December 31, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Happiness and liberty ― economics as fake philantropy

 
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December 30, 2021

Occasional Tweets: There is no scientific authority in economics

 
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December 29, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Silly economics is over

 


For more about paradigm see AXECquery. 
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December 28, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economics ― get your free online proto-scientific garbage from top universities

 


For more about academia see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: Again and again ― the "profit is part of income" idiocy

 


For more about share of income see AXECquery.
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Occasional Tweets: How Wall Street became the social/progressive champion of WeThePeople

 


For more about Wall Street see AXECquery.
For more about Warren Mosler see AXECquery. 
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December 27, 2021

Occasional Tweets: MMT is not science but brain-dead political agenda-pushing

 

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Twitter Dec 27, 2021 "MMT is not a policy" and other schizophrenic MMT claims



Related 'Totally schizo ― MMT and policy'
For more about MMT as a scientific lens see AXECquery.
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December 25, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economics ― the future is now

 
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Occasional Tweets: 0.1% of "criticisms of economists from non-economists are completely stupid and wrong"

 
 
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Occasional Tweets: 200+ years of scientific incompetence ― economists still miss the point of substance

 
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December 23, 2021

Occasional Tweets: All the Oligarchy's men

 

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Twitter Dec 24, 2021 In order to bring down public debt one needs a budget surplus ― except for Messrs Macron/Draghi who can do it with more budget deficits

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Occasional Tweets: Paradigm Shift ― advancing economics from political blather to science

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Paradigm Shift.
For more about Diane Coyle see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: MMT ― not a noble cause

 


For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT. 
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December 22, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Get a life, MMTers!

 


For more about refutation see AXECquery.
For more about Warren Mosler see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: Economics ― the USA/GER axis of idiocy

 
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December 21, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Where does profit ultimately come from?

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Profit/Distribution. 
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Occasional Tweets: Agenda pushers since the founding fathers

 
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Occasional Tweets: Economics ― who funds whom?

 
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December 19, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The end of inflation waffling

 
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December 18, 2021

Occasional Tweets: How macroeconomics went wrong

 


For more about macrofoundations see AXECquery. 

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December 17, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economists do not serve their fellow citizens

 
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Occasional Tweets: There is much confusion about democracy and oligarchy

 
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Occasional Tweets: Greed does not produce profit

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Profit/Distribution. 
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December 16, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economists even abuse Christmas (II)

 
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December 15, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economists are still behind the curve

 
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December 14, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to recycle Kalecki (I)

 


For more about Kalecki see AXECquery. 
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December 13, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The soul of macroeconomics

 


For more about methodology see AXECquery. 
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December 12, 2021

How Adam Smith messed up economics

Comment on Ken Zimmerman on 'Adam Smith’s idea is still the basis of the discipline of economics'


The history of economic thought is the history of scientific failure. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent. Because of this, the whole analytical superstructure of economics is scientifically worthless. Because of this, economic policy guidance NEVER has had sound scientific foundations.

Now, the problem is this: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

Because economists do not have the true theory, economics boils down to brain-dead agenda-pushing. Economists are not scientists but clowns, useful idiots, and agenda pushers in the political Circus Maximus. Economics is proto-scientific garbage and because of their scientific incompetence, economists are a hazard to their fellow citizens.#1

The mental misery can be traced back to Adam Smith: “Smith … disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along.” (Schumpeter)

Or, as Ken Zimmerman spins it: “The real start of modern Western economics as a discipline is usually traced to Adam Smith (1723–1790). Beginning as a moral philosopher concerned with human motives, Smith later wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 as a series of lectures on public policy. The task he set for himself was that of a natural scientist, to discover the workings of a vast machine ― the economy. From this philosophical foundation, Smith builds a powerful argument that the individual’s self-interest generates the society’s best interests. Beginning with a rational individual motivated by positive natural impulses, he undertakes a series of dramatic political attacks on monopolists, corrupt governments, tariffs promoted by strong business lobbyists, guilds, colonialists, and ‘the capricious ambitions of kings and ministers’ (1937, 460). Though based on self-interest, a well-working economy, he said, should not cater to the selfish interests of a small class or group. Instead, it furthers the wealth of the nation as a whole ― and it is not a great step from here to the idea of democracy, of rule ‘of, by, and for’ the people of the nation.”

“Beginning with a rational individual”, Adam Smith inaugurated methodological individualism and led the profession straight into the Fallacy of Composition. The fact of the matter is, that NO way leads from the second-guessing of Human Nature/motives/behavior/action to the understanding of how the economic system works.

What Adam Smith did was a mixture of psychology and sociology ― PsySoc for short#2 ― including moralizing and agenda-pushing but NOT economics proper. Economics is about the behavior of the economic system and NOT the behavior of people. Adam Smith never understood the behavior of the system as a whole, i.e. “the workings of a vast machine”, and he never understood macroeconomic profit.#3 The supply-demand-equilibrium narrative that culminated in General Equilibrium Theory is a bad joke to this day. An economist who does not understand profit, i.e. the foundational concept of economics, is a laughing stock.

However, the economy is an abstract entity that defies intuitive understanding, and human behavior is something every moron claims to understand from his own personal experience. As a consequence, Adam Smith's blather about the baker and the butcher and their rational self-interest won the popular vote. The beauty of PsySoc is that one can speculate and talk and moralize about human nature/behavior without ever arriving at scientific knowledge about how the economic system works. People do not like science, people like storytelling and talk shows.

In his scientific incompetence, Adam Smith took the wrong path. He led economics away from science and helped it finally become a subcontractor of the disinfotainment industry.#4

To this day, economics has no scientific truth-value#5 but only political use-value. Politically, Smith's invisible-hand economics forwarded the illusion of Democracy and the reality of Oligarchy. And this is why “Adam Smith's idea is still the basis of the discipline of economics”.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke



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REPLY to mameerop, Dec 13 [not published because of comments closed]

Economics has a long tradition of the pointless exercise called exegesis: “Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. Traditionally, the term was used primarily for work with religious texts, especially the Bible. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretations of virtually any text, …”#1, #2

At some point in any economic discussion, the issue is no longer how the economy works but about what XYZ has said about how the economy works. In other words, folks get lost in metacommunication.

This is NOT an accident but a built-in feature of political economics.

“Another danger is that you may ‘precise everything away’ and be left with only a comparative poverty of meaning. ... Such a problem was avoided, said Keynes, by Marshall who used loose definitions but allowed the reader to infer his meaning from ‘the richness of context’.” (Coates, 2007, p. 87)

In other words, the reader is encouraged to substitute almost any meaning he likes. The result is well-known. Keynes' loose verbal reasoning triggered an enthusiastic exegesis movement that circled for some decades around the question ‘What Keynes really meant?’ Predictably, the question has never been answered. The richness of meaning only generated a wealth of blah blah.

The same holds, of course, for Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.

Take notice that every text that contains this metaphor has NO scientific content but is pure disinformation and that every author who applies this metaphor is NOT a scientist but a mentally retarded political agenda-pusher.

Adam Smith has to be buried at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery together with all folks who ever tried to ‘explain’ what Smith ‘really’ meant.

Economics is a failed/fake science and needs a Paradigm Shift. This means that Adam Smith's idea is NO LONGER the “basis of the discipline of economics”.


#2 For more about exegesis see AXECquery

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Wikimedia AXEC121i

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December 11, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economists ― self-hype is their only talent

 
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Occasional Tweets: von Mises was a stupid/corrupt political agenda pusher

 


For more about Austrianism see AXECquery.
For more about von Mises see AXECquery. 
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December 10, 2021

Occasional Tweets: MMT policy has no valid scientific foundations

 
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Occasional Tweets: How to respect the separation between religion and science

 

For more about religion see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: Economic policy guidance has never had sound scientific foundations (II)

 
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Occasional Tweets: Spending without taxing ― the survival formula

 
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December 8, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economics is not science, never has been

 


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December 7, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Humility is the magic hood of incompetence

 
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Occasional Tweets: The "reforming programs" of MMT always boil down to deficit-spending/money-creation

 
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December 6, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Neither luck nor skill

 
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Occasional Tweets: The critical economist ― just another laughing stock

 
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December 5, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The life elixir of Capitalism

 

For more about profit see AXECquery. 
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December 4, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to recycle the history of economic thought

 


For more about proto-scientific garbage see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: Economists even abuse Christmas (I)

 
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December 2, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The foundational concept of economics is profit

 

For details of the big picture see cross-references Profit/Distribution. 
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Occasional Tweets: Economists are fake scientists but real agenda pushers

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption. 
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Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to hype fake scientists

 
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December 1, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Get it, economics is not a social science but a systems science

 
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Occasional Tweets: Academia and Science is NOT the same thing ― in economics, they are opposites

 


For more about science see AXECquery. 
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Occasional Tweets: In science, only material/formal consistency counts, NOT the number of followers

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Scientific Incompetence. 
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Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to recycle Keynes (III)

 


For details of the big picture see cross-references Keynesianism. 
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Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to recycle Hayek (I)

 


For more about Hayek see AXECquery. 
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November 30, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The MMTers are running out of arguments

 
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Occasional Tweets: Schizophrenia ― the main representative of MMT complains about the smashing success of their policy

 


For more about distribution see AXECorg.
For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT.
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Occasional Tweets: The Classics in Economics were not scientists but political agenda pushers

 


For more about cargo cult see AXECorg. 
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Occasional Tweets: Dear idiots, learn algebra

 


For more about I=S see AXECquery. 
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November 29, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economists ― dim-witted moralizers since the founding fathers

 

For more about science see AXECquery. 


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Occasional Tweets: To this day, economists do not know the difference between opinion and knowledge

 
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November 28, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The economist

 


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November 27, 2021

Occasional Tweets: The fatal flaw

 


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November 26, 2021

Occasional Tweets: Economic textbooks ― pulp science

 


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November 25, 2021

Occasional Tweets: What killed macroeconomics? Economists?

 
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Occasional Tweets: The futile attempt to recycle Bastiat

 




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Screenshot from Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis



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