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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30139 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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It's funny because though he's right to say economists know very little compared to how much they usually claim to, the negative effects of price controls is one of the very few things that is both consensual among economists and backed by solid historical evidence. If you had to name the one thing the entire discipline actually agrees on for the most part, it's that.

Now if we want to be maximally charitable, maybe they overstate it, sometimes you may be willing to eat the deadweight loss for political reasons. But handwaving the concern away as experts clutching at pearls is a bit zany.

Yeah, pretty much the only policy as universally unpopular among economists as price controls is protectionist tariffs.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works

Protectionism is essential for building up an economy. See the section on Korea in the link ..

That is a very expansive take away from that book.

I'd say its thesis was that protectionism worked for East Asian countries during a brief time period.

There has always been a theoretical case that tariffs can work as protectionist trade policy. Economists stopped telling people this about a century ago, because what consistently happened is that countries would just start applying tariffs to everything and tank their economy. (or spark trade wars that tanked everyone's economy)

Its as if some people heard that radiation therapy can be good for you if you need to remove a cancerous tumor, so they all went and sat inside of nuclear power plants.

I wish there were a book called 'Things That 90% of Economists Agree On'. I imagine it would be a pretty thin book, the only thing I know of that would definitely be in it is rent control. But it would at least give a baseline of policies that are so clearly bad that no serious administration should consider it.

Part of the problem is that the profession has lost a lot of credibility. The public has - belatedly - realised that you can always find some economist or other to wheel out in favour of/against almost any policy under the Sun. When that rare issue comes along that unifies the profession it isn't always legible to the public, who have gotten used to ignoring them.

Part of the problem is that the profession has lost a lot of credibility.

A frequent joke heard in my circles is "What do you call an economist who opens his mouth?" "Wrong." Their reputation is so terrible among the public that a lot of people would go stick their head out of the window and look up if they heard one say the sky was blue.

Basically the Law of Supply and the Law of Demand are agreed on, and the other things agreed on follow directly from them. All that is micro. It's macro that's the big mess.

I wish there were a book called "Things That 90% of Economists Agree On".

Consensus Among Economists 2020

Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90 percent)

Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (95 percent)

If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the course of the business cycle rather than yearly. (93 percent)

Fiscal policy (e .g., tax cut and/or expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (94 percent)

Appropriately designed fiscal policy can increase the long-run rate of capital formation and economic growth. (90 percent)

The Earned Income Tax Credit program should be expanded. (90 percent)

Immigration generally has a net positive economic effect for the US economy. (97 percent)

Antitrust laws should be enforced vigorously. (93 percent)

Addressing biases in individuals and institutions can improve both equity and efficiency. (90 percent)

See also the surveys conducted by the University of Chicago's Clark Center for Global Markets. (The website seems to be a bit broken at the moment, possibly due to a recent domain-name change. Older surveys can be found using the Internet Archive.)

Capping annual rent increases by corporate landlords at 5 percent, as proposed by President Biden, would not make middle-income Americans substantially better off over the next ten years. (85 percent)

Capping annual rent increases at 5 percent, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce the amount of available apartments for rent over the next ten years. (72 percent)

Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would not substantially reduce US income inequality over the next ten years. (79 percent)

Very nice, thank you sir!

If I remember correctly, “The Myth of the Rational Voter” is primarily concerned with the topic you speak of; policies that are politically popular but have almost universal condemnation from Economists.

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