Monday, June 28, 2010
Oh Noes!!!
Please don't take our finite, and thus fundamentally flawed no matter how complex they are, models away from us! Weez needs them so people don't realize our profession is a simple one hiding behind advanced math and SAS programs! Give us money and we'll give you complicated programs with lots of greek symbols!
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8 comments:
The link in that article to the original paper doesn't work, but this one does:
www.scribd.com/doc/33655771/Economics-is-Hard
Link is currently http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/www.scribd.com/doc/33655771/Economics-is-Hard -- I don't think that's correct?
Surely there is a way I can turn "make more, spend less, invest intelligently" into a complex software package totaling billions of gigabytes in size that I can sell for hundreds of dollars a copy!
Or at least there was, until Cappy began saving the world with common sense. Curse you, Cappy.
The link doesn't work, but I read the article off of Greg Mankiw's blog already anyway.
I don't think macroeconomics is easy. On the contrary, I think it's almost pointless from a policy perspective, and the complexity of it makes it a farce.
Congress thinks the minimum wage is a good idea. It takes about five minutes to explain why that's not correct to a random batch of Econ 1010 students.
The government is going to do what is politically expedient, not what makes good sense economically. From a fiscal standpoint it's all but ignored except to fish for excuses to justify the politically expedient course of action and from a monetary standpoint we get so much random bullshit from the fiscal side of things that carefully adjusting a variety of factors to produce an optimal outcome is like building a house of cards with the help of an overcaffeinated child with a hyperactivity disorder.
The skill and precision of one party means nothing when there's a retard flailing around messing everything up. Being more precise really isn't going to help anything.
That letter certainly enthuses more people to consider a career in economics. Did anyone at the Richmond Fed ever hear the word "ivory tower"?
@Ryan Fuller:
Monetary policy exists to correct the mistakes of governments that play around with their fiscal toys. There was no such thing like monetary policy before the abolition of the gold specie standard.
yeah, a career in economics.
Option 1 - Academia where you'll just teach new students the same drivel you learned before them
Option 2 - Government work where your research will largely go ignored and not really have anything to do with economics anyway.
Option 3 - The private sector, where you will get fired for reporting the truth instead of guessing what your overlords want the numbers to say.
Option 4 - Start your own hedge fund, but oops, too bad, you're just a sole individual and nobody will give you the millions in capital you need to make your hedge fund because you didn't work at the bulge bracket.
Computer networking here I come!
The problem I have with all this is how virtually every economic news commentator and program seem to be so over-enthusiastically positive about the economy, when many of the economic data belies that.
WTF?
If you come across someone with blood spraying out of a severed arm, don't you dare think about trying to stop the bleeding. Unless you are a vascular surgeon, you can't possibly know enough to do any good. Simply allow this person to bleed freely until someone with the right college degree arrives to take care of the situation.
It may look like your house is on fire but unless you are a fully qualified fireman, you simply cannot know. Walk into your house, call the fireman then sit down and wait for them to arrive.
If people are only allowed to write about things they have a pHd in, wouldn't that entirely end print media, all broadcast media and most of the internet?
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