Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] frizzi



At 10:42 PM -0600 8/19/11, William Robertson wrote:

Okay, said the last was my final post on this, but I have to answer this. Are you saying that non-Keynesian economists don't exist? They're everywhere. Google it. Start with Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. Regarding the failure of Keynesian economics, please provide a success. I can provide the success of cutting tax rates and reducing government spending. It was Calvin Coolidge in the early 20's. Got us out of a recession in 2 or 3 years. Unemployment rates were significant at the time, and he turned it around quickly.

Your comment, "The mainstream of the economic community is far from agreeing with your conclusion" is not what one would expect from a scientific community. Define mainstream (see previous post). And since when did we vote on conclusions in science?

I believe JC said something about people being smart in one area and then going with emotion in another. I have observed, over the short time I've been on this list, a liberal mindset that often defies objectivity and rationality. Could it be that all the physicists in this group do not necessarily apply their objectiveness when it comes to political issues?

Obviously, you didn't read my post very carefully. The last sentence clearly said that there were non-keynesian economists. My issue is exactly what John M. just posted. You made a statement of opinion as if it was a statement of fact. That isn't very scientific.

Finally, I will define "mainstream," to be the dominant group of whatever discipline. Most academic economists and at least a significant fraction of business-employed economists are Keynesians. I use the phrase mainstream economists in the same sense that we use the phrase mainstream scientists when talking about creationism or AGW deniers, or the smoking-doesn't- cause-cancer group. They are clearly a marginalized group, hence not "mainstream." Obviously economics, not being an exact science will have a more diverse collection of opinions, and many of those outside the mainstream won't be marginalized. Nonetheless, I think it is safe to claim that the non-keynesians are not in the majority; simply a scan of the web doesn't provide reliable data to either confirm or deny any claim about the opinion distribution of economists.

I took a couple of economics courses as an undergraduate and Stanford nearly 60 years ago (long before Stanford was a world-class university, and certainly not known as a bastion of liberalism or worse) and the economics department at that time included no professors who were not Keynesian.
I think today there may be one or two non-Keynesian members of the department, but certainly not a majority. I doubt that is much different at other major universities.

Naturally, with our economy pretty much in shambles these days, there is no dearth of economists making pronouncements on TV. Other than MSNBC (which as expected, includes very few conservatives among its guest list), I watch PBS news a lot (not a bastion of left wing opinion--just look at the FAIR blogs to confirm that), and among the economists they have given air time to, there have been hardly any that I would place in the non-Keynesian group. The only outspoken non-Keynesians I have seen on PBS have been the politicians, and not the economists, with very few exceptions (those from the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks, mostly--I can't remember an academic non-Keynesian within the past few months). These aren't conclusive samples either, but I think they are a more reliable indicator that looking at the web.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

It isn't easy being green.

--Kermit Lagrenouille