A lot of people ask me if I find economics to be a worthless degree and I say, "Yes, yes it is."
The discipline has been corrupted by Keynesians and professional bureaucrats as a means to rationalize wealth transfers and any private sector employment is minimal due to the private sector being about as dumb and intellectually crippled as the labor pool it pulls it's leaders from.
Thankfully I majored in finance so I have some modicum of accounting skill to fake like I know what I'm doing. Regardless, I would strongly advise AGAINST majoring or pursuing a career in economics because you will simply, once again, be giving Big Education academians your money to be:
1. Lied to
2. Taught nothing
3. With no tangible skill that any employer wants
4. Unless you already have an uncle in the Bulge Bracket or government who can land you a job
However, I do believe, like writing, it is a skill you should develop or learn on your own in that it will serve you better in other areas of your life. Not just because it's intellectually rewarding and stimulating, but studying reality-based economics (ie-Austrian) will help you understand where to invest, how society will evolve (or in our case collapse) and in general predict the economy much better than Krugmanites.
13 comments:
In my neck of the woods, there is no talk of finance or economics. Their main gripe is they can't annex new land to steal the wealth from because of a new law enacted. And as we know, non-profits, government jobs, and a micro managed private sector do not grow the economy. They merely suck the wealth out of it.
I would recommend people do Finance, business, or accounting over economics but at the same time Economics > Political Science, or other non business majors.
Its basically a pyramid:
STEM
Medicine/pharmacy
Finance
General Business
Law used to be up there and while it still can have a rewarding career technology is taking away a lot of the jobs.
I think it's a little odd to claim that Austrian economics is reality based, more so than other schools of thought.
The whole point of praxeology is to avoid empiricism in any form and to make claims that can be logically derived a priori from known economic principles without getting into the quantitative side of things at all.
The reasoning behind this basically boils down to the idea that real life is too messy to allow for valid experimentation and any conclusions derived from quantitative analysis would only be applicable under the exact circumstances where they were derived in the first place, which will never happen again.
I have respect for the Austrians. I think many of their criticisms of mainstream economic thought are accurate, although in some cases they overstate their differences. I think their ideas about business cycles being driven by a mismatch between people's time preferences and interest rates deserve further examination.
But I wouldn't say they are reality based, which implies empiricism. They avoid real world analysis to focus on a priori deductive reasoning.
Was kind of surprised to see the title of this post, but after reading it I agree.
Economics, as a field of study, is not worthless. A degree in it, after two, four, or six years of brainwashing by agenda driven socialist zombies that are incapable of speaking about anything other then Keynes, is worthless.
Hard sciences seems to be the only degrees that are not corruptible by an agenda. I think sociology, psychology, etc... are all valid fields of study, and quite interesting, but it is the belief that somehow having a degree in those soft fields makes you employable should supplant "I promise not to...." as the worlds biggest lie.
Also, the Wall Street Journal published earnings and unemployment rate according to college degree. Economics majors make $69,000 a year at the median (with $42,000 and $108,000 at the 25th and 75th percentiles) with 6.3% unemployment.
It's no petroleum engineering degree, but it's far from worthless.
If going to college STEM is the way to go. We will always need more science and technology.
Secondly, healthcare. People will continue to live longer and be ridden with illness, if not disease ridden then they will still need care in their advanced years just before death.
If neither of these interest then I advise young people to work a menial job, save up money to buy a plot of land and grow their own food and herbs and live off the land or sell that. Many people are making good money selling herbal concoctions and natural remedies online.
The funnest thing is for those with a sense of wonder: work a menial job, save up money and go experience the world. I've had many oppurtunities open up for me by simply making friends in foreign countries.
I agree with the Austrian school.
Also something that is not available in most universities, economic history. This a must read area, for anyone wanting to do investment planning. The history of Wall Street is a fascinating subject. The Dot Com bubble and the Tulip Mania are the same stories, set in different eras.
Also understanding the back and forth swings, of hard money and government diluted paper money, is an important topic. These economic upheavals have all happened before.
Greece has gone bankrupt five times since their independence.Yet somehow this has been forgotten, and the Eurocrats want to keep lending more money.
Learning from the mistakes of the past, can save you a lot of money.
As a student of economics, I have to agree 100 %.
Even a lot of the manosphere/MRA bloggers are ignorant on economics and wealth-creation. A significant number of them (who will go nameless to protect the guilty) tend to have socialist tendencies. I do not understand this as I consider socialism to be a "sissy" ideology.
There's a reason they call economics the "dismal science".
Sometimes, I wonder if it even is a science - how can one possibly model, analyze or predict such a complex system - one which is often times irrational and illogical due to the human psychology.
Liberal/Progressive/Keynesian and a MRA and proud of it! Rick.
I have a Bachelors of Science in Economic Analysis. It sounds like alot of you are basing economics on a few intro level classes. Its far less political than you would imagine and more mathematical once you get past the lower level bs classes.
The most important thing about an econ degree is econometrics. Its where you get into data analysis of the financial markets. Its primarily for risk assessing and investing. Similar to actuaries and quants. Mainly another type of applied mathematics.
Because the majority of professors teaching it don’t even know the basics of economics.
Even the so called experts from Harvard are totally clueless about even the basics of Economics!
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