Interest rates. Unemployment. GDP. Markets. Austerity measures. Economists tell us what we, as societies, can and can't afford. But how do they decide? What values are at play? IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell speaks with two economists about how modern mantras on the economy limit our choices and shut down civic debate. **This episode first aired September 9, 2015.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/it-s-the-economists-stupid-1.3219471From my listening the key takeaway was that economic models are comprised of 'hundreds if not thousands of assumptions' that are frequently based on value judgments, but because they come from economists and because these models use a large amount of math, which is presumed to be objective, most people mistakenly believe that the economic models themselves are strictly objective.
My favorite was the first part which took on the desire of so many especially academic economists to make economics all about calculus which they say economists who don't like this call 'physics envy.' Although the program didn't say this, the implication of combining the two arguments in the segment is that, as I wrote above, economics models are comprised of 'hundreds if not thousands of assumptions' that in some to many cases are based on simple guesswork (i.e based on nothing) and that wrapping it in calculus not only, as I wrote above, gives it a veneer of objectivity that it doesn't deserve, but that essentially the calculus is a lot of busy work because having so many meaningless assumptions in the model makes the calculus a process of 'garbage in, garbage out.' (That phrase isn't actually used.)
Good to hear there are at least some academic economists or former academic economists who also believe that the discipline is now far too dominated by those with 'physics envy.'
Of course, in so far as it was my inability to pass integral calculus that prevented me from getting a degree in economics, my dislike of calculus dominating economics isn't strictly objective either.
