What Economics Can Show Us (and What It Can't)
with Nikita Petrov and Mark Sussman
Social scientists sometimes seem to think they have all the answers. But every field of knowledge has its limits. Acting as though “fixing the economy” will ameliorate all other social problems risks blinding us to the deeper issues at work in our nation. In this clip from my first solo Q&A session, I address the mistaken view that technical expertise in economics (or any field) can address the fundamental questions of civic, social, and political life.
This is a clip from a recent Substack subscriber-only Q&A session. To get access to the full episode, as well as an ad-free podcast feed, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.
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Economics like every other form of social studies is not science... There are over a thousand of the finest phds from the best schools working at the Fed and the results are shall we say not that great. Go ahead and pile on I'll read your comments and laugh but economics and every other social study is a backward looking discipline that sees what people have done and then draws inferences that really don't predict the future. The FED has never predicted a recession and it never will and that's the best we got. The discipline might be useful in some ways but the idea that all these sciences are some sort of citadel of knowledge is silly. At best they're common Sense observations and at worse they are society destroying theories.
Let's stop for a moment and think. Communist, totalitarian governments that control every aspect of their economy, invariably fail to maintain a robust. economy. It's been tried. It's failed every time. But policy wonks, like drug addicts, keep going back to what makes them feel good, instead of doing what is best.
We have people in Washington making decisions that affect all of us, who are essentially clueless about real life in the real world. At the risk of being denounced for being rational, consider the two presidential candidates. Which one has lived their entire life in the real world, and which one is a clueless party hack who has never had a real job? Before you address that question, consider whether you will address it form your head or from your heart.