[1rudeboy]

This essay had Andrew Leonard over at Salon howling, and FReepers piling-on without reading it (I know, because the link went dead for a few days).

[1rudeboy]

ping

[mnehring]

Btt

[mad_as_he$$]

If you laid all of the economists in the world end to end they still would not reach a conclusion.

That said economics is made deliberately hard by people in the trade. They make it almost a black art simply to confuse and bewilder the general public with bull$hit. I aced econ once I figured out that the lingo was just there to make it sound like it was above the average Joe. Biggest problem today is that the world economy has changed and the econ peddlers have not. Therefore they are constantly hit with “unexpected” economic data. Bottom line is that this depression will not end until the uncertain aspects of government intrusion and taxation are settled.

[Mase]

They are the patron saints of the “Macroeconomic Policy is Easy: Only Idiots Don’t Think So” movement: Paul Krugman and Brad Delong

I got a good chuckle out of this. Few people irritate me more than Paul Krugman. Just when I thought he couldn't become any more intolerable, he wins a Nobel Prize.

[Don Corleone]

Economics...lets see...money in minus money out = profit unless money out is larger than money in when it becomes a loss. Very difficult.

[B Knotts]

Economics is hard in this respect: the economy is too complex for anyone to fully understand it, and thus it is impossible to control it. So, government should just stop trying; cut taxes and get out of the way.

[newfreep]

A 100% Absolute fact:

Keynesian economics ALWAYS fails. ALWAYS.

[Night Hides Not]

Damn right macroeconomics is hard.

In fact, it was one of the hardest classes I ever took in college (who am I kidding...they were all hard). Adding to the difficulty were two additional factors: the class started at 7AM, and there were five students total in the class.

There was nowhere to hide, and the 85 YO professor could be brutal when you gave a wrong answer. The man forgot more economics than all those pinhead PHDs could ever learn.

[PGalt]

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. - Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850

[LibLieSlayer]

One thing about economists... most are not business people and they do not understand business. Most would not be an economist if they knew how to make money in the business world. A few are truly sharp scientists but very few. Most “economists” quoted my the state run media are acaDemons... they know the least of all.

LLS

[chickenlips]

That’s because they never read Hazlitt’s classic.

Go here for help:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Henry-Hazlitt/dp/B001G8NW6Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278167272&sr=8-2

Time for a a beer, another pressing problem solved.

[raybbr]

The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new. Moreover, there is a substantial likelihood that it will instead offer something incoherent or misleading. Note also that intelligence is not the issue. Many of those I am telling you not to listen to will more than successfully be able to match wits, in any generalized sense, with me. This is irrelevant. The question is: can they provide you, the reader, with an internally consistent analysis of a dynamic system subject to random shocks populated by thoughtful actors whose collective actions must be rendered feasible? For many questions, I and my colleagues can, and for those that the profession cannot, the blogging crowd probably can’t either.

Good grief! All he had to say was, "Economics follows Chaos Theory and therefore can't be explained" instead of four pages of Thesaurus use.

[KarlInOhio]

99% of the people with PhDs in economics never write anything meant for the general public. Those that do write for the public almost always have axes to grind and those axes are what drive their writing rather than the raw economic data. That is true for cranks like Krugman and brilliant authors like Sowell [no bias in my choices :) ]. Imagine if Dr. Sowell analyzed the data and found that government control of the economy actually was better in the long term... I think he would still rank personal freedom over a few percentage points of GDP. Similarly, Krugman will never admit that individual freedom is better than government economic control no matter how many times the Fed and the Treasury screw up.

[bert]

A priest , an engineer and an economist were cast away on a desert island.

One day a big wood crate floated in. They opened it up and found wet rags and some canned goods.

They were hungry, actually starving, but couldn’t open the cans.

The priest said “I’ll pray for guidance”

The engineer scrounged up an old coconut and some palm fronds and worked to no avail on one of the cans.

The economist took one of the cans and then placed it on the empty crate and began to study the can fiercely. the next evening after 28 hours of study and contemplation he rose and announced “ I have the solution, we must first assume a can opener”

Economics is pseudo science and in truth a black art.

[Oceander]

"In this essay, I argue that neither non-economist bloggers, nor economists who portray economics —especially macroeconomic policy— as a simple enterprise with clear conclusions, are likely to contibute any insight to discussion of economics and, as a result, should be ignored by an open-minded lay public"
(Emphasis added)

Apparently spelling is hard, too. Since I know how to spell better than "Mr. PhD," by the same basic "logic" (in the strictly technical sense of the term) of the article, I am a better economist than "Mr. PhD."

[EternalVigilance]

Real economics, or the path to true prosperity, is easily understood and summed up in one word:

Freedom.

[superloser]

Pfft. Economics is difficult?

Economics is the study of supply and demand. Period. Everything can be broken down to that. EVERYTHING.

What economists think is "hard" is trying to write a coherent commentary -- and these days -- trying to tweak or game the system.

[Poser]

Economics are a way for economists to gain employment.

Other than the obvious supply and demand factors, economists haven’t the slightest clue what will happen.