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Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012
While this may be more appropriate in D&D, asking here seemed like a better bet for a straight answer. I'm an engineering student so economics is not exactly the forte of most of us and tends to draw people towards ideas that can be "mathematically proven" as apparently Austrian school economics is when compared to Keynesian school and takes into account supply and production where the other only takes into account demand (dunno if these assertions are true or not out if they're valid). Can I get a full explanation on it and why it is or isn't valid when compared to Keynesian? Also can someone explain the same for Keynesian as it seems to be more favored on these boards.

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skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

Sounds a hell of a lot like a homework assignment....

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Xelkelvos posted:

apparently Austrian school economics is when compared to Keynesian school and takes into account supply and production where the other only takes into account demand

It might be more informative to ask these people what the gently caress this is even supposed to mean

ifuckedjesus
Sep 5, 2002
filez filez filez filez filez filez filez filez filez
Austrian school economics is a fairy tale

Justin Godscock
Oct 12, 2004

Listen here, funnyman!
OP, can you please re-phrase your question because I am a legit economics student (also, supply and demand is the bread and butter of economics no matter which school you subscribe to) and I really don't know what you're asking.

You want the dictionary definition of supply-side economics but you kinda went off on a tangent and I have no idea what you want to know.

Edit: I'll give you the dictionary definition anyways but a brief one: Basically, supply-side economics involves increasing production of the supply to spur economic growth. What this usually means (post-Reagan Republicans are loving HUGE at this, BTW) is lower taxes and less government intervention in the economy (they are seen as hurdles towards those that produce under this system) to spur growth. This means that the people that makes goods are able to do so, employ more people who then make money to spend on those goods. This is also known as "trickle down economics" where the money from increased business activity goes down towards the masses in the form of increased wages from increased growth. I should also warn you this is a political lightning rod as to how effective this truly is because of recent attention on income inequality over the last 30 years.

Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Sep 24, 2015

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Justin Godscock posted:

OP, can you please re-phrase your question because I am a legit economics student (also, supply and demand is the bread and butter of economics no matter which school you subscribe to) and I really don't know what you're asking.

You want the dictionary definition of supply-side economics but you kinda went off on a tangent and I have no idea what you want to know.

Edit: I'll give you the dictionary definition anyways but a brief one: Basically, supply-side economics involves increasing production of the supply to spur economic growth. What this usually means (post-Reagan Republicans are loving HUGE at this, BTW) is lower taxes and less government intervention in the economy (they are seen as hurdles towards those that produce under this system) to spur growth. This means that the people that makes goods are able to do so, employ more people who then make money to spend on those goods. This is also known as "trickle down economics" where the money from increased business activity goes down towards the masses in the form of increased wages from increased growth. I should also warn you this is a political lightning rod as to how effective this truly is because of recent attention on income inequality over the last 30 years.

It probably also doesn't help that I know nothing about Keynesian economics other than it's based around demand. It was engineering student talking to engineering student so neither of us likely knew all that much beside the broader points on our respective sides. His arguments were largely the broad Libertarian talking points about how regulation caused the two most recent crashes due to over regulation and so forth and I basically conceded since I didn't know much myself.

so basically the definitions of both schools and the pros and cons of each is what I'm asking. and probably any evidence of one or the other working. I could probably try on D&D too.

Edit: also that Keynesian basically funnels wealth more downwards rather than upwards, so to speak.

Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Sep 24, 2015

Buried alive
Jun 8, 2009
^^^ D&D has a Libertarian/Jrod containment thread if you want to browse that. Does a good job of showing the holes in that approach. There's also this example that kind of hits it home for me.

Suppose you have 10 workers making 100 widgets a week. One of the workers comes up with a new process that improves production to the point where those same 10 workers are now producing 200 widgets per week.

Supply side/Trickle down: The increase in widgets will cause the price to fall, which will boost demand/sales, which will increase profits, which will increase investments and worker pay, which will benefit society in general when the workers go out to use their increased pay.

Blind spot: Price and supply of the product are not the only variables that affect demand. It's possible that widgets are going out of fashion (bell-bottom jeans) are becoming technologically obsolete (type-writers, new cell phone models, etc) or maybe people only ever want/need 1 or 2 widgets and don't need more (cars, houses, various medical services).

Possible result: People do not buy any more widgets per week. The employer only needs half as many employees, so he fires 5 of the workers. Then he slashes the pay of the remaining 5 because, after all, he knows 5 guys (the ones he just fired) that would love to have that job. Although it's easier to make widgets now, he keeps the price the same since price isn't a big factor in the demand of widgets. Then he keeps the profits for himself, as there's no point in trying to expand capacity since demand is highly inelastic.

Guess which one has happened way more throughout history. Also anyone who blames the 2008 financial crisis on regulation is really far gone, and it will take months/years of talking to this person to get them to change their mind.

Also also people forming a group to pool resources and see how they can make money is good (corporation), but people forming a group to pool resources and see how they can make money is bad (unions).

As for quick definitions... one-sentence versions would go something like this.

Libertarianism: Freedom and voluntary action is ultimate, remove all regulation as it's all for the best anyway.
Keyensian: Regulate poo poo that breaks, use taxes to provide services when things go south, ease up on taxes when things are rolling smoothly.

For evidence, you can look at Canada's banking system compared to ours, or even ours from the 50's-ish? to the 80's. Long story short, having a heavily regulated finance sector helps prevent boom/bust cycles.

Buried alive fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Sep 24, 2015

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012
Engineers should generally never be trusted outside of their scope of work unless they can demonstrate otherwise. (See also: Groverhouse)

That being said, what's the Demand side version of that then?

Blackjack2000
Mar 29, 2010

Xelkelvos posted:

It probably also doesn't help that I know nothing about Keynesian economics other than it's based around demand. It was engineering student talking to engineering student so neither of us likely knew all that much beside the broader points on our respective sides. His arguments were largely the broad Libertarian talking points about how regulation caused the two most recent crashes due to over regulation and so forth and I basically conceded since I didn't know much myself.

so basically the definitions of both schools and the pros and cons of each is what I'm asking. and probably any evidence of one or the other working. I could probably try on D&D too.

Edit: also that Keynesian basically funnels wealth more downwards rather than upwards, so to speak.

If anyone is blaming the financial crisis of 2008-2009 on over-regulation they are straight up ideologues. The financial crisis was more complex that most people with an agenda want to admit, but a big component of it was the way that assets were being carried on the balance sheets of large financial institutions.

Keynesian economics is demand oriented and views government intervention (in the form of both monetary and fiscal policy) is necessary to stabilize the business cycle. Read Krugman. It's observably true. Look at the fed's response to the crisis (the government also had a muted fiscal response, but the fed's was far more dramatic) pumping $4.5 trillion into the economy in six years along with ZIRP returned the American economy to growth in pretty dramatic fashion.

Supply side is stupid, IDK really what else to say, tell them to look at Kansas?

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.
What kind of business is the most heavily regulated in the United States? The import and sale of illegal drugs. It's been subjected to a variety of choking government measures that have effectively decreased the supply of illegal drugs, which is why no one does them at all. This is proof that if you get the government out of the way, a business will flourish.

Justin Godscock
Oct 12, 2004

Listen here, funnyman!
The Canadian banking system really is the envy of the world because the government found a great balance between regulation and freedom on that one. Market failures are going to happen, it's inevitable, but having solid regulation means that the waves can crash against the rocks but nothing will happen to the house built way above. Not one Canadian bank even came close to failure back in 2009 because regulation meant they couldn't do any of the shady poo poo that American banks were up to for decades. It also helps the banks here actually like the regulation so you don't have lobbyists being paid by them to whine to Parliament about "hurt opportunities" or whatever poo poo.

Xelkelvos posted:

It probably also doesn't help that I know nothing about Keynesian economics other than it's based around demand. It was engineering student talking to engineering student so neither of us likely knew all that much beside the broader points on our respective sides. His arguments were largely the broad Libertarian talking points about how regulation caused the two most recent crashes due to over regulation and so forth and I basically conceded since I didn't know much myself.

so basically the definitions of both schools and the pros and cons of each is what I'm asking. and probably any evidence of one or the other working. I could probably try on D&D too.

Edit: also that Keynesian basically funnels wealth more downwards rather than upwards, so to speak.

I agree that anyone that says the 2008-09 Great Recession was because of over-regulation is spouting an ideologue. It's a very complex topic and it's actually de-regulation that had some impact but, again, there were a lot of factors and books are going to be written about it for years to come. Paul Krugman, who was cited here, is an amazing read (he won the Nobel Prize for Economics) for anyone wanting a layman's version of economics and he wrote a lot of poo poo about the 2008-09 meltdown so seek some of that out. He can be a little political at times but only when he's shooting down politicians who don't know what they are talking about when it comes to economics.

I gave the dictionary definition of supply-side so I'll give the brief definition of demand-side. Demand side basically says during a time of economic recession or depression the government should intervene by spending money on projects and basically make up for the gap in private spending until that sector gets back on its feet. This was very popular during the Great Depression of the 30s when the American government spent a lot of money on projects like the Hoover Dam. The economy improved somewhat by the end of the decade but then along came WW2 which was like dumping a barrel of gasoline onto a bonfire in terms of kickstarting the economy. Now, I'm going to dispel a huge myth: it was government takeover of ALL resources and industries putting America into a state of total war (spending went up to 120% of GDP to fund the war effort) while some ideologues like to say it was industry or the market and not the government. The pros are this generally works but does rack up debt plus some people don't like government intruding into the economy. The Great Recession saw demand side return with the Bailout (from George W Bush to prop up the banks) and the Stimulus (from Barack Obama to fund projects until the economy improved) which did work but arguably weren't enough.

The con of supply side, and oh God can this be a topic unto itself, is that the income gap between rich and poor indicates the money did not go down to the poor in the forms of increased wages or opportunities. There's evidence the rich just hoarded this money and reneged on their promise 30 years ago this money would have a benefit on society. I could also go on a tangent about how cut spending and decreased taxes led to social services and other government programs only hurt the poor even more but, again, we'd be here a while.

Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Sep 24, 2015

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Xelkelvos posted:

That being said, what's the Demand side version of that then?

That's a really, really vague question but I guess in general it would be if you take measures to ensure that people (like the workers at the widget factory) have money to spend they will tend to spend it, putting that money back into the economy and stimulating growth. Large numbers of people with less individual money tend to spend a large portion of their wealth, whereas the relatively small numbers of people with obscene amounts of money tend to just sit on most of theirs forever, rendering it economically useless. Therefore, redistributive measures like income taxes + social programs to mitigate living expenses (healthcare) and lower the financial bar to participate in the economy (public transport) and generally counteract the tendency of the wealthy to use their wealth and power to amass all of the wealth and power are a strong economic good that in the long term improves the wellbeing of everybody, c.f. how it's much nicer to be pretty much anybody in a keyesian economy in the modern day than it was to be even at the top of the prior millennium of feudal stagnation where a handful of elites reserved all wealth to themselves.

Commie NedFlanders
Mar 8, 2014

It's totally stupid. It assumes that all business owners want to hire people all the time, but the only thing stopping them is a lack of more money.

The myth is that if you cut taxes for the wealthy, they are going to use that money to raise wages or hire more people, which helps workers. This is idiotic.

The justification for this is the stupid Laffer Curve which basically demonstrates that higher and higher tax rates eventually (a really high tax rate) results in less hiring because it's unaffordable and they use stupid inverse logic to incorrectly assume that lower tax rates will then result in more hiring.

The truth of the matter is that labor is expensive and business owners are concerned with keeping their labor costs down. Just because you get a tax cut doesn't mean you're gonna immediately run out and try to hire someone so you can give them the money. That would be stupid. There are many things you could do with that money that may result in even greater returns such as savings or investments.

The only thing that makes a business owner hire more people is the need to hire more people, that is: demand.

When demand is up, business owners MUST hire workers to keep up with business and everyone wins.


Therefore if you really want to boost the economy, you need DEMAND side economics, which is basically Keynesian economics

Whiskey Sours
Jan 25, 2014

Weather proof.

Justin Godscock posted:

The Canadian banking system really is the envy of the world because the government found a great balance between regulation and freedom on that one. Market failures are going to happen, it's inevitable, but having solid regulation means that the waves can crash against the rocks but nothing will happen to the house built way above. Not one Canadian bank even came close to failure back in 2009 because regulation meant they couldn't do any of the shady poo poo that American banks were up to for decades. It also helps the banks here actually like the regulation so you don't have lobbyists being paid by them to whine to Parliament about "hurt opportunities" or whatever poo poo.



I know this is 4 years out of date, but prices have only risen since then. In response to the global financial crisis (which was ultimately caused by the collapse of housing bubbles in the USA, Spain, Ireland, etc), the Government of Canada was guaranteeing 40 year, no money down mortgages for a while in 2008/2009. We didn't avoid crisis, we're just waiting for it.

Also the Canadian government bailed out our banks with $114 billion in 2009. That's ten times what we gave the auto industry.

Congratulations on buying into Stephen Harper's propaganda.

Commie NedFlanders
Mar 8, 2014

Keynesian policies pump more money into the pockets of the working class through jobs programs or benefits.

This temporary boost in low wage income increasing consumer spending. This inevitably goes back to businesses, but because it's an increase in demand rather than supply, businesses are forced to hire more people, which further stimulates spending.


You want to keep the capital flowing, but supply side economics makes it too easy for the wealthy to just sit on it and accumulate interest. There's no incentive built,in to actually spur growth, just remove imaginary obstacles

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Commie NedFlanders posted:

Keynesian policies pump more money into the pockets of the working class through jobs programs or benefits.

This temporary boost in low wage income increasing consumer spending. This inevitably goes back to businesses, but because it's an increase in demand rather than supply, businesses are forced to hire more people, which further stimulates spending.


You want to keep the capital flowing, but supply side economics makes it too easy for the wealthy to just sit on it and accumulate interest. There's no incentive built,in to actually spur growth, just remove imaginary obstacles

Well, no direct incentives to build societal growth or the wealth of those around them. All of the direct incentives are deflationary to the currency and incentivise safe stockpiling and spending as little as possible to minimize risk.

Edit: I understand the base concepts of Keynesian okay enough, but the benefits of Supply-side and their justifications seem utterly opaque. I'd likely get a direct answer to this if I went into the Libertarian hell hole, but I'd rather add a few extra holes into my head than to venture into those pits of insanity.

Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Sep 30, 2015

Griz
May 21, 2001


Xelkelvos posted:

Edit: I understand the base concepts of Keynesian okay enough, but the benefits of Supply-side and their justifications seem utterly opaque. I'd likely get a direct answer to this if I went into the Libertarian hell hole, but I'd rather add a few extra holes into my head than to venture into those pits of insanity.

The benefits are that rich people get tax cuts and less regulations, the justifications are a bunch of vague hand-wavy bullshit invented to support policies that make the rich even richer.

If you point out that there's no real-world evidence of this actually working anywhere, supporters will just claim that they didn't cut taxes enough, or there's a "vast liberal conspiracy" to cherry-pick data to make it look like a failure, or they haven't given it enough time to see the true results, etc.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Xelkelvos posted:

Well, no direct incentives to build societal growth or the wealth of those around them. All of the direct incentives are deflationary to the currency and incentivise safe stockpiling and spending as little as possible to minimize risk.

Edit: I understand the base concepts of Keynesian okay enough, but the benefits of Supply-side and their justifications seem utterly opaque. I'd likely get a direct answer to this if I went into the Libertarian hell hole, but I'd rather add a few extra holes into my head than to venture into those pits of insanity.

the justification is if you take even a little bit of rich peoples' money, they will decide making all the rest of the money just isn't worth it anymore and take their ball and go home. Since rich people are super genius job creators directly appointed by God and their wealth is merely their just due for providing the divine light we are all of us but mere parasites of, nobody will take their place in starting businesses or providing goods and services and everyone else will become a homeless junkie.

These are largely the same people who believe the invisible hand of the free market, if completely uncorrupted by human influence in some vaguely defined way, will be an omniscient and omnipotent force of pure good that will lead us all into an earthly Paradise, and it is only because of sinful human institutions like government that we lack for anything

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Sep 30, 2015

ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

Xelkelvos posted:

It probably also doesn't help that I know nothing about Keynesian economics other than it's based around demand. It was engineering student talking to engineering student so neither of us likely knew all that much beside the broader points on our respective sides. His arguments were largely the broad Libertarian talking points about how regulation caused the two most recent crashes due to over regulation and so forth and I basically conceded since I didn't know much myself.

so basically the definitions of both schools and the pros and cons of each is what I'm asking. and probably any evidence of one or the other working. I could probably try on D&D too.

There aren't really "pros and cons" of these two theories. One of them works, the other doesn't.

The first thing to recognize is that economics isn't really about money. It's about human behavior, value, decision-making, and how these affect the generation and flow of both material and nonmaterial goods. It's a field that encompasses finance, psychology, and sociology all to a certain degree.

The Keynesian school of economics is the mainstream view, and at its core it emphasizes that there's a "business cycle" that goes on. The economy is a bit of a rollercoaster, with peaks (economic booms) and dips (economic recessions or depressions), inflation and deflation (though usually more inflation). Keynesians believe that it is possible to moderate the business cycle so it doesn't go into crazy inflation on one end or depression on another by sound economic policy. The most basic way of doing this is through government spending when the economy is in decline, and cutting spending when the economy is doing OK. This is referred to "countercyclical spending," and usually people focus more on the government spending aspect.

The Austrian school of economics arose decades ago when a small group of economists believed that human behavior was far too complex to measure empirically. Thus, any sort of empirical model of economics was futile. Austrian economists instead develop economic models based on a priori reasoning. Now, hopefully as an engineer you understand that this is absolute bullshit, because there's a big difference between what works in headspace and how things actually work in reality. And honestly, this is very typical of US Republican economic policies right now: they operate from what "sounds logical" (that is, "if you cut taxes and back the government out of the economy entirely, you'll unshackle the private sector and the economy will go into overdrive!") rather than looking at what historically does and doesn't work, often with disastrous consequences.

Currently, a very fascinating case study is going on right now with Kansas where supply-sider Tea Party Libertarians took over. I have a thread about it right here.

Overall, I think the best comparison between empirical Keynesians and rationalist Austrian-Libertarians is this: An empirical Keynesian would be like a conventional doctor and say "Well there's a lot that we don't know about cancer, but here's what we do know. Here's the prognosis, and some possible treatments that have so-and-so chance of working." A rationalist Austrian-Libertarian would be like a holistic medicine practitioner and say "Whoa there, the body is a total mystery! You actually don't know as much as you think, why don't you back off on that chemotherapy because you'll probably just gently caress things up even more. Let the body heal its cancer by itself, yo."

In short: Austrian economics is dumb.



quote:

Edit: also that Keynesian basically funnels wealth more downwards rather than upwards, so to speak.

Not necessarily. It really depends on the status of the economic model you're looking at.

ShadowCatboy fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Sep 30, 2015

ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

Good poo poo here, just want to add a couple of more specific Empirical examples:

As Godscock mentioned here, The New Deal (from 1933-1938) helped bolster the economy after the Great Depression through a lot of public spending projects, and it actually did a decent job of gradually improving the nation's GDP and reducing unemployment. However, about three or four years in Roosevelt apparently felt that the economy was in a safe space now and curbed government spending, which led to the recession of 1937-38, where GDP experienced a major dip and unemployment jumped up. Conservatives of course will interpret the cause of the recession differently, but Keynesians see it as essentially pulling the plug when the patient's not ready to breathe on his own yet.

Certain specific forms of government spending have been tracked as being some of the best ways to stimulate the economy. At the top of the list, food stamps, which stimulates 1.73$ in transactions for every 1$ spent on them. Infrastructure spending is also a great method, and as an investment it also serves to catalyze new business ventures (just consider how high-speed trains stimulate the economy of every city they pass through since it means a new flow of workers, or how the internet revolutionized business).

On the dismally low end of the scale: tax cuts to the wealthy.


icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008




a guy drew this on a napkin one day in 1974 and so the Republicans can bullshit that cutting taxes will increase revenue in between rounds of whipping their base up into a terrified rage over the browns, blacks, Muslims, poors, gays, liberals, etc, etc

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


Xelkelvos posted:

While this may be more appropriate in D&D, asking here seemed like a better bet for a straight answer. I'm an engineering student so economics is not exactly the forte of most of us and tends to draw people towards ideas that can be "mathematically proven" as apparently Austrian school economics is when compared to Keynesian school and takes into account supply and production where the other only takes into account demand (dunno if these assertions are true or not out if they're valid). Can I get a full explanation on it and why it is or isn't valid when compared to Keynesian? Also can someone explain the same for Keynesian as it seems to be more favored on these boards.

So first off, "Keynesianism" in terms of academic theory isn't a thing, other than the fact that Keynes was basically the founder of what is now Macroeconomics. Keynes' theory is a standard, integral part of the academic social science of economics. Austrian "economics" is basically bullshit charlatanism that literally rejects scientific empiricism (because scientific empiricism indicates that government intervention is needed to maximize GDP). So as for the bolded loving :laffo:. See here. The thing about demand is complete bullshit. The guy you're talking to should take an Econ 101 course, and stop reading literature distributed by libertarian lobbying groups

A better explanation for why autistic engineering types like libertarianism is because their education in the humanities is usually awful and they're more susceptible to intellectual snake oil because of it, combined with the fact that they tend to be whiter, maler and wealthier and thus stand to benefit materially from it

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Sep 30, 2015

ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
Here OP, this is a very simple rundown of Keynesian economics VS Libertarianism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otmgFQHbaDo

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

icantfindaname posted:

So first off, "Keynesianism" in terms of academic theory isn't a thing, other than the fact that Keynes was basically the founder of what is now Macroeconomics. Keynes' theory is a standard, integral part of the academic social science of economics. Austrian "economics" is basically bullshit charlatanism that literally rejects scientific empiricism (because scientific empiricism indicates that government intervention is needed to maximize GDP). So as for the bolded loving :laffo:. See here. The thing about demand is complete bullshit. The guy you're talking to should take an Econ 101 course, and stop reading literature distributed by libertarian lobbying groups

A better explanation for why autistic engineering types like libertarianism is because their education in the humanities is usually awful and they're more susceptible to intellectual snake oil because of it, combined with the fact that they tend to be whiter, maler and wealthier and thus stand to benefit materially from it

One of the courses we were actually required to take was Engineering Economics.

It was mostly about using Excel and time-value of money.

I've actually taken macroeconomics myself out of personal interest while getting a psych degree so I'm obviously more amenable to more humanistic topics compared to some of my peers.

big business man
Sep 30, 2012

icantfindaname posted:

So first off, "Keynesianism" in terms of academic theory isn't a thing, other than the fact that Keynes was basically the founder of what is now Macroeconomics. Keynes' theory is a standard, integral part of the academic social science of economics. Austrian "economics" is basically bullshit charlatanism that literally rejects scientific empiricism (because scientific empiricism indicates that government intervention is needed to maximize GDP). So as for the bolded loving :laffo:. See here. The thing about demand is complete bullshit. The guy you're talking to should take an Econ 101 course, and stop reading literature distributed by libertarian lobbying groups

A better explanation for why autistic engineering types like libertarianism is because their education in the humanities is usually awful and they're more susceptible to intellectual snake oil because of it, combined with the fact that they tend to be whiter, maler and wealthier and thus stand to benefit materially from it

ding ding ding.

Austrian economics and economists are literally :laffo: levels of absurd and it is really shameful that ITYOOL 2015 people still have to devote effort into 'disproving' them

Phone
Jul 30, 2005

親子丼をほしい。
All you need to know about Austrian economics is the Greece garbage and half of those fuckers' Excel files have wrong formulas in them and they shrug and continue on because it makes them feel good.

Aerial Tollhouse
Feb 17, 2011
The reason supply side economics became popular was because the 70s saw high unemployment coupled with high inflation, which was something that keynsian policies didn't have an answer for. Reagan became president, deregulated and cut taxes, and the economy improved. This completely ignores the fact that paul volcker (a democrat who hates the financial sector and who reagan fired) spent years battling inflation and ignoring heavy pressure from special interests or the collapse of commodity prices, both of which probably did more than Reagan's policies. Also, some posters in this thread seem to be confusing Chicago school and austrian economics. Chicago school is what Milton Friedman and most of Reagan's advisors were, they're the most conservative part of mainstream economics, heavily suspicious of government but mostly use similar methodology to other economists. Austrians are outside of the mainstream, and most of them completely disavow math and experimentation, instead prefering to derive their conclusions by arguing from "first principles". It's confusing because both groups have similar policy recommendations, though austrians are usually more extreme.

Spazzle
Jul 5, 2003

How is using logic and arguing from first principles really different from having a broad, poorly specified model?

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Spazzle posted:

How is using logic and arguing from first principles really different from having a broad, poorly specified model?

It sounds like a high-minded philosophy thing to the kind of guys who think taking a philosophy class makes you a hobo

Buried alive
Jun 8, 2009

Spazzle posted:

How is using logic and arguing from first principles really different from having a broad, poorly specified model?

When it comes to Austrian ecnomics...

Model: This evidence is contrary to our model, we need to refine it.
Austrian: This evidence is contrary to our first principles. It must be false.

Of course it's always possible to to go full tilt "the model cannot be wrong" and wind up in the same place as Austrian Praxeology, but generally the difference it that a model can be refined or even rejected outright if competing evidence is strong and clear enough.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Spazzle posted:

How is using logic and arguing from first principles really different from having a broad, poorly specified model?

Because if those first principles are wrong or flawed, then the proceeding logic is wrong too. The proper way to go about it is to refine those principles and assumptions until they reflect reality or otherwise account for the variance in some way by adjusting the model.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


Spazzle posted:

How is using logic and arguing from first principles really different from having a broad, poorly specified model?

Because the first principles aren't true? If the first principles indicate some thing should be true that observably isn't, then your axioms do not mesh with reality. That's how empiricism works dude

Austrianism is sneaky though because even though it pretends to be, it's not actually talking about the same thing that normal neoclassical econ is. Normal econ concerns itself with GDP, and seeks to find models that describe and predict what economic conditions maximize GDP. Austrianism, however, is essentially an ethical system under which abrogating property rights is basically the highest crime. They don't actually care about GDP or efficiency, it's a bunch of fancy words to say "got mine, gently caress you, keep away from my stuff"

The neoclassical argument for or against a policy is 'will it maximize GDP?' The Austrian argument is 'does it mesh with our first principles?' And their first principles are 'absolute property rights, always and forever'

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Oct 4, 2015

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ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

icantfindaname posted:

Austrianism is sneaky though because even though it pretends to be, it's not actually talking about the same thing that normal neoclassical econ is. Normal econ concerns itself with GDP, and seeks to find models that describe and predict what economic conditions maximize GDP. Austrianism, however, is essentially an ethical system under which abrogating property rights is basically the highest crime. They don't actually care about GDP or efficiency, it's a bunch of fancy words to say "got mine, gently caress you, keep away from my stuff"

The neoclassical argument for or against a policy is 'will it maximize GDP?' The Austrian argument is 'does it mesh with our first principles?' And their first principles are 'absolute property rights, always and forever'

As a prime example, here is an essay from the Von Mises institute that argues it should be perfectly legal for a parent to let his children starve, or leave them to die on windswept crags like the Greeks of old. However, if we open up the free market to the sale of babies, this wouldn't really be a widespread problem:

https://mises.org/library/children-and-rights

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