Wednesday, March 20, 2019

DiLorenzo on Krugman, Academic Economists and the Younger Generation of Econ Ph.D.s

As part of an email exchange with Tom DiLorenzo as a follow up to the post, DiLorenzo vs. Krugman on Krueger, Tom had this to say (posted with permission).

"Krugman is the epitome of a lying weasel.  As Bob Higgs once said, the majority of academic economists are 'uneducated frauds.'  The younger generation of econ Ph.D.s seems dominated by young PC leftists who learned a little econometrics in grad school and use it to torture the data until it confesses so that they can declare that economic theory has been wrong for hundreds of years, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, mandated benefits, etc. don't increase the price of labor and cause unemployment after all.  I once heard Ronald Coase mock the profession by saying, 'If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.'"
-RW

1 comment:

  1. I started my Master's in economics at a good school after a bachelor's in physics and 10 years+ working. Unfortunately didn't finish because I was going broke. But I had the exact same experience. One teacher I admired started a reading circle, had us read Hayek and others for a broader range of knowledge. Quite a few Chinese students in the circle. I still remember one of them saying "if the economy takes a down turn, the GDP equation shows the government should just spend more money". That in a nutshell is how they view a large complex macro economy, as a series of equations that can be modeled and manipulated. I tried to counter those arguments during my time there but was heavily out numbered. But also look at what fields are paying well now, data scientists and predictive analytics. I regret not finishing but don't regret not taking on more debt to do so. They were all young and fresh out of a bachelor's in college, no real world experience to help put what the books were telling them in context. So I think some of this mathematics in economics also stems from a constant flow of academics with no real world grounding. They've never had to trade services, make labor decisions, look for ways to beat the competition in the marketplace, deal with people at all education levels and all ranges across the psychological spectrum, etc. Oh well, I tried

    ReplyDelete