AXEC: New Foundations of Economics

February 12, 2019

Economists: agenda pushers, distractors, blockers, muters, censors

Comment on Noah Way on Inês Goncalves Raposo’s ‘On Modern Monetary Theory’

Overview

Economics: a hereditary mental disease with scientific incompetence as father and political fraud as mother
Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
Fraud comes always in the cloak of charity, salvation, or threat of doom
If religion is opium of the people, economics is crack of the people
Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
Economics is a science? You must be joking!
Economists, stupid or corrupt or both?

Twitter/X blocking/muting by

#EconBlocker: Stephanie Kelton

#EconBlocker: Brian Romanchuk

#EconBlocker: Sara Holland

#EconBlocker: Lord Keynes

#EconBlocker: Onlyindreams

#EconBlocker: Mark Flowerchild

#EconBlocker: Patricia Pino

#EconBlocker: The Real Progressives

#EconBlocker: Richard Tye

#EconBlocker: Tony Weston

#EconBlocker: Nick Rowe

#EconBlocker: Rethinking Economics

#EconBlocker: Steve Grumbine

#EconBlocker: Jo Michell

#EconBlocker: Scott Fullwiler

#EconBlocker: Gower Initiative

#EconBlocker: Eric Lonergan

#EconBlocker: Raul Carillo

#EconBlocker: James Tapper

#EconBlocker: Fadhel Kaboub

#EconBlocker: Kim Driver

#EconBlocker: Noah Smith

#EconBlocker: Nathan Tankus

#EconBlocker: Nathan Becker

#EconBlocker: Pavlina Tcherneva

#EconBlocker: Moneymonopolist

#EconBlocker: Steven Hail

#EconBlocker: Edward Harrison

#EconBlocker: Economic Questions

#EconBlocker: Tobias Hlobil

#EconBlocker: Louis-Philippe Rochon

#EconBlocker: Rebuild Macroeconomics

#EconBlocker: MMT podcast

#EconBlocker: Dina Pomeranz

#EconBlocker: Simon Nevin

#EconBlocker: Democratic Restoration Movement

#EconBlocker: Civic Action

#EconBlocker: Relearning Economics

#EconBlocker: Thomas Fazi

#EconBlocker: Lana Dell

#EconBlocker: VeriDelisi

#EconBlocker: Unlearning Economics

#EconBlocker: Deficit Owls

#EconBlocker: Money on the Left

#EconBlocker: Charles J Engine of Hope

#EconBlocker: Jeff Baker

#EconBlocker: Paul Hünermund

#EconBlocker Andrés Bernal

#EconBlocker: Andreas Peichl

#EconBlocker: Sherry Reson

#EconBlocker: Maurice Höfgen

#EconBlocker: Richard Baldwin

#EconBlocker: Macro N Cheese

#EconBlocker: Steve Roth

#EconBlocker: Wolfgang Theil

View Twitter/X for details

#EconBlocker: Paddy Carter

#EconBlocker: Sebastian Gechert

#EconBlocker: Greek Stav

#EconBlocker: Blub_29

#EconBlocker: Minivan Man Tim

#EconBlocker: Lars Jorgensen

#EconBlocker: Tercero-Lucas

#EconBlocker: Lukas Freund

#EconBlocker: Jason Smith

#EconBlocker: George Selgin

#EconBlocker: Sebastian Dullien

#EconBlocker: Dennis Gottschlich

#EconBlocker: Sam Levey

#EconBlocker: Clint Ballinger

#EconBlocker: Philip Armstrong

#EconBlocker: Jan Schnellenbach

#EconBlocker: Post-Keynesian Economic Society

#EconBlocker: Marshall Steinbaum

#EconBlocker: Fiat Money

#EconBlocker: Tobias Kohlstruck

#EconBlocker: Benjamin Born

#EconBlocker: Mark Fabian

#EconBlocker: John Giles

#EconBlocker: Neil Smith

#EconBlocker: Bill Goggin

#EconBlocker: Bill @TxEx

#EconBlocker: Rudi Bachmann

#EconBlocker: Monika Köppl Turyna

#EconBlocker: Patrick Nüß

#EconBlocker: Max Discohouser

#EconBlocker: Devil E. Cheese

#EconBlocker: Jengis Osman

EconBlocker: Unegv Ugidali

#EconBlocker: ABC of MMT

#EconBlocker: John Quiggin

#EconBlocker: Steve Keen

#EconBlocker: Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity

#EconBlocker: Chris McArdle

#EconBlocker: Optimist

#EconBlocker: Paul Gambles

#EconBlocker: Scott Ferguson

#EconBlocker: Modern Money Australia

#EconBlocker: Cambridge University

#EonBlocker: Colin Camerer

#EconBlocker: Nadia Netti

#EconBlocker: Snittroll

#EconBlocker: Marcel Dimke

#EconBlocker: Stephan Ewald

#EconBlocker: Rose Ann Rabiola Miele/Real Progress in Action

#EconBlocker: Pearkes

#EconBlocker: Kathryn Cannon

#EconBlocker: Dominika Langenmayr

#EconBlocker: Max Hauser

#EconBlocker: Dirk Ehnts

#EconBlocker: Angus Armstrong

#EconBlocker: Bichler & Nitzan

#Blocker: ABCs of MMT

#EconBlocker: Pablo Melito

#EconBlocker: Flavio Toxvaerd

#EconBlocker: AusMMT

#EconBlocker: Paul Lewis

#EconBlocker: Jonathan Hahn

#EconBlocker: Australian Real Progressives

#EconBlocker: Justin Wolfers

#EconBlocker: Brotyboy

#EconBlocker: Ashish Barua

#EconBlocker: MMT Switzerland

#EconBlocker: Maxximilian Seijo

#EconBlocker: Stephen Williamson

#EconBlocker: Wojtek Kopczuk

#EconBlocker: Beyond the Spectrum

#EconBlocker: Alan Luchetti

#EconBlocker: Simard-Casanova

#EconBlocker: Drizt81

#EconBlocker: politicswithnick

#EconBlocker: Seminar Marxist Theory

#EconBlocker: Jayne Flanagan

#EconBlocker: Gio de Biase

#EconBlocker: Plurale Ökonomik Wien

#EconBlocker: Arash Molavi Vasséi

#EconBlocker: Shengwu Li

#EconBlocker: Modern Money Scot

#EconBlocker: Cory Doctorow

#EconBlocker: Jennifer Doleac

#EconBlocker: Economists for Future

#EconBlocker: MMT France

#EconBlocker: Lucia Pradella

#EconBlocker: Ferdinand Fichtner

#EconBlocker: Sophia Kuehnlenz

#Econblocker: Graham Brownlow

#EconBlocker: Lars Syll

#EconBlocker: Francesco Trebbi

#EconBlocker: Sakshi Aravind

#EconBlocker: Lorna Slater

#EconBlocker: Jeff Coventry

#EconBlocker: Fundacja Lipińskiego

#EconBlocker: Rohan Grey

#EconBlocker: cdubford

#EconBlocker: Foes

#EconBlocker: MMT India

#EconBlocker: Nick Testa

#EconBlocker: Beatrice Cherrier

#EconBlocker: David Roberts

#EconBlocker: Pufendorf Ges.

#EconBlocker: Francesco Sergi

#EconBlocker: KynarethNoBaka

#EconBlocker: Brad DeLong

#EconBlocker: NOUS_Network

#EconBlocker: Claudia Sahm

#EconBlocker: Cartesian Otter

#EconBlocker: Carl Mühlbach

#EconBlocker: Man in a pit

#EconBlocker: Andreas Botsch

#EconBlocker: Ramona Massachi

#EconBlocker: Aaron Sahr

#EconBlocker: Thibault Laurentjoye

#EconBlocker: Ben Golub

#EconBlocker: Matthew Klein

#EconBlocker: Pascal Michaillat

#EconBlocker: Cléo Chassonnerie-Zaïgouche

#EconBlocker: Microfounded

#EconBlocker: ECONtribute

#EconBlocker: Sant'Anna

#EconBlocker: Farzad Saidi

#EconBlocker: Frances Coppola

#EconBlocker: Nuno Palma

#EconBlocker: KriWis Berlin

#EconBlocker: Michael Clemens

#EconBlocker: Charles Hayden

#EconBlocker: Thomas Beschorner

#EconBlocker: TakingHayekSeriously

#EconBlocker: Popcornpunch

#EconBlocker: Christian Bayer

#EconBlocker: Steven Medema

#EconBlocker: Lukas

#EconBlocker: Economic Ethics

#EconBlocker: Isabella Weber

#EconBlocker: Philip Jung

#EconBlocker: Cameron Murray

#EconBlocker: Ben Moll

#EconBlocker: Jim G

#EconBlocker: 50linesonly

#EconBlocker: Paul

#EconBlocker: Beautiful Loser

#EconBlocker: Timon Henze

#EconBlocker: Noah Williams

#EconBlocker: Institute for Humane Studies

#EconBlocker: Post-Monetarist Political Economy

#EconBlocker: Arjun Jayadev

#EconBlocker: Antonio Andreoni

#EconBlocker: Johanna Sprondel

#EconBlocker: Carlo Masala

#EconBlocker: Warren Mosler

#EconBlocker: Picss3o

#EconBlocker: Ty Keynes

#EconBlocker: Productivity Institute

#EconBlocker: Joules / Jules

#EconBlocker: Fabian Lange

#EconBlocker: Bruno Frey

#EconBlocker: Malcolm Reavell

#EconBlocker: Yes

#EconBlocker: Leo Mühlenweg

#EconBlocker: Claire Jackson-Prior

#EconBlocker: Jan Schulz-Gebhard

#EconBlocker: David McNab

#EconBlocker: Michael Thrower

#EconBlocker: Brian Albrecht

#EconBlocker: Per Bylund

#EconBlocker: MMT101

#EconBlocker: Ashis Barua

#EconBlocker: Jesús Fernández-Villaverde

#EconBlocker: Steve Hall

#EconBlocker: Mark Thoma

Twitter/X Aug 6

#EconBlocker: Ezquid

#EconBlocker: Modern Money Australia

#EconBlocker: Aaron B

#EconBlocker: Tom Hickey

#EconBlocker: Payam Sharifi

#EconBlocker: Ingrid Kvangraven

#EconBlocker: Steve Keen

#EconBlocker: Scott Fullwiler

#EconBlocker: Carolina Alves

#EconBlocker: Bill Mitchell

#EconMuter: Brian Romanchuk

#EconHider: Per Bylund

#EconBlocker: Andrew McLeod

#EconBlocker: Rudy Havenstein

#EconBlocker: Relearning Economics

#EconBlocker: Insane Economist Quotes

Blog blocking/muting/censoring by

Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder

Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Lars Syll’s spam folder

Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Real-World Economics Review’s spam folder

Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Mark Thoma’s spam folder

Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Nick Rowe’s spam folder

Needed: The Worst of the Worst of economics blogs

#EconBlocker: Bill Mitchell #EconBlocker: Lars Syll #EconBlocker: Real-World Economics Review #EconBlocker: Mark Thoma #EconBlocker: Nick Rowe

Scientific incompetence and lack of integrity

For details of the big picture, see cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists

Feynman Integrity, fake science, and the econblogosphere

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Related 'You don’t see what you don’t see: censorship in the econblogosphere' and 'Economics, free speech, and censorship' and 'Needed: The Worst of the Worst of economics blogs' and 'Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?' and 'Economists: “a bevy of camp-following whores”' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion'.

***

#PointOfProof
#EconBlocker
#HallOfScientificShame

***

For more about #Econblocker, see AXECquery.

***

#EconBlockers violate clearly defined professional standards

***

It is noteworthy that the #EconBlocker Unlearning Economics of all people has put a video about The Toxic Culture of the Economics Profession on YouTube.

***

Twitter/X, Nov 11, 2024 Visibility

Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems

Comment on Inês Goncalves Raposo on ‘On Modern Monetary Theory’*

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Contrary to their claim of doing science, economists have never been anything else than political agenda pushers. Because of this, the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” is a fraud.#1

“There are always many different opinions and conventions concerning any one problem or subject-matter... This shows that they are not all true. For if they conflict, then at best only one of them can be true. Thus it appears that Parmenides ... was the first to distinguish clearly between truth or reality on the one hand, and convention or conventional opinion (hearsay, plausible myth) on the other ...” (Popper)

The ancient Greek’s distinction between episteme (= knowledge) and doxa (= opinion) corresponds to the distinction between science and non-science.

The scientist’s goal is to definitively settle a given question “That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry is a very important proposition.” (Peirce)

Scientific logic posits a binary division between opposites. Truth and falsehood are opposites: there is no half-truth or half-falsehood.#2 Science is predicated on the Principle of the Excluded Middle.

The Excluded Middle, the swamp between true/false where ‘nothing is clear and everything is possible’ (Keynes), is the habitat of non- and anti-scientists, believers, IQ test failures, schizophrenics, political agenda pushers, and fraudsters.

At present, economics is NOT a science but a heap of half-truths/half-falsehoods. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong.

Economists work hard to maintain the status quo of the pluralism of false theories. Their modus operandi is meta-communication, that is, economists mainly talk about what other economists have said or really meant or how they have been misinterpreted.

A recent example is MMT. Inês Goncalves Raposo exhausted herself with name-dropping and who said what without ever coming to a conclusion about what is true and what is false. Thus she follows the basic methodological rule of economics, i.e. never to reach a final true/false conclusion but to keep everything in the swamp of inconclusiveness and the logical nirvana of A and non-A and to advertise pluralistic schizo as an epistemological ideal.#3

The fact of the matter is that MMT is refuted on all counts.#4 Scientifically, MMT is dead and buried. And exactly at this point, the habitual fraud kicks in: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern, 1941)

Inês Goncalves Raposo’s blog post is a clear attempt to keep economics in the proto-scientific swamp of the pluralism of provably false theories.#5

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

* Bruegel, blog post Feb 11
#1 The real problem with the economics Nobel
#2 Keynesians never got this vital point: “For Keynes, as for Post Keynesians the guiding motto is ‘it is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong!’” (Davidson). See here.
#3 MMT: How to get out of the infinite meta-communication loop
#4 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
#5 There is NO such thing as “smart, honest, honorable economists”

Related 'Links on capital-T Truth, stupidity, corruption' and 'A new curriculum for swampies?' and 'Refuting MMT’s Macroeconomics Textbook' and 'Opinion vs. Knowledge' and 'From opinion recycling to real scientific progress' and 'Knowledge only — no opinion'.

For more about immunizing stratagem see AXECquery.

February 11, 2019

Marxism is one of four instances of proto-scientific garbage

Comment on Chris Dillow on ‘In defence of conservative Marxism’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Economics is a failed/fake science. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/ formally inconsistent, and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong.

As a result, since Adam Smith/Karl Marx economic policy guidance NEVER has had sound scientific foundations.#1 This, of course, holds also for Marxism.

Marx’s profit theory is provably false.#2
As a consequence, the concepts of exploitation and classes are false.
Marx lacks the concept of cross-over exploitation.#3, #4
Because the foundational concepts are false, Marx’s whole analytical superstructure is false.
Because the theory is defective, Marxian economic policy guidance was bound to fail from the very beginning.
After-Marxians have not spotted Marx’s foundational blunder to this day.#5
Marxians are scientifically incompetent just like non-Marxians and all together are only employable as clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus.

Forget the whole Capitalism/Socialism/Communism thing. Neither left-wing nor right-wing economists ever knew what profit is and how the actual monetary economy works. Economics has no scientific truth-value, only political use-value.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Karl Marx, fake scientist
#2 Proﬁt for Marxists
#3 Capitalism, poverty, exploitation, and cross-over exploitation
#4 If we only had classes
#5 Economists simply don’t get it

Knowledge only — no opinion

Science does not explain everything, but non-science explains nothing.

Neither orthodox nor heterodox economics satisfies the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency.

Economists cannot explain how the economy works. The Profit Theory is false since Adam Smith. There is much opinion and little knowledge.

Opinion is the realm of political economics, knowledge is the realm of theoretical economics.

Political economics is scientifically worthless.

Theoretical economics is built upon clearly stated premises, i.e., upon a set of axioms.

Orthodoxy got the axiomatic foundations wrong and Heterodoxy has none at all.

Economics is a failed science. Economists are incompetent scientists.

Profit

Neither Classicals, nor Walrasians, nor Marshallians, nor Marxians, nor Keynesians, nor Institutionialists, nor Monetary Economists, nor MMTers, nor Austrians, nor Sraffaians, nor Evolutionists, nor Game theorists, nor EconoPhysicists, nor RBCers, nor New Keynesians, nor New Classicals ever came to grips with profit. Hence, they all fail to capture the essence of the market economy.

Because of this, economists have nothing to offer in the way of a scientifically founded economic policy guidance.

The hybrid science

As a first approximation, one can agree on the general characteristic that the economy is a complex system.

However, with the term system one usually associates a structure with components that are non-human. In order to stress the obvious fact that humans are an essential component of the economic system the market economy should be characterized more precisely as a complex hybrid human/system entity.

The scientific method is straightforwardly applicable to the sys-component but not to the hum-component. While it is clear that the economy always has to be treated as an indivisible whole, for good methodological reasons the analysis has to start with the objective system-component.

In gestalt-psychological terms the economic system is the foreground, individual behavior the background. Common sense wrongly insists that the hum-component must always be in the foreground. This fallacy compares to geo-centrism. The economic system has its own logic which is different from the behavioral logic of humans. The systemic logic is what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand.

There are systemic laws but no behavioral laws. Systemic laws have the same methodological status as physical laws.

Neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy can tell what the systemic laws of the actual monetary economy are.

Whether the outcome of the human/system-interaction is good or bad is a politcal question that lies outside of theoretical economics. Theoretical economics explains how the actual economy works - no less, no more.

Narrative vs.Theory

Psychological, sociological or behavioral assumptionism cannot yield anything other than a gossip model of the world. Second-guessing the agents is not economic analysis.

Science deals exclusively with propositions that can in principle be decided by objective means. The rest is opinion, faith, phantasy, motive speculation, allegation, hallucination, myth, paranoia, ink-blot association, psychology, philosophy, in one word: storytelling.

Storytelling is the original mode of communication in the social realm — except science.

Political economics is storytelling and, by default, the natural habitat of confused confusers. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are social narratives and not scientifically valid representations of reality.

"The truth is, most persons, not excepting professional economists, are satisfied with very hazy notions." (Fisher)

In marked contrast, theoretical economics lives up to the standards of material and formal consistency. A scientific theory is the best mental representation of reality that is humanly possible.

Theory starts with a set of objective and consistent axioms.

Paradigm Shift

"The problem is not just to say that something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy." (Feynman)

"As will become evident, there is more agreement on the defects of orthodox theory than there is on what theory is to replace it: but all agreed that the point of the criticism is to clear the ground for construction." (Nell)

"The moral of the story is simply this: it takes a new theory, and not just the destructive exposure of assumptions or the collection of new facts, to beat an old theory." (Blaug)

"Is it not a fact, which stares at us from the histories of all sciences, that it is much more difficult for the human mind to forge the most elementary conceptual schemes than it is to elaborate the most complicated superstructure when those elements are well in hand?" (Schumpeter)

"The task of producing knowledge against the grain requires imagination." (Mirowski)

"A new idea is extremely difficult to think of. It takes a fantastic imagination." (Feynman)

"The scientific imagination dreams of explanations and laws." (Peirce)

"It is brilliance of imagination which makes the glory of science." (Evans)

"... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ ... than we knew in 1790, after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations." (Clower)

Selftest and to watch for

You apply one of these items

• supply-demand-equilibrium,

• general equilibrium,

• marginal utility,

• well-behaved production functions,

• total income = value of output,

• total income = wages + profits,

• I=S,

• wage rate down - employment up,

• behavioral axioms?

Then you are out of science because of unnoticed material or formal inconsistency.

Every economist who uses the concept of equilibrium is scientifically incompetent because she/he failed to notice that equilibrium is an economic nonentity.

Practically this means: as soon as the word equilibrium appears in an economic text it can be thrown into the waste basket. The same holds for all other nonentities.

The vast majority of economists deals mainly with nonentities. This is why Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is scientifically worthless.

Since Adam Smith, economic policy guidance has no sound scientific foundations.

To be replaced (1)

The core premises of Orthodoxy are uncertain and false and this fully explains the failure of the research program.

“As with any Lakatosian research program, the neo-Walrasian program is characterized by its hard core, heuristics, and protective belts. Without asserting that the following characterization is definitive, I have argued that the program is organized around the following propositions: HC1 economic agents have preferences over outcomes; HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints; HC3 agent choice is manifest in interrelated markets; HC4 agents have full relevant knowledge; HC5 observable outcomes are coordinated, and must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub)

The inescapable Paradigm Shift consists of the move from this obsolete hard core to the superior set of structural axioms.

To be replaced (2)

The fundamental equations of macroeconomics have been formulated by Keynes in two lines.

"Income = value of output = consumption + investment. Saving = income - consumption. Therefore saving = investment."

This elementary syllogism is demonstrably false. The demonstration consists in the proof that Keynes could not solve the Profit Puzzle. Neither did Post-Neo-New-Keynesians.

In the most general terms, the economics Paradigm Shift consists in switching from the behavior-centric bottom-up approach to the structure-centric top-down approach. This is comparable to the Copernican turn from geo-centrism to helio-centrism.

Consensus

Economics is a science without scientists. Because they are ignorant of the elementary difference between profit and income, the present generation of economists has not made and cannot make a significant contribution to the discussion about how the actual economy works.

Every orthodox or heterodox economist can convince himself/herself that their profit theory is defective.

Every non-economist can — by applying elementary logic — convince himself that conventional profit theories are false. See 'How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down'.

Because the profit theory is false the whole of conventional economic theory has to be rejected.

"What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse." (McCauley)

No scientist will ever accept Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, or Austrianism. These approaches are logically and/or empirically refuted. This is the actual methodological state-of-art. Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, or Austrians are still at the proto-scientific stage. These approaches cannot be improved, only abandoned.

Economists are a public nuisance because they have an opinion on everything but knowledge of nothing.

About me

“Bottom line is that your profit law is just a definition you made up nobody else agrees with, nobody. You are all alone with your precious tautology.” Barkley Rosser

“In any event, your entire theory is based on you doing macro accounting in wacky fashion that nobody agrees with.” Brian Romanchuk

"Your stuff is at least original: it's quite cool after a couple of decades at this to see a fresh Economics. But real promises are not advanced: they were around for millennia until the Greeks obscured them with Metaphysics." Chris Cook

"No mate, they're you-blockers. You have all the personality traits of a crank, and the rest of them have tired of you. You could be 100% right, and you'd still die as your only follower." Steve Keen

"What you are doing fills is all with joy, your constructive critique is most welcome!"

Achim Truger,

German Council of Economic Experts,

in a failed attempt to be ironic

"200+ years of thought and yet you are the only one who gets it—or even understands your argument. Thank god we have you, pseudonymous Twitter user. Otherwise no one would know."

William Luther

Assistant Professor of Economics

in a failed attempt to be funny

"Egmonts profit law is the perfect equation that demonstrates this in action. Put the equation into a spreadsheet and then add government spending and watch how it flows into profits. Enter in some debt (-Sm) and watch too how that flows into profits. It can't go anywhere else."

Dean

About the rest of economics

Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT, Pluralism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/ formally inconsistent. Economics is a failed science.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” Leonardo da Vinci

In economics, the overwhelming majority belongs to Class III. This explains why economics is after 200+ years still at the proto-scientific level.

The obvious task for every economist is to advance from cargo cult science and political agenda-pushing to science. This is absolutely beyond the means of Class III people.

For 200+ years now, economists are not scientists but agenda pushers, useful idiots, clowns in the political Circus Maximus.

Nopopop

This blog does not add to any popular/un- popular opinion.

This blog does not hand out advice about how to avoid taxes, to get rich on the stock market, to be successful in business, to increase the wealth of nations, to run an economy, to maximize welfare, to prevent national/global bankruptcy, to improve the institutional setup of society, to get out of national/global depression, nor about how to save humankind or any subgroup thereof.

This blog is about the true theory of the actual monetary economy.

"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)

Focus

Science is of primary interest and importance. Scientists are of secondary interest.

With regard to science, most people lose focus easily because of a natural preference for anecdotes and gossip over facts or subjectivity over objectivity.

Hence, Schumpeter once considered it necessary to remind his habitually disoriented fellow economists: “Remember: occasionally, it may be an interesting question to ask why a man says what he says; but whatever the answer, it does not tell us anything about whether what he says is true or false.”

Science is about true/false and nothing else.

Disclaimer

Missing Blog-Reference links: AXEC does not guarantee that their comments can at any time be recovered from where they have been posted intitially because the availability depends on the publication policy of the blog owner which is implicitly accepted on entering a debate. See also: 'Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?'

Texts: Parts of arbitrary length of any of the author's texts is and will be used again by the author in papers, books, websites, blogs, and other media without explicit reference. The right to make corrections or minor textual improvements on reutilization is reserved. Therefore, it is always a good idea to double-check for the latest version.

Caution: Do not expect a corroboration of your political view. Neither a refutation. Political economics has been scientifically worthless since Adam Smith. Politics has to be separated from economics because it is categorically different from science. The best science can do and has always done is to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you have been objectively wrong or ignorant until now. Science goes beyond the naive common sense of today and becomes the sophisticated common sense of tomorrow.

See also Terms of Use and Legal at www.AXEC.org

Outlook

To recall, while political economics is storytelling, theoretical economics adheres to scientific standards.

The first task of theoretical economics is to get the axiomatic foundations right. This is what J. S. Mill called the opus magnum. Neither Orthodoxy nor Heterodoxy came up with a reasonable solution to this day. This explains the secular stagnation of economics.

There is no serious alternative to structural axiomatic economics. This is not a matter of opinion but of proof. The sole criteria are material and formal consistency.

All of economics has to be reconstructed from the ground up.

Major economic policy implication

The price mechanism does not work as standard economics hypothesizes. The axiom-based Employment Law states that overall employment increases if the average wage rate increases relative to average price and productivity. This gives one the lever to improve the employment situation all over the world and to fend off deflation without rising debt and without artificial capacity growth. To increase the average price relative to the average wage rate and productivity increases unemployment.

Right policy depends on true theory.

“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)

Lacking the true theory, economists promote for more than 200 years opinion instead of knowledge.