December 28, 2016

Economics: Two centuries of scientific incompetence

Comment on Bradford DeLong on ‘The Age of Incompetence’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Bradford DeLong comments on the incompetence of US presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. DeLong is an economist and economics is supposed to be a science and ― this got lost entirely in the Age of Incompetence ― genuine scientists keep out of politics because they know that politics and science do not mix, never have, and never will.

Economists habitually ignore the separation of politics and science. They claim to do science since Adam Smith/Karl Marx, what they, in fact, have done is what Feynman famously called cargo cult science or, more specifically, political economics.

Political economics is agenda-pushing and has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. Economics is a failed science. The major approaches — Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism — are mutually contradictory and materially/ formally inconsistent. Until this day, there is NO scientifically valid economics.

Political economists are incompetent scientists and have made economics a fake science.#1 DeLong is a prominent representative of this aberration. He is outside of science, his contributions to economics are proto-scientific garbage, and his comments on politics are sitcom stuff.

Incompetent economists are as much a menace to their fellow citizens as incompetent presidents.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 For details of the big picture see cross-references Incompetence

Related  'Economic policy advice has never had sound scientific foundations' and 'Economists: the Trumps of science' and 'Why Hayek was not a scientist' and 'Economics ― a Zombie wrestling show' and 'Econ 101 is dead ― and now?' and 'Economists still don’t get Econ 101 right' and 'Enough! Economists, retire now!' and 'Krugman is not an economist'.

For more on DeLong see AXECquery.