was oil.
Nothing he said is at odds with oil being at the root of it...
The majority of Pikketty's book is made up dates and facts that he pulled out of his ass, how does that make the work anything less than trash...
Because it probably mirrors his studied incoherent babbling in order to appear avant garde and mystical.
It's probably a French thing. a lot of them try to pull it off.
You have come up with a perfect description of Nidstyles. FP is actually coherent, he presupposes his readers have a clue...
Nid pulls words out of his ass. Truly a couple of deviations short of the mean....
Great post falak pema, well done!!
Give the booze a break and come back later.
Beyond your comprehension level, eh?
By taking Piketty's word at face value without questioning his "facts" you are yourself part of a separate DOGMA and THEORY , which just happen to be closer to you own political bias.
PIkkety is a pure product of the french elites schools , very close to the french socialists and the french Power that be (he used to fuck (and beat) the current "ministre de la culture")). Taxing the rich into oblivion , and rising capital gain taxes was precisely what Hollande sold during his campaign (along with plenty other incredibly stupid ideas contributing to his current demise)
Have you been in France recently ? because i was there 26 years and still hold french citizenship. Let me tell you what's currently happening , since your socialist-ish hero
is coming from the same school as the rest of the political elites in place.
Anyone with half a brain wants out. Now. This country is screwed . The true rich(your Oligarchs) are more than ever becoming fast friends with their new politician toys , get customized tax rates in exchange for various level of corruption and a full spectrum of "services"..and who do you think gets screwed ? Who ends up paying the never fucking ending , ever rising bill of any socialist R>G dreamland ? and every other new dreamland that will follow ? You think the like of pikkety or your keynesian shockteam gives a rats ass about real people anymore than a free market advocates does?
At least , free market theory is an honest thing.You don't usually get bailed out by crooked politicians with taxpayers blood , and every greedy fucker gets equally screwed because the market is always right , which is pretty much the exact opposite of the current situation .
Nice strawman mixed in with a little gratuitous ad hom...
Psst.. Free markets have never existed and never will... The human condition abhors a free market...
6) BTFD
Even Simpler and funnier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4
Economics is simple logic. Unfortunately, if you get a good enough orator he can take that logical argument and twist it so a large number of people believe that the opposite is actually true (the broken window argument for instance). In the end, however, logic wins out. Universal laws, unlike man's laws, cannot be broken. In a free market, supply and demand will always meet at a price point that reflects the demand and supply for a given good or service. This will be true as long as scarcity of resources exists.
One armored division can make short work of supply and demand. And that, or similar assertions of power, is how the important stuff gets settled. Supply and demand fail on the notion of free economic actors.
Economics in one sentence:
"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
-Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt (1946,1978)
-
I feel obligated to say something in this thread, but it would probably be unscientific, politically motivated, and nobody would trust what I said anyway. Meh.
Congratulations.
You're hired.
-Paul Krugman
# 6. No bright lights for economists.
# 7. Don't get them wet EVER.
# 8. No matter how much they cry or complain don't EVER feed them after midnight.
It creates all kinds of problems.
Taco stand econonmics: never trust an economist (or President) who has never managed so much as a taco stand.
Excellent - people talking - that's how the good life works ;)
Rule #6: Economics is a lot like Psychology,,,mostly BS...
;-D
Economics is most definitely a science. The author seems to assume that just because it is not a natural science that deals with inanimate objects (such as physics) it cannot be a science at all. However, that is simply untrue. What is true is that many economists nowadays pretend that economics is like physics. This 'scientism' is erroneous.
Economics is one of the few sciences to have regressed in the past 70 years instead of progressing. Empirical data, such as those Piketty examined (and as it turned out, even his data were full or errors) cannot tell us anything about theorems of economics. Economic science is based on the logic of action and deed, its proper method is logical deduction. And contrary to what legions of modern-day economists assert, it is also definitely not about 'prediction'.
It is true that economics has been 'politicized', but it is erroneous to conclude that it is therefore equivalent to 'politics'. Naturally, most of today's mainstream economists are intellectual apologists for statism, so it is no wonder that this impression has come about. There was a time when economists were regarded as a thorn in the side of the ruling class, because they told rulers that they could no more suspend economic laws than they could order the sun to shine or not to shine. That has certainly changed - today many economists are creating 'scientific' fig leafs for government intervention in the economy. The neo-Marxist Piketty is a prime example for this type of statist intellectual, as are people like krugman, Rogoff and many others.
There can be no doubt that economic science such as it is today requires a major overhaul. But economists who have not forgotten what the science is actually about do thankfully exist.
Isn't 'dismal' usually placed between the words 'the' and 'science' when referring to economics?
Real science studies data, formulates hypotheses and tests those before declaring 'laws'. It also allows us to use those obsevations to predict future events.
I just do not see economics being used in that way. So science or no, for all practical purposes it is politics.
Admittedly even real science can be corrupted as we see in the case of climate studies. Any person who declares any science is 'settled' (Tim Cook of Apple and Al Gore former presidentish guy) come to mind, are simply not very bright (too bad for Apple in Cook's case because Apple is kind of a science company). Eventually the data will be examined and all possible explanations will be reviewed (not just those that support a carbon tax) and we will advance our understanding and hopefully benefit by that effort. For now we have to contend with (this should all be in bolded caps in red) oh my god it is soooo awful we should at least do something because it is soooo awful'. Economics is similar but the financial motivation is more open.
Economics IS the dismal science. Ecology is doubly dismal science. Combining economics with ecology is dismal cubed science.
Just had to log in to tell you you are making waaaay too much sense there.
Carry on.
"Economic science is based on the logic of action and deed, its proper method is logical deduction"
That's not science. Science REQUIRES you have hypotheses, experiments & peer review. Economics requires the opposite: you don't have data, you erase & adjust data as if it were natural to lie about the most basic measurements before permitting them to be used, there is no standard metric or equipment for anything & peer review is mostly not happening or is biased & purchased.
Everything you wrote is utter fraud & nonsense.
Nice work: I got a -1 each from Krugman, Greenspawn & Tha Bernank.
There are all too many examples of corrupt "science" available without even getting to the science and art of Economics.
I always tell me people that the following is the real key to economics and business:
bring in more money than you spend.
Time for Titus, that is only if you are one of the "little people" who can not legally make "money" out of nothing, or are not amongst those first in line to take advantage of that "money" made of nothing.
The "little people's" morality to avoid debt is pathetic inside of a system based on the MADness of Money As Debt. It has become pathetic for the "little people" to continue to believe in "capitalism" or "free markets," etc., when the fundamental system is POLITICALLY ENFORCED FRAUDS. Such individual practicality by the "little people" made more sense at the beginning of the exponential growth curve of debt slavery, but that becomes more and more pathetic to the degree that the basic debt slavery systems generated numbers which are debt insanities.
Young people today are doomed, because they are born into a system where neither the old-fashioned moralities, nor even the contemporary immoralities, make enough sense anymore. No kind of returns to old-fashioned common sense moralities will cut it anymore. Those days are over! One way or another, people are going to be forced to go through some kind of political revolutions, since the established systems are enforced frauds, which have become criminally insane. Old fashioned forms of sanity can not cope with the runaway magnitudes of the current forms of social insanities!
Right now an algo (coming back from a lunch break) is deciding to sell 200 tons of gold....wanna bet?
Econ has gone to the dark side; nothing's real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWxs13JWSE
Still needs to be condensed for the avg American attention span and Cliff Notes to summarize it for them.
I'll take Austrian "science" over Keynesian "science" any day!
Differing velocities to the exact same endpoint.
If given the choice, I'll take the slow train, I guess.
It's probably because you're predisposed to the orthodoxy of:
"Do stupid things and everything will go bad."
As opposed to:
"Do stupid things and everything gets better."
Ok, a bit simplistic...But there it is.
In undergratuate studies we were told that economics is the study of the optimum allocation of limited resources. All of the models depended on this rediculous assumption that people make rationale, self-serving decisions. All good except people are not rationale and those with the most to say about allocation of resources make short-sighted society-destroying decisions. As a professional economist, my extensive university training in economics earned me the right to go learn something useful. The book is genious.
Where's the definition of noise, because I think I found some?
Security fee on airline tickets set to riseJune 19, 2014 4:33 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - Airline passengers are about to pay more for security screening.
Following orders from Congress, the Transportation Security Administration is poised to raise the fee to $5.60 each way. That's up from $2.50 each way for a nonstop flight and $5 for a trip including connections.
Trips with long stopovers — more than four hours on most domestic travel — will have bigger increases because each leg will trigger a new fee.
The proposed changes will be published Friday in the Federal Register and take effect 30 days later.
Congress approved higher TSA fees as part of a December budget deal. Despite protests against the TSA's proposal, Congress dictated that the security fee rise to $5.60.
There is a 60-day public comment period, but it would likely take another act of Congress to change TSA's rules.
A spokeswoman for industry trade group Airlines for America says the changes will hurt people in smaller cities who must take more one-way flights to get where they're going.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Meanwhile, 786 toddlers stumbled across the boarder from Mexico.
Makes perfect sense,
I trust in the Professor Irwin Corey School of Economics.
Road to serfdom name change not yet. Blue book much much more moral than Beige book. .. another fiat bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Sing it Freddy.
That tells you nothing of economics. Bad little book.
LSE and Sir Mick Jagger come to mind
To All Americans (and some illegals?): Begin your withdrawal from the system now. What lies wait across the other side is bad. Keep your powder dry.
So why add 700 words explaining it?
Of course economics is a science. Even the Nobel prize committee feels that way and awards a Nobel Prize in Economics. Just look at the quality of past winners, like Krugman....
Nevermind....
Unless...there's no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics
Princeton School of Economics, aka, the Derek Zoolander School for kids who can't do math and stuff or say true things or other Stuff
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/RethinkingEconomicsUsingComplexity...
Simplistic clap trap. Not saying economics as it is currently practised and taught is valuable, but there is merit in pondering its imponderables.
Simplistic? Erm isn't that the whole point... that it's simple.
Your link doesn't work by the way. Is that becuase you're an economist and it would be too simplistic to use a shortened url?
Properly speaking, economics is a social science, not a political one, which is why political economy always leads to the abuse and ultimate ruin of economics (Marxist, Keynesian, Monetarist, whatever). And given that the end of all politics, properly speaking, is liberty, the economics of liberty — i.e., the Austrian School — is the only morally sound economics and thus the only one that a free people needs in order to survive and prosper.
End The FED and stop listening to the talking heads.
Henry Hazlitt's book, Economics in one lesson is a classic
Henry Hazliitt has a high security clearance is a classic according to Hoyle.
What really blows my mind is how Jeff Immelt is doing the Alstom deal...with a socialist government. Never in my lifetime have I ever seen how fascism can be so easily seen. Tomorrows headlines will prove it.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
We’ve got this profession wrong; a lot of professional economists think what they do is too difficult for ordinary people. You’d be surprised how often these people are stupid enough to say things, at least in private, like ‘you wouldn’t understand what I do even if I explained it to you’.
They do not 'think'. They know it's not complicated. That's why they hide it. 3 card monte and the shell game aren't complicated either - but the practicioners CHEAT. That is the only way they will win. They are lying, socipaths and taking advantage of everyone.
I therefore take this post as of little or no value. Tell the truth. Bernake knew and knows EXACTLY when he is lying, and it's constant. He does not know exactly the outcomes, but he knows when he lies. and it was alot. as was greenspan. and there were no consequences for them. just us.
Just a slightly trivial aside; perhaps the referenced "common sense" would not have attained such status without Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), and at least a dozen other major philosophers after him....
An economist is someone who can not balance their own checkbook, but wants to balance everyone elses checkbook.
But you need to be an Einstein to understand what a convoluted fucking mess they've turned it into.
I would add one more line to the little book: Fuck Ben.
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." - George Bernard Shaw
Imagine how expensive a plumber would be if they used Latin terminology.
Yeah.
And imagine how expensive getting your plumbing fixed would be, if it was done by an economist.
I do private consulting and the going fee for my services is an annualized rate of a qu arter yard... that is some funny stuff right there now!
The study of economics is often baffling and confusing. Many economic theories exist but many are full of holes and conundrums. Much of how people react to a policy may have to do with timing and perception instead of reality. Economics is full of loops that feed back upon themselves and unexpected pitfalls based on expectations.
All this can become quite abstract. Economist predict events that never tend to unfold as expected or planned. Many of the "modern monetary theories" in use today have not been proven over time, but reflect an attitude that we can control economic cycles better than in the past. More on how few people really understand this very important part of our lives in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/03/few-people-really-understand-econ...
It was called POLITICAL ECONOMY for a reason. Since it is all about Choices it is a branch of Moral Philosophy (Adam Smith) with Goods and Bads and Utility Curves.......it is "scientific" only in the sense Marxism is "scientific" and Das Kapital was dedicated to Charles Darwin
Only two simple rules needed:
Don't spend more than you earn.
Save for a rainy day.
That's it, that's all.
In a free economy you don't need economists. That alone tells you the bias of the ones we have.
great book!!!
I want to print it on my T-shirt for everyone to read
ueed to be only C-D students and third generation milionaires got MBA's.... kind of like and extended summer camp sort of thing.... keep the dummy in school where he cant do any harm... and then when he grads we make him the President due to his "greater knowledge"... and then hope he plays lots of golf and breeds horses or philanders and stays out of the way...
Austrian economics is a science.
The Federal Reserve's Keynesian philosophy tends to dominate the public awareness of economics. As this article points out, few people seem to know there are competing philosophies...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/the-creature-from-jekyll-island-the-e...
Somewhere it should say:
Never let your out-flow excede your in-come.
This article is totally correct and points out something that has become increasingly clear in the past few weeks.
We are awash in experts who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Like Dr Oz
And Suze Orman
And Steve Liesman
Barack Obama
Eric Holder
Al fucking Gore
We are inundated with complete idiots who think they are experts or maven and want to tell us everyday that they know better than what our common sense tells us.
Well I say,fuck every one of them and the horse they rode in on
Love you Grandma
I am proof economics is simple common sense. Two years of college before I was tired of being broke. Went into construction, my natural gift. Saved half of my earnings in real estate. Lost 50% of my 401 in tech bubble in 2000. Left stocks for good July 2007 (I saw it coming), never to return again. Buy used trucks, eat out rarely, I don't watch TV, I do vote but I'm thinking about giving it up, only debt is on rental property, pay cash for everything, SORRY boys, no PM's except my childhood coin collect from 1970's.
Learned all I ever needed to know about economics from my grandma b. 1910 She was mother of three, wife for 54 years, homemaker, never drove a car and died with 100k in a shoe box on the top shelf of the guest bedroom closet (didn't trust banks), she never had an employer. Guess what: no estate TAX on shoe box contents, GOV did get her $50k home for nursing home expense.
Grandma " If you can't pay cash, you don't need it." I miss those people, see you soon Grandma.
Yeah, the Depression shaped a lot of people....
OT - Shortest Poems - Hey why not?
Fleas
Adam Had'em
by Strickland Gillilan
Whee!
Me!
by Cassius Clay
I learned all of this from reading Heinlein decades ago.