Blog-Reference
Economics claims to be a science. The fact is that economists never did proper science because they were too much occupied with agenda pushing. This holds for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and Pluralism. None of these approaches has sound scientific foundations. This does not matter for economic policy, though, because it is known from history that politics runs on silly stories/literary fictions and not on materially/formally consistent theories.
This is why the political sphere and the scientific sphere have to be strictly kept apart. In economics, though, the exact opposite can be observed for 200+ years. Economics is NOT an integral part of science but of the political Circus Maximus.
Barkley Rosser is a fine specimen of the representative economist. His main occupation is propaganda/entertainment/attention-management and not science. With the title of his post ‘Hannity as Goebbels’ Barkley Rosser identifies himself as a member of the propaganda/counter-propaganda community.
The business of the economist as a scientist is to figure out how the economy works and NOT how Washington DC works. The business of the economist as a scientist is NOT to see to it that stupid/corrupt politicians/journalists are expelled/locked up but to produce scientific truth and to see to it that stupid/corrupt agenda pusher do not hijack academia.
The question is why Barkley Rosser does not get tired of addressing political failure/fraud but closes his eyes to the failure/fraud of his own profession.
MMT, for example, propagates a bunch of social measures with the MMT-specific extra benefit of promptly realizing deficit-spending/money-creation. MMTers underpin their policy guidance on any occasion with the macroeconomic balances equation (X−M)+(G−T)+(I−S)=0.#1
This equation is proto-scientific garbage. The axiomatically correct balances equation reads (X−M)+(G−T)+(I−S)−(Qm−Yd)=0.#2, #3 And from this equation follows the reduced form Qm=G−T, that is, Public Deficit = Private Profit. Macroeconomics tells everyone that, in effect, MMT policy benefits alone the one-percenters.#4, #5
So, MMTers talk a lot of social benefits for the ninety-nine-percenters and present provably false macroeconomic equations to mislead the general public.#6 Worse, MMTers pose as Progressives and undermine the genuine social movements.#7
All this happens in plain sight and every theoretical economist (= scientist) can easily see through the fraud of political economists (= agenda pushers).
Barkley Rosser is NOT a scientist. Either he does not understand macroeconomics because he is too stupid or he covers the political machinations of his corrupt colleagues by pointing his finger to some brain-dead media figure and shouting Goebbels!!!
If there ever was one atom of science in economics, it is definitively gone. From Walrasianism to Keynesianism to Marxianism to Austrianism, economics is a political fraud. This, clearly, has to end.#8
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Down with idiocy!
#2 Profit and the Private-Property-Irrelevance Theorem
#3 Economists cannot do the simple math of profit — better keep them out of politics
#4 Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump and exploding profit
#5 Deficit-spending/money-creation is ALWAYS a bad deal for WeThePeople
#6 The Kelton-Fraud
#7 How Bill Mitchell stalks Jeremy Corbyn
#8 The end of political economics
Related 'The biggest scientific mistake of the last centuries, and it has much to do with academic economists'.
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REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Aug 26You say: “I have over 200 academic publications. Many have nothing to do with politics at all, dealing with abstract mathematical theory, not really appropriate to blog about as not very accessiblee to most readers. I realize you will dismiss them as unscientific because they do not use or ever even mention your worthless and unpublishabe piece of crap theory about profit.”
This is a spot-on self-representation of the representative economist.
Now, we are going to prove that the representative economist is too stupid for the elementary mathematics that underlies the monetary economy.#1, #2 The analytical starting point is given as follows:
(A0) The objectively given systemic configuration consists of the household and the business sector which in turn consists initially of one giant fully integrated firm. The elementary production-consumption economy is given with three macroeconomic axioms.
(A1) Yw=WL wage income Yw is equal to wage rate W times working hours. L.
(A2) O=RL output O is equal to productivity R times working hours L.
(A3) C=PX consumption expenditure C is equal to price P times quantity bought/sold X.
From the macroeconomic axioms follow models by specification. The Ur-Model is given by two conditions (X=O, C=Yw), and two definitions (monetary profit/loss Qm≡C−Yw, monetary saving/dissaving Sm≡Yw−C).
It always holds Qm≡−Sm (i). The business sector’s monetary profit Qm is equal to the household sector’s dissaving −Sm. The business sector’s loss is equal to the household sector’s saving.
Eq. (i) is the most elementary accounting identity.#1 It obviously refutes Keynes’ I=S.#2 The idiocy of the representative economist consists of calling I=S an accounting identity “that by definition (or construction) must be true.” (Wikipedia) The fact is that I=S is FALSE by construction.
The fact is that the axiomatically correct expanded accounting identity reads Qm≡I−Sm#3, which says that saving is NEVER equal to investment. So, Keynesianism and the whole analytical apparatus of the multiplier and IS-LM is false. The same holds for the Wicksell-mechanism which is predicated on the equilibrium of I and S. The same holds for the MMT balances equation. The same holds for Marx’s profit theory. And so on for the rest of economics.
The representative economist in his utter scientific incompetence has NOT realized anything to this day. He was too busy with producing peer-reviewed proto-scientific garbage and with political agenda pushing by shouting Goebbels! at mentally retarded TV anchors. All this, clearly, is NOT science and it has to end NOW.
#1 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (II)
#2 “Income = value of output = consumption + investment. Saving = income − consumption. Therefore saving = investment.” (GT, p. 63)
#3 Wikimedia AXEC143d Profit Law