AXEC: New Foundations of Economics

September 2, 2020

Occasional Tweets: Confusing flows and balances

#MMT

“I have found out what MMT is; it is the science of confusing flows with the balance of flows.” EKH

Profit is a balance, i.e. the difference of flows, and NOT a flow like wage income. For details seehttps://t.co/3x9c31peUB https://t.co/iTvh5FYvhX https://t.co/nIAJmF1Om7
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) September 2, 2020

Links on Inflation

Twitter-Reference ModernMoneyScot and Blog-Reference

The fact is that the Theory of Money ― including MMT ― is proto-scientific garbage. More details:

► Settling the MMT―Inflation issue for good

► Dear idiots, government deficits do NOT cause inflation

► MMT: Distribution is the drawback NOT Inflation

► Economics as tireless production of proto-scientific garbage: inflation theory as an example

► How to get rid of inflation and deflation

► MMT and the inflation-red-herring

► Gov-Deficits do NOT cause inflation

► How some MMTers got inflation wrong

► Inflation: back to basics

► A la recherche de l'inflation perdue

► Forget Friedman, forget the Quantity Theory

► Attention: there are THREE types of inflation

► How Wicksell and the rest got inflation/deflation wrong

► The macroeconomic Law of Supply and Demand for the closed economy with market-clearing is shown with Graphic AXEC64

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

***

"There is a third, and perhaps most important reason why we will also not get inflation. That is because of the nature of modern money."
Tackling the post-coronavirus #InflationMyths #DeficitMyths and #MMT | Brave New Europe https://t.co/TuRJzzdebi
— Modern Money Scotland (@ModernMoneyScot) September 2, 2020

August 31, 2020

The new economic Paradigm requires a new textbook

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘US Federal Reserve statement signals a new phase in the paradigm shift in macroeconomics’

Blog-Reference

Bill Mitchell summarizes current events “Regular readers will know that for the last few years I have been documenting the way that the dominant paradigm in macroeconomics (New Keynesianism) is slowly disintegrating as the dissonance between its empirical predictions and reality becomes too great to ignore and justify. … Last week, the US Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Jerome Powell made a path breaking speech ― New Economic Challenges and the Fed’s Monetary Policy Review ― at the annual economic policy symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City at Jackson Hole. On the same day, the Federal Reserve Bank released a statement ― Federal Open Market Committee announces approval of updates to its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. We have now entered a new phase of the paradigm shift in macroeconomics.”

Bill Mitchell feels validated “This has progressively opened the door for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the emerging rival paradigm.” Mainstream economics has failed “But we are making progress.”

“And, if you scanned the textbook market in macroeconomics looking for guidance to all of this, then you would find only ONE offering that allows you to understand all of this ― yes ― Macroeconomics (William Mitchell, L. Randall Wray, and Martin Watts). Small sales pitch ― but that is the fact.”

Yes, a Paradigm Shift is going on, but it is not headed toward MMT. Yes, mainstream textbooks are obsolete #1, #2, #3 but this does not mean that the new MMT textbook is scientifically acceptable. The fact of the matter is that the foundational MMT sectoral balances equation is provably false.#4 Because of this, the analytical superstructure of MMT is false and as a consequence, the new MMT macroeconomics textbook is scientifically worthless.

The Paradigm Shift moves from false Walrasian microfoundations and false Keynesian macrofoundations to true macrofoundations.#5

The good news for teachers and students is that the axiomatically correct textbook Sovereign Economics is now available.#6

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 To this day, economists have produced NOT ONE textbook that satisfies scientific standards

#2 Economics textbooks ― tombstones at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery

#3 Textbooks and the mental cloning of dumb economists

#4 Wikipedia, economics, scientific knowledge, or political agenda pushing?

#5 Refuting MMT’s Macroeconomics Textbook

#6 Sovereign Economics Amazon.de, BoD, etc.

***

REPLY to Tom Hickey on Sep 2

Bill Mitchell commented on the FED’s announcement of a new monetary strategy: “We have now entered a new phase of the paradigm shift in macroeconomics.” And “Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole was described by a Reuters report (August 28, 2020) ― With new monetary policy approach, Fed lays Phillips curve to rest ― in this way: ‘One of the fundamental theories of modern economics may have finally been put to rest.’

This may be politically true but is scientifically false because the Phillips curve had been put to rest already in 2012.#1

The folks at the FED are a bit slow, worse, they still do not get the point.

The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Employment Law states that in order to increase employment, wages must go UP, and/or prices must go DOWN. To push inflation is pure idiocy.

Yes, for the micro-brains of economists this appears counter-intuitive. But then, microeconomics is long dead. The Paradigm Shift from false Walrasian microfoundations and false Keynesian macrofoundations to true macrofoundations is an accomplished fact.#2

#1 Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster, see Links on the Phillips Curve

#2 Cross-references Paradigm Shift

August 30, 2020

MMT: fraudsters united

Comment on Richard Murphy on ‘Steve Keen’s lightbulb moment on modern monetary theory’*

Blog-Reference

Richard Murphy, Steve Keen, and Stephanie Kelton have been refuted individually some time ago. #1, #2, #3

According to Richard Murphy, the big MMT lightbulb consists of “the deficit creates money”. This is not quite correct because the public deficit creates counterfeit currency. #4 And because of the Profit Law ⇒ Public Deficit = Private Profit, this mode of money creation is NOT neutral with regard to distribution but a massive free lunch for the Oligarchy.

Needless to emphasize that distribution is not an issue for the MMT sales team that poses as progressive friends of WeThePeople.

These are the facts

• MMT policy is NOT in the interest of the WeThePeople.

• MMT policy amounts to an abuse of the fiat money system.

• The profit effect of MMT money-creation/deficit-spending strengthens the Oligarchy.

• Politically, MMT is a fraud, and scientifically, it is garbage. #5

Axiomatic macroeconomics tells one that late capitalism can only survive with ever-increasing public deficit-spending. COVID has made this clear to even the dullest person as deficit-spending explodes around the world. This is why Steve Keen jumped on the MMT bandwagon. His Minsky model now confirms Stephanie Kelton’s new sales brochure. What a happy coincidence!

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

* Tax Research UK

#1 MMT: Richard Murphy’s battle-for-money hoax

#2 Where advanced Heterodoxy — represented by Steve Keen — took the wrong turn

#3 The Kelton-Fraud

#4 The counterfeit currency printers

#5 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT, see cross-references MMT

August 27, 2020

The trouble with truth

Comment on Philip Giraldi on ‘Rashomon American Style–Truth is somewhere in between’

Blog-Reference

Philip Giraldi’s summary misses the point by suggesting that truth is an entirely subjective affair: “The story reveals how all of the contradictory testimony was fundamentally dishonest, in that each participant was interpreting events to support his or her self-interest in the outcome of the tragedy.”

This conclusion is true for the political sphere. In the Rashomon story, though, the 5th person is missing: the detective/scientist. It seems that the paradox of multiple truths has been solved already by the ancient Greeks: “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 idea of truth has no meaning in the political context. It has no meaning in economics either, because economics is not a science. Science is binary i.e. true/false and NOTHING in between. There is NO such thing in science as roughly right or roughly wrong, it is only materially/formally true/false. The swamp between true/false where “nothing is clear and everything is possible” (Keynes) is the natural habitat of morons, agenda pushers, confused confusers, blatherers, fraudsters, trolls, incompetent scientists, in one word, political economists. #1, #2

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times
#2 Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses

Price theory — more than beating the dead horse again and again

Comment on Blair Fix on ‘Supply and demand deconstructed’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Blair Fix summarizes “… Jonathan Nitzan demolishes the neoclassical theory of prices. It’s a master lesson in how to deconstruct a theory.”

Mainstream economics, though, does not need another deconstruction. #1, #2, #3 Mainstreamers have admitted failure long ago. “There is another alternative: to formulate a completely new research program and conceptual approach. As we have seen, this is often spoken of, but there is still no indication of what it might mean.” (Ingrao et al., 1990)

Clearly, everybody knows by now for sure that supply-demand-equilibrium is proto-scientific garbage. Back in 1954, Schumpeter found it still necessary to diffuse doubts about the scientific status of the supply-demand-equilibrium approach “The primitive apparatus of the theory of supply and demand is scientific. But the scientific achievement is so modest, and common sense and scientific knowledge are logically such close neighbors in this case, that any assertion about the precise point at which the one turned into the other must of necessity remain arbitrary.”

So, the right thing to do is to bury and forget the “Totem of the Micro”: “If neoclassical theory is bunk, then what explains prices? Jonathan Nitzan, together with Shimshon Bichler, argues that prices are inseparable from power.” #4

With this, though, everything remains in the old economics-is-a-social-science paradigm. The behavioral assumption of price-taking is replaced by the assumption of price-setting. To remain in the psycho-sociological sphere is the lethal blunder of the power approach because economics is a systems science. #5

Here are the basics of the macrofoundations approach. The elementary production-consumption economy is defined with this set of macroeconomic axioms: (A0) The economy consists of the household and the business sector, which, in turn, consists initially of one giant fully integrated firm. (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.

Under the conditions of market-clearing X=O and budget-balancing C=Yw in each period, the price as the dependent variable is given by P=W/R (1a). The price is determined by the wage rate W, which takes the role of the nominal numéraire, and the productivity R. This is the most elementary case; i.e., when the economy gets more complex, the price equation becomes longer.*

The macroeconomic Law of Supply and Demand (1a) implies W/P=R (1b), i.e., the real wage is always equal to the productivity, no matter how the wage rate W is set or how long the individual or aggregate working time L is. Full employment is possible; the workers always get the whole product O. The workers' living standard depends ultimately on productivity.

The logical next steps are (i) to skip the conditions of market-clearing and budget-balancing and to allow for price-setting, (ii) to differentiate the business sector into multiple firms and markets, and to determine the price structure. #6

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 There is NO such thing as supply-demand-equilibrium
#2 How to Get Rid of Supply-Demand-Equilibrium
#3 The Law of Supply and Demand: Here It Is Finally
#4 This echoes Macht und ökonomisches Gesetz (Power and Economic Law), Schriften des Vereins für Socialpolitik, 1972.
#5 Your economics is refuted on all counts: here is the real thing
#6 See Ch. 3 Market interdependence in Sovereign Economics

“Totem of the Micro” has been coined by Axel Leijonhufvud.

* E.g. AXEC64

***

#PointOfProof

Aug 29

post missing

August 26, 2020

Occasional Tweets: Where does profit come from?

#Economics #Profit

The question ‘Where does profit come from?’ on p. 70 of Bichler/Nitzan Capital as Power is answered on p. 11 ff. of #SovereignEconomics.https://t.co/Gxuijmw6po
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 26, 2020

#LearnEconomics #Profit

The axiomatic #ProfitLaw is to be found already for a long time on Graphic AXEC143d [redirected from https://t.co/92WmLnfHe7]

and other easily accessible places, e.g. SSRN or Bloghttps://t.co/3x9c31peUB

Learn to google. pic.twitter.com/hDDqmaA383
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 26, 2020

#LearnEconomics #Profit

I have alerted you several times since 2015 – free of charge – that your approach is proto-scientific garbage. See blog searchhttps://t.co/IyHrijYpKo
and you will find the #ProfitLaw.

Learn to google.
Learn to read.
Learn to think.
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 26, 2020

#LearnEconomics #Profit

The Profit Theory is False Since Adam Smith … (SSRN Oct 2014)https://t.co/l1bcDv0bPv
Proﬁt for Marxists (SSRN Mar 2014)https://t.co/94jqoxxHCP #Economics #FailedScience #Economists #ScientificIncompetence #DefundEconomics #FireEconomists #ScrapTheLot
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 26, 2020

Lest I forget, Steve Keen got a personal refutation

Debunking Squared (SSRN Nov 2013)https://t.co/WP0GvLkq4d
— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 26, 2020

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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.