From: thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu (T. Scott Thompson)
Subject: Re: "Death of America"
Reply-To: thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Organization: Economics Department, University of Minnesota
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:06:08 GMT

kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee) writes:

>I didn't mean to say your analysis is invalid.  I meant to say that discussing
>narrow escape scenarios when everything is about to collapse and when there's
>still time to save ourselves in a more certain fashion is a little irrelevant.

What is the "scientific" basis for the hypothesis that "everything is
about to collapse"?  Is there a "scientifically" rigorous basis for
your concern, or is this merely a linear extrapolation of current
trends?

(For what it's worth, I agree with your opinion that the government
should take a more active role in balancing the budget than they have
in the past.  I do not claim that this is a "scientific" opinion,
however.)

>However, analysis of your kind is what permits politicians to suit campaigns
>to their private agendas.  It is because economists focus on nitpicking and
>forget the big picture and can never agree with each other that politicians
>can always find some analysis that suits their private needs.

I do not believe that this is correct.  Most economists _do_ agree
that "politicians can always find some analysis that suits their
private needs."  This will be true regardless of what economists do or
do not say and publish.  The only reason that the opinions of, say,
physicists are not abused by politicians is that physicists are not
usually working on matters of immediate interest to politicians.  In
the exceptional cases (say the supercollider project, development of
the H-bomb, etc.) politicians are just as adept at exploiting the
opinions of physicists as they are at exploiting the opinions of
economists.

>My entire message has been: when you can't do dependable analyses of
>outcomes, be conservative.  Hence balance the budget.

By what scientific principle is a balanced budget "conservative"?  The
only justifications for such a statement that come to mind are either
(a) based on a particular political philosophy rather than a
scientific analysis, or (b) implicitly assume some kind of dynamic
analysis of the sort that you claim are "unreliable."

>This is the
>philosophical underpinning of all sciences and engineering.  Unfortunately,
>economics tends to ignore it.

I disagree that conservatism is the "philosophical underpinning" of
all science.  Were Galileo or Copernicus's new models of the solar
system conservative?  How about Einstein's relativity theories?
Major advances in science have often occured through radical breaks
with the accepted wisdom, even when the new ideas went against the
"common sense" of their time.

Your statement perhaps is more true for engineering.  Since
"economics" is expected to play a dual role (i.e. "scientific" study
of economic behavior on the one hand vs. policy analysis, or "social
engineering" on the other) I don't see that conservatism necessarily
_ought_ to be an "underpinning" for all economic analysis.

>>>The proper role of economics, in the first place, should have been to tell
>>>society to be conservative because it can only reliably do steady-state and
>>>not dynamic analysis.  But no, you guys choose to stay in your mathematically
>>                                ^^^^^^^^
>>I find this offensive.

>It was not meant to be friendly.  I'm sick and tired of social "scientists"
>acting superficially like real scientists and ignoring basic common sense
>and screwing things up for everybody!

And most economists are sick and tired of being beat up for their
supposedly "non-scientific" behavior by people who are unwilling or
unable to define "real" science, and whose knowledge of modern
economics and of what economists actually do is limited to a few
undergraduate courses and to what they read in the newspaper.

There are good and bad social scientists, just as there are good and
bad physical scientists, biologists and engineers.  The kinds of
emotional criticisms you make here have no place in "real" scientific
discourse.  Perhaps you would define "real" science for us so that we
can identify where we have gone astray.

>Most of my comments were not directed at any individual but at economists in
>this country as a whole.

If you learned more about the community of economists I think that you
would find that there is considerably more agreement with your
analysis of the macroeconomy than you apparently think there is.
Economists probably are more diverse in their opinions about their own
profession than are most so-called "real" scientists.
--
T. Scott Thompson              email:  thompson@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Department of Economics        phone:  (612) 625-0119
University of Minnesota        fax:    (612) 624-0209
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA