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Guest Post: Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard An Economist Say
Submitted by Simon Black, author of Sovereign Man
Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard An Economist Say
In the mid-1800s, a cousin of Charles Darwin by the name of Francis Galton wrote a series of works expanding on an old idea of selective breeding in human beings.
Galton’s theory became known as eugenics. At its core, eugenics was underpinned by an assumption that talent and genius were hereditary traits, and that deliberate breeding could improve the human race.
Within decades, intellectuals were spending their entire careers studying these ideas, quickly spawning a number of different fields dedicated to ‘racial sciences.’
Scholars began closely examining racial differences and building volumes of statistics on everything ranging from intelligence to reproduction to genetic effectiveness in combating disease.
‘Scientists’ would scurry about taking cranial measurements, sizing up jaw lines, calculating forehead slopes, and estimating nose angles… all of which became ‘evidence’ of racial superiority.
It became clear that one race was superior to another because the science of the day said that it was true. And they had the statistics and equations to prove it.
This faux-science became the moral justification for racial segregation and imperialistic expansion.
After all, one could hardly feel bad about conquering and enslaving an entire nation if the science proves that they’re an inferior race.
Nazi officials took these ideas and perverted them even further, wrapping horrific crimes in a blanket of science.
Today, it’s nice to know that human beings are a lot more enlightened. We know that the dimensions of someone’s skull or nose don’t matter much in the way of intelligence or integrity.
And we can wonder with absolute incredulity how anyone could have passed off such nonsense as science.
Here’s the irony, though. In the future, they’ll wonder the same thing about us. The difference is that our faux-science is economics.
In the future, they’ll wonder with utter incredulity how these ridiculous assertions about conjuring money out of thin air and borrowing your way out of debt could possibly pass as science.
They’ll be mystified at how political leaders listen to these modern day soothsayers, directing national policy and robbing wealth from hundreds of millions of people based on this faux-science.
And they’ll be completely floored when they see that we actually award our most esteemed prizes to these men who tell us that we can spend our way out of recession and tax our way into prosperity.
To give you an example, I’ve just finished Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s new book The Price of Inequality in which he writes something that may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from an economist:
“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”
Yes, in the eyes of our most decorated ‘scientists’, the brilliance and guile of Ingvar Kamprad, Sam Walton, Ray Kroc, Asa Candler, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and millions of others are far less important than an effective government bureaucracy.
His entire book, in fact, is an impassioned argument for even more government control and redistribution of wealth. Right… because it’s been working so well.
These ideas are totally absurd. Yet this what passes as science today. And because it’s science, society simply believes it to be true.
No doubt, people in the future will look back, and they’ll wonder… but they won’t understand one bit.
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It's a feel good thing for liberals. They love the jingo's. "Fair share" and "the right thing to do" gets them every time.
Just exactly why is taking any share of my labor fair?
When Allen Greenspan met Ayn Atlas Shrugged and our tanked economy.
http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/when-alan-met-ayn-atlas-shrugged-and-our-t...
Stiglitz in all his scientistic splendor, back in 2002, regarding the unquestionable solvency of Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac :
"The paper concludes that the probability of default by the GSEs is extremely small. Given this, the expected monetary costs of exposure to GSE insolvency are relatively small — even given very large levels of outstanding GSE debt..."
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/stiglitzrisk.pdf
Yes, but that was a mistake, this time he really really means it.
In the future, they will think that Jonestown was a pilot project
Tylers: this would be an interesting open thread: "What is the dumbest thing you have ever heard from an economist?"
I predict thousands of contest entries ;-)
- Ned
Pipe down will you? They're bad enough without you starting a contest.
Moved
Moved
Not moved.
I may have moved --- it depends on what the exact definition of the word "move" is.
Max Fischer said:
I'm thinking twitter would be more appropriate than ZH for your constipation updates.
He sees the government as a lubricant to facilitate the flow of ideas. A group of people who are compensated totally because they are reelected, not directly by results...unlike how a business is rewarded. It's ridiculous to say that stronger government rather than stronger business creates more avenues for ideas, development, and prosperity. Businesses are focused on survival through innovation. The government is focused on survival through reelection.
Well, the fact that eugenics was tried by central planning and failed (miserably and horribly) does not mean that genetic selection cannot happen in a free society. Wouldnt the successful and wealthy individuals bear more children, trigerring a sort of selection through the free markets?
As with anything, central planning takes a naturally-occuring phenomenon and tries to appropriate to itself the engineering of it, only to hit the wall of universal balancing.
There is a theory that Hollywood has acted as a magnet for shallow, good looking ambitious people for 100 years who stayed there and formed their own breeding population. As a result, there is now this large community of shallow, good looking ambitious people associated with show business in the Los Angeles area. Never having been there I don't know if this is true or not.
Statistics show that the opposite happens - successful, wealthy people choose to have fewer children. That's one of the major reasons why our species will always be mired in mediocrity. A certain amount of stupidity is required in a species for its members to ruin their own lives by voluntarily having kids.
It makes sense so long as you recognize, in a Marxist sense of the term, that the interests of the academic class are aligned with a that of an expansionist state.
So there is no "truth", no such a science as "economics", the only narratives that are worth repeating are those that expand the size and scope of the state. And every word must serve that master.
Economics and economists: poxed clapped-out whores pimping themselves to government and banksters in a disgusting perversion masquerading as an "academic discipline".
And some of that spawn continues to this day, leading most graduates to have the skills to say "Would you like fries with that?"
- Ned
The city planner of Austin, Tx thought building I35 as an over/under road was the best way to direct traffic. It failed horribly. Throughout the years, college professors that taught courses on City planning used his model as a way NOT to construct major expressways in a city. The Austin planner committed suicide in 1987.
Ben will be looked upon, as this guy was, by future generations.
If he did it before reproducing, Darwin would be proud...
They'll look back and wonder how the general population could be so stupid as to give the guys who make this shit up (MMT, endless deficit financing, bailouts, sovereign debt ponzi schemes, Federal Reserve) the ability to establish policies that resulted in the absolute impoverishment of said general population.
They'll probably also mark it as either the start of, or the high water mark for (depending on whether your an optimist or pessimist) the 'Age of Absolute, Technology-Enabled Propaganda'.
I have a hard time understanding how much better is humanity with Wall-mart or Macdonalds ....
People like Archimedes ,Newton,Einstein and thousands of others have push beyond our frontiers without any greed...
People like Archimedes ,Newton,Einstein and thousands of others have push beyond our frontiers without any greed...
Where did you get that idea? Newton was no stranger to wealth and I would dare say that Archemedes was roundly rewarded for his invention. Wake up, why should the world be any different at all with or without them. They both are just a fleeting of time, all you think you know is but a triviality wrapped up in a spec of time. Go and make your own world better relative to you which is all any feeble puny human can ever hope to achieve.
Well if we were all held to the standard to what we do for humanity then 98% of the world would be and should be eliminated based on your post. If you don't live up to the standards of Einstien and Newton or Achimedes then off with your head!!!
Greed is good. Greed for life, for knowledge, for love. Greed is the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Those you named above were greedy in their thirst for knowledge and understanding. Sam Walton found a way to do retail better in the 1950's that was better and more efficient then what the big boys at the time were doing. How is he the bad guy here? Why aren't you also bringing down Target, KMart, Kroger, Safeway, Costco and every other big retailer? If there was a better way than Wal-Mart and your so damned evolved why don't you get off your ass and make it happen instead of bitching about it and knock Wal Mart off like Wal Mart did KMart. Target was crap 15 years ago until the execution at Wal Mart made them do better. Small town America actually benefited from Wal Mart as it gave them convenient access to goods that they never enjoyed before. Well fuck them right because they should live in the big city or suck it. Of course when Sam Walton started with a Ben Franklin 5 and dime store everyone was on his side. Now that they are the largest retailer in the world they become evil. Just like Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds etc.... Moral of the American story. Start a business, succeed, get too successful then fuck you! Odd the way that happens. Compare Wal Mart HQ dump to, oh hell I don't every Fortune 500 HQ and especially the bankster HQ's in Manhattan. At least they talk the talk. Of course employing hundreds of thousands of people does absolutely nothing for humanity. You have a pretty twisted sense of humanity in my opinion.
Well i guess the hundreds thousands of Americans payed minimum wages to sell crap made in china really get what the american dream is all about !!!
In contrast I think that the janitor that mopped the floor at Cape Canaveral was part of something big.
It Seems that there are many kinds of achievments but some are more noble than others...
Well if your only capable of earning minimum wage then you also need to adjust your idea of the American dream. No one is forcing a person to work at Wal Mart and or flip burgers. How much is a janitor supposed to make? How much is a person bagging groceries supposed to make or stand at the door and being a greeter. You seem to have a warped version of reality. How many other companies are hiring 75 year old retirees to stand at the door and say hi? If they didn't want or need the job they would take it. If someone has better skills than being a grocery bagger then they would move forward. Those are supposed to be stepping stone jobs, not jobs to raise a family on. What you think everyone deserves to start at the top? I have yet to see one person being forced by Wal Mart corp to shop or work at their store. So who the hell do you think your helping with your big ideas. How do you know what another person makes by the way? Who are you to determine what a person makes for doing a specific job? Get a grip.
And pontificating on Zero Hedge helps humanity how?????
“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”
This explains why the auto's out of central planned USSR were all the rage.
That is code for science by consensus, which of course is not science, but is what we live with today. And even the word "consensus" is misleading as it actual means those with the loudest voice or most money. In other words PNS = science by the big-lie.
I suspect the researchers of the future will look back and wonder why we gave up science and reason.
I believe government researchers of the future will stand aghast at the thoughtcrime of differentiating between science and post-normal science! Oh wait they already do...
i see that the bush crime syndicate and other goons of the cia, rockefeller axis of evil, and flat earth society have targeted you for a reputation destruction campaign....
don't worry - they too shall pass away as the feces that they are.
More bullshit from Sovereign Man. Nobody believed you could borrow your way to riches before 1914. 100 years of price stability under the gold standard proved it. They didn't refrain from chiselling the currency because they didn't think of it, that was SOP before the 19th century. They refrained because it was bad for business. Great Britain could never have built up a world wide trade and colonial empire unless their shillings, pounds and gold sovereigns were accepted at par all over the world.
It is only in the last 100 years that we have gone back to the old idea that you can spend money you don't have and make it all right by watering down the currency.
Furthermore Stiglitz is right that the success of the private sector depends on a healthy public sector. If Bill Gates had been born in Zimbabwe could he have written computer code? Sure. Could he have built up Microsoft to its present wealth and importance? Don't make me laugh.
Every business depends on infrastructure. If you don't have the infrastructure you are very limited to what you can build. Unless you are a business giant, wealthy enough to go into some loser country and bring all your infrastructure with you, like a major mining company.
As America's infrastructure crumbles it will get harder and harder to build up any kind of business beyond the strictly local small business. In the 19th century you had US Steel, Bell Telephone and Union Pacific Railroad as typical startups. In the 20th century you had Ford, IBM, General Electric. What have we got in the 21st century? Lululemon, Groupon and Facebook and in a few more years you won't even have them.
Excellent points, Di. Re: your last paragraph. It seems to me that there is a critical size of a growing company where it attracts the kind of boss that opts to cut costs as the primary driver of bonuses--I mean, earnings (i.e., dehumanize the employees), after which new hires cease to happen. Below that size, hiring continues in order to promote or react to a growing market for that company's product or service. Throw in political golden-goose cooking--regulations, not taxes, a decent accountant can work around taxes--and that critical number drops inversely, significantly and disproportionately to the rate of change in the number of regulations, federal, state and local combined.
The wealthy have no reservations about using government to manipulate the 'free market' to their advantage, to feed their companies no-bid contracts, force competitors out of business and tehn cut tax rates on THEIR income - further increasing their wealth. Wheen you have ONE PERSON spending $100 million on political campaigns you can't tell me they aren't doing so without expecting a good return on their money. The Walmart heirs saved hundreds of millions in estate taxes with law changes (changes that benefitted less than two dozen families). meanwhile Walmart keeps a good number of their employees working less than 30 hours a week to avoid paying them any benefits - leaving thois eEMPLOYED people collecting foodstamps and dependent on emergency room care (which we all pay for) because they don't have any health insurance.
The REAL manipulation of government and 'redistribution of wealth' is occurring to benefit the wealthy not the poor.
A very good friend in securities law is astounded that people have NOT gone to jail over the very real crimes committed over the past decade - and notes that things are worse now than they were in 2008. He is aghast that government bailed out companies and left management in place - still collecting millions in bonuses , instead oof firing them and clawing back previously paiod bonuses. 'All I do is make rich people richer - make sure they can 'legally do' what should be clearly illegal..... they can't spend all the money they have but they want more....they are doing NOTHING to help their employer, the country or the economy - they care only about themselves....'
I have not read Stiglitz's book. However regarding government regulation, I would suggest the following would be medicinally curative.
99% agree. Only quibble is that we've de-funded the regulatory and prosecuting agencies. It's not as simple as firing the agency heads - we need to make it possible for the regulators to do their jobs.
Yes, agreed. After I wrote my post I recalled reading several times in Matt Taibbi's wonderful essays/blogs....that the regulatory boards are severely under funded in what many feel is a cold calculated neutering of the only people who could haul Wall Street before a judge and jury. This is probably true and it is then up to American's to urge their congress reps to advocate for much stronger budgets for the regulators. I would highly, very highly recommend that you guys watch (you can do this online now) a wonderful series of PBS Frontline documentaries about the financial zoo. One that comes to mind is this one (which will directly address your point):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
History will correctly point out that the legion of dergulation hit teams, urged on by Bill (totally clueless about Wall Street) Clinton, managed by then Fed Chairman Greenspan and seconded by Tim Geitner......who worked against Brooksley Born; the big boys were dead wrong and she was correct. Net result: liar loans, deregulation to the max, no one taking the whistle blower against Maddoff seriously, Long Term Credit, etc., etc. The USA desperately needs super sharp teeth on the regulatory side and it needs to see justice done. Credibility is eroding day by day and blaming it on Bernanke is to fall into a trap of bait and switch. He is not a regulator and cannot tell Congress how to pass laws. I dare say that had he not done all of his bag of tricks since the Wall Street melt down- post Lehmann Brothers, the world wide financial system would have probably collapsed and I for one would probably have lost my job, working as I do in retail brokerage. Mistakes might have been made but at least he held the center from imploding.
so you dont want Obama to raise your taxes so you write this article? did you start hating governments just recently or always? its not the government fucking you over, its the other wealthy induviduals that have bought off the government that are fucking you over. They want to fuck you over and if the government doesnt stop them no one will. Greed is inherent in human nature. Induviduals get wealthy with hard work and inginuity but also by exploitation and opression. How you get rich is the most important.
So it's the guy who buy's the governement official that is bad or is it the person that is in governement that can easily be bought. I believe the guy that sells his soul to the devil at the expense of the masses is the bigger evil than the devil himself. Governement is not a thing but a collection of humans that have a choice to make every day to do the right thing or do the thing that feathers his own nest. Unfortunately the political elite line their pockets and protect themselves against the masses and dupe the masses into blaming the buyer, not the person that got bought.
ALGORE ONCE SPOKE OF 'SETTLED SCIENCE'
Science knows no such thing. THAT was the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
It also points out how politicians use science loosely to gain their desired ends. Real science is hard. Politics is sleazy and easy. When politicians start talking about science I remind myself most of them can't / don't balance their checking accounts. They 'just are not good with number'...you know, numbers, math, the language os science.
Didn't a ruling body at one time put to death anyone that didnt' agree that the earth was flat? Wasn't Pluto once a said to be a planet? Didn't the science of a certain period believe cat's were evil and were not allowed thus allowing the rat population multiply leading to the plague? At one time leeches were the science of the day. Science is sadly used to embolden the powers of the time to find ways to enrichen themselves and dupe the people. Mathematics is the only science that can be written in stone. All the other "sciences" better be in pencil because as knowledge expands those sciences tend to change.
Did the government legalize the mushrooms that Steve Jobs took that allowed him to think up the crazy shit that eventually become a fortune?
The government did however protect Bill Gates when he stole Windows from Xerox.
Economics is a science now already????
The word "dismal" comes to mind.
"They’ll be mystified at how political leaders listen to these modern day soothsayers, directing national policy and robbing wealth from hundreds of millions of people based on this faux-science."
If this is true then folks in the future are idiots that have learned nothing from history. Anyone that is 'mystified' by the fact that a politician would want to rob the wealth of a nation to make his/her own life a bit better shouldn't be engaged in anything more trying than attempting to find their own ass with their own hands.
As economics has become more mathematically based it has largely become a religion. The real issue is its absurd assumptions and pretense of being a “science”. For example, assume perfect capital markets (e.g., the CAPM assumes: no taxes, no transaction costs, homogenous expectations, etc., etcetera), blah, blah, blah … Yes, economics is absurd and seemingly merely a faith based test of the candidate’s submitting to the cultural Marxist powers that be (e.g., Stiglitz, Summers, Bernanke, etc., etcetera). That noted, to equate eugenics with current economics is absurd.
Firstly, if race is a social construct then why ad hominem attack anyone who suggests it is not? In fact, why even bother paying attention to it if it is so unimportant, irrelevant, and wrong? Could it be that there is truth in selective breeding in mammals (i.e., it works to enhance some traits and/or deemphasize others), and yet even though “some animals are more equal than others”, humans are not much different in terms of breeding than say dogs? Of course eugenics works, by definition; but the belief that it doesn’t has become a religion among the cultural Marxists. Sure economics will be viewed as a silly falsifiable religion, but so will the belief that “race is a social construct”. Tell your hero Barry “if I had a son he’d look like me” Soetoro and Erik “My People” Holder about your faith that genetics is a religion just like modern economics. They might not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they clearly appreciate the “useful idiot” attitude of the author of this piece regarding eugenics (and the fool who ad hominem attacks to stifle any intelligent discussion on the matter).
This is a sensitive subject because addressing it will result in what amounts to a thoughtcrime in our modern PC society. The fact is that when you look at more or less all social variables and by exension economic variables, the biggest predictors by far are biological variables. When you strip away all the confounded stuff, you are left with several biological variables that explain A LOT. Economists only use variables that are heavily influenced by variables they simply can't explore because they'll be out of a job. That explains a lot of all the bullshit infecting economics and the social sciences in general. The strongest variables are generally IQ and gender. Race also has a lot of predictive power as well as genetic personality traits. These variables hold for groups as well as individuals. But hey, let's not go there!
Verum quod lies- "That noted, to equate eugenics with current economics is absurd."
Really? You ever heard of Planned Parenthood who happens to be a corporation. And which political party supports Planned Black Genocide Parenthood. The Democrat Party. Go read about Margaret Sanger and hereugenics thinking behind it to specifically eliminate blacks through slom-mo genocide. Its about economics because these people who were thought to be unitelligent had too many children which is a cost on the social system. Now we have Cloward-Piven where minorities are encouraged to go on welfare to overwhelm the captialist system to collapse it to turn it into a socialist/communist utopia that turn the population into gov't dependents that slowly eliminates" the bad stock of the race" according to Mizzzzz Sanger.
Its all about economics which is about the dollar bills yall.
I think you may have missed the point, and in so doing validated it. In their rush to embrace the concept of breeding the perfect human, scientists never stopped to ask about the morality of breeding humans. Similarly, the modern economists in their rush to optimize the economy for growth and employment they have failed to ask about the morality of what they are doing. They have trampled the ideas of human freedom and respect for the individual. In engineering the conomy they have treated the average person as a tool of the economy and a slave to the goals of technocrat rather than a free individual whose right to own property and not have it or it's value stolen from them should be respected.
Isn't Stiglitz the same fellow who wrote papers with Orszag about how Fannie and Freddie were fine ... circa 2004? This is the FOB crowd that came to town in the 90s, then cleaned up working for Citi and Goldman, just in time for those banks to get TARP money ....
Does anyone get the joke?
P.S. Having the privilege of living near Beantown, in Mass, I keep seeing campaign ads on ZH for the ridiculous Elizabeth Warren, the wealthy Harvard Law professor who helped to push the subprime bubble of the 90s (another FOB!) and made use of bubble-era credit for her relatives. (She's now tapping into the same wealthy crony donor network that Billary created and Obama expanded.) Do I have to keep looking at this? Is there some way of turning off her offensive ads?
adblockplus.org
I'm so ashamed...I can't remember the name of the scientist whose name the government acted in 'Atlas Shrugged'. Because this quote:
“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”
Could have been taken directly from the speech he gave the day the government revealed the soundwave machine.
2 problems. ZH'ers still believe the faux science of superior and inferior races. Check out those posts by the guy who writes about the 30 blocks of blithe or whatever. ZHedgies love them.
And second, Joseph Stiglitz is right. It's not more goobmint, but without a succesful government and competent institutions, work the labour of your genius might be way more than anyone can handle. Don't forget about all that basic infrastructure which precedes most inventions and discoveries and which is dependant on the state, like road, security, laws, etc... Now put Steve Jobs in governmentless Somalia and see what he can do there.
Put Steve Jobs in the middle of the desert with a stone axe and length of hemp rope, and you don't think he would build a billion dollar business with the ants and insects who live there? Wow - revolutionary thinking, and so very supportive of your argument that its government thats important. Antarctica lackd proper government, if they had government - well, it would be a technological wonder land.
I think you are onto something, others might say you are a retarded moron, who draws parallels between unrelated things and seeks to support his argument on obvious fallacies - but I'm not one of those people - I'm on your side - and its not just because you make such good arguments, its mainly because you are crazy, and I like to stay on side with crazy people - cause who knows what the hell will pop into their head next - shooting someone they don't like possibly.
FUCKTARD! Not directed at anyone. I just felt like writing that.
Capitalists that do not understand economics will destroy Capitalism if unregulated!
Eugenics is pseudo science essentially to give an argument for mass murderers.
Two dumber and dumbest parents can produce a very genius child.
The other way around, two very intelligent parents have an higher risk on getting a child with the down syndrom.
It seems that nature doesn't want us to get too smart. I wonder why?
How is it that we have lib nitwits in the cheap seats all of a sudden? Everywhere their thinking is in play and everywhere it fails - and they think they are brilliant! They have all the answers if the moron class would just let them get on with it. But no, there's always someone there saying No to the state, er, to them. Fascists all - a festering pathology oozing from the academic petri dish where they first emerged, begatting more of the same, ad nauseum. Liberty. Fuck the rest.
Karl Marx-
"The bourgeois (middle class) family will VANISH as a matter of course when its COMPLIMENT VANISHES and both will VANISH with the VANISHING OF CAPITAL."
"The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to "alter" the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie). the bourgeois claptrap about FAMILY and EDUCATION, about the hallowed correlation of parent and child, becomes all the more DISGUSTING the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians (the worker) are torn asunder and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor."
Anyone care to disagree that all this is PURPOSEFUL? And yes, Obama is PURPOSEFULLY DOING IT. Anyone with 1/4 of a brain understrands this is not how you get an economy going, unless you WANT the CONTROL of the economy. But not to make it work. WE HAVE A MARXIST/LENINIST/MAOIST for Preezy of the United Steezy. And he sure is Sleazy! Vote this Commie Bastardo out. Those that think Romney is the same as Obama better get your head and your ass wire together. Romney at least believes in capitalism and low taxes whch is what gets an economy going. He will at least give us a system that will bounce back once the reset happens. But if we are a socialist/communist market based society with a built in welfare state or underclass then we will never get out from under this mess or it will take 50 years. Think of your families and friends. WE WILL ALL SUFFER
Economics isn't a science, never has been, never will be. It doesn't even conform to the basic Scientific Method.
What economics actually is, is politics in disguise. Economists are the modern day equivalents of the chief priests of old, creating an obfuscating layer of propaganda to con regular people into granting ever more power to their masters. No need to over complicate things, this is all economics is: a con, a political game.
Economics tries to pretend that it's a science by plagiarizing scientific equations and using them improperly to gain false legitimacy (no seriously: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-cl... ), but that's no different from any child dressing up like a pirate / fairy / superman / etc and playing make believe. Nobody actually takes them seriously.
Simon Black is taking the superman kid seriously and is shocked when the kid doesn't turn out to have super powers.
No shit, Sherlock.