This reminds me of how the Romans supposedly didn't know that printing money would create inflation.
We know MMT is bad long term policy, but politicians in the short term can create favorable economic conditions for the few.
We know MMT is bad long term policy, but politicians in the short term can create favorable economic conditions for the few.
How is anyone supposed to argue against that? You can use that to try and defeat any argument, but it doesn't really demonstrate anything. What people? How do you know they are smarter? Are smart people always correct?
It doesn't need a detailed rebuttal.
Here are some examples of reasonable responses:
- How do you know that?
- When in history did that happen?
- Could you be more specific?
None of those require more than one sentence, or implying that the person is too stupid to have an opinion.
Not sure why the onus is on me to be "reasonable" in my response when we all agree that the person I was replying to was making an entirely unreasonable assertion.
This means nothing when they haven't been held accountable for bad predictions. I work in finance, and it's super easy to build a model that looks like it can predict the future, but fails completely when applied in practice, due to some statistical/modelling error. Predicting the future is damn hard; it's way easier for us to convince ourselves that a model is correct than to actuallly produce a correct model, so if somebody isn't subject to a constant process of feedback (a scientific process) it's very unlikely they're producing correct models. Crystal healers have also spent their lives trying to determine how crystals can be used to make the world a better place; it doesn't mean squat because they don't apply the scientific method in their research.
From an economic perspective, if these people really had models that could predict the future, they'd be traders, not economists. Because why settle for a meagre economist's salary when they could be making millions?
Regardless, I simply have to laugh at your comment. The "finance bro says economists are all morons who would be traders if they actually knew anything" trope is pretty great!
It sounds like you know more about this field than others. That's great—but then the thing to do is share some of what you know, so we all can learn. If you mix it with cheap shots and swipes, that not only breaks HN's rules, it discredits the truth you're trying to advance, which is not in your interests or anyone else's.
I am yet to find a macro economist that is sensible and intelligent.