A great read: Economics
isn't a bogus science — we just don't use it correctly
John Ioannidis notes:
“But these crises
and scandals do not mean that the science of economics is inherently
unreliable. Most of them occurred because we ignored what we knew.
Perhaps most
obviously, we deputized — and continue to deputize — the wrong people as
authorities. For instance, many assume that the real experts on the subject of
money are those who have a lot of it. But the opinions of wealthy tycoons are
often dissociated from scientific evidence, out of touch with reality and all
too plainly wrong. Amassing wealth as an individual is not the same thing as
building and sustaining broad economic growth across nations. Often, making a
private fortune is a matter of luck. “Fortuna” is the Latin word for luck,
after all.
What’s more, our
culture elevates predictions about the stock market and the course of the
economy at large, when any good economist will tell you that the most advanced
models are not much better than gut feeling. Credit rating agencies and highly
paid gurus are largely selling products of little or no value to the gullible.”--
What Makes a Good Economist?
John Maynard Keynes famously stated:
“The
master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be
mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must
understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in
terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of
thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of
the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely
outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous
mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth
as a politician.”