Anything can be as complicated as you want to make it.
However, surely the basic job of the scientist is to make things simple.
Economics, in its drift away from science that began perhaps at the beginning of the 20th century, has become so complicated that it is the butt of jokes.
After 100 years, economists not only don't know why we've had a boom, they don't even know why it has come to an end. When Clinton mounted the "largest tax hike in history" - why didn't the economy go belly up?
Actually, it continued to prosper. Why?
Well, economists have a hundred reasons for everything - often contradictory.
The triumph of their art seems to be Greenspan's periodic announcements that he's putting the interest rate down a bit. (When it doesn't work, he does it again, and again.) I suppose that the major concern in this nonsense belongs to the people who will be directly affected by capitalization.
"Wow! Land prices have gone up. The recession is over."
Economics used to be about "The Nature, Production, and Distribution, of Wealth" -with Distribution meaning how Wealth is distributed among the producers.
But you know that.
It was about people producing the things that kept them alive. To do this they had to be able to work on land probably with the aid of tools.
Quit seriously, nothing has changed. This is still the situation. We have become far more sophisticated in our use of land and tools, but it's still the same.
Isn't it?
However, we have buried ourselves in monstrous complication. I've practically given up reading economic papers because they are almost unreadable and say very little about nothing of importance.
Economics has become an arcane study meant only for its practitioners. It does teach skills which can be useful - as Ed has indicated - but philosophically, and scientifically, it has abdicated from any responsibility.
Perhaps we should abandon it and begin again. And we should start with its clientele -- people. How do these completely unpredictable people behave? Why do these completely unpredictable people behave as they do?
Is there order among the chaos?
But reaching back, we find the Classicals have already done this. You'll notice that not one exception to the Basic Assumptions has been suggested, though there have been several attempts to words in my mouth, and to interpret the Assumptions in ways never intended.
Yet, this is just the beginning. On this foundation, we could erect an economic edifice that is not only stable, but useful to analyze the problems we have in our society.
But, of course, that would be much too simple.
Harry
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Arthur wrote:
If only it were all this simple.
- Arthur,
- We get our clothes from the tailor - or from Penny's or Marks and Sparks
- We get our meat from the butcher and our produce from the greengrocer.
- We get our milk from the milkman.
- Isn't this more sensible than keeping two cows - one to slaughter - growing 17 different vegetable, running up tee-shirts on the sewing machine, and spending a couple of weeks producing an ill-fitting suit?
- So, why does this all change at the docks?
- Free Trade is not a political policy. It is natural for humans to exchange.
- Protection is a policy that tries to prevent this natural cooperation from happening.
- How simple this all is. Why make it complicated? Perhaps because that's the way the Neo-Classicals make a living.
- Harry
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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