Occasional Tweets: Politics corrupts science, always and everywhere (I)

 

The strict separation of science and politics is long gone. Politics has steadily corrupted science. Now it's official. Make no mistake, science as founded 2300+ years ago by the Greeks has been captured. Scientists have become clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus. Henceforth, the appeal to science/knowledge/truth means NOTHING. For more details see Links on the Economics Nobel and cross-references Political Economics/ Stupidity/Corruption.

Remembrance Day: Official Capitulation/Sellout of Science, Sep 3, 2020.

#Science#NobelPrize#NoFalseHeroMemorials

Clearly, these 81 Nobelists are NOT aware of what science is all about and what scientific ethics implies. They are but clowns and useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus. Science, too, has become part of a clown show.

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) September 3, 2020

👎

— Rüdiger Kuhnke (@KuhnkeRuediger) September 16, 2020

24 winners of the Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of computing, endorse Biden. They cite Trump's anti-immigrant policies that are keeping out students, scientists, inventors.
First time Turing Award laureates have endorsed a candidatehttps://t.co/UWLJGw6xFM

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 20, 2020

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now.

The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death. We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President.https://t.co/8TlH7shjFn

— Scientific American (@sciam) September 15, 2020

13 Nobel Prize-winning economists back Bidenhttps://t.co/ARNANds60I

— Axios (@axios) September 22, 2020

I'm seeing a pattern:

"Thirteen Nobel Prize-winning economists said Tuesday they are backing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s economic agenda"https://t.co/89GH277LaW pic.twitter.com/pPXcIid5ko

— Erik Brynjolfsson (@erikbryn) September 25, 2020

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For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption

***

The Unz Review Sep 26 

Twitter/X Jun 28, 2024 Worthless science, "worthless" Laureates

Twitter/X Sep 11, 2024, The separation of science and politics is gaining ground

Occasional Tweets: Economists have a problem with intellectual honesty

 

#Economics claims to be #Science but #Walrasianism, #Keynesianism, #Marxianism, #Austrianism, #MMT, & #Pluralism are axiomatically false & materially/formally inconsistent. #Economists violate scientific #Ethics on a daily basis. ⇒https://t.co/xM9Qi15Jvs pic.twitter.com/t7e96pQOID

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) April 5, 2023

Knowledge vs Belief

Comment on Asad Zaman on ‘The marginalisation of morality’

Blog-Reference

This blog [RWER] distinguishes itself from all the rest by its title Real-World Economics Review Blog. The keyword is economics. Now, everybody understands that (i) the economy is but one aspect of the real world, and (ii), that economics is the science that tries to find out how the economy works. Hence economics is restricted with respect to its subject matter and committed to the scientific method.

Since its beginnings, economics has overstepped its narrow limits. The simple reason is that authors and teachers and ideologues and politicians have consistently tried to instrumentalize economics for other purposes. This gave us political economics in the widest sense whereby the term political embraces all belief systems including, of course, religions (Nelson, 2006).

To the extent that theoretical economics has been hijacked by political economics, it has to regain its full independence. That part of economics that has been political from Smith, to Marx, to Hayek, to Keynes, and on to the actual orthodox and heterodox activists has to be clearly separated from science and eventually thrown out.

Theoretical economics is about the world economy. It is not about the Greece or European or US economy. And it is certainly not at all about the problems of the American educational system. It is the task of American citizens to organize the education of their children. And no economist has any legitimacy of telling anybody how this could or should be done.

Most belief systems are expansionary and rely on the time-tested experience that the best way to propagate belief is to hijack the educational system, including, of course, the universities.

Now, science is about knowledge and this is the exact opposite of belief. Science restricts itself to things that can be known, and belief systems second-guess things that cannot be known. Science has its own moral standard that is not derived from any belief system. What is most important, though, is that humanity has learned in the course of history that morality is a fundamental human trait that comes before religion or politics. Non-religious people have moral standards that are on average higher than those of religious people who have, again on average, unthinkingly adapted to their rather specific cultural environments.

We may agree with Assad Zaman that morality is at a low ebb in the USA and the world at large. We do certainly not agree that this is due to a lack of religious education.

As economists, we have a problem that has nothing at all to do with morals and belief systems. It is a fact that the scientific level of economics is at a low ebb in the USA and the world at large. As a result, we have no economic theory that satisfies the scientific standards of material and formal consistency. And here moral comes in again. By propagating refuted or irrefutable theories or belief systems the representative economist violates scientific ethics.

To do some sociology about the deplorable state of American universities is not real-world economics. It is the proper task of Heterodox economics to emancipate economics from all belief systems and to make it a real science that after 200+ years of groping in the dark eventually finds out how the actual economy works.#1

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Nelson, R. H. (2006). Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.

#1 For a start see the belief-free New Curriculum.

Asad Zaman marches with the Zeitgeist down a blind alley

Comment on Asad Zaman/Tom Hickey on ‘My Journey from Theory to Reality’

Blog-Reference

The philosopher Tom Hickey sketches the great trends of history: “Many of the traditional worldviews are embedded in a religious contexts that have become cultural. Even in secular China, President Xi is resurrecting Confucius as a cultural icon, and in the supposedly secular US, dominant religious groups are asserting influence more openly, with science itself subject to challenge when it is perceived to conflict with tradition. Asad Zaman’s post is good example of this rising trend, as well as what a highly educated person asking such questions might do about it. This process is an iteration of the historical dialectic as liberal and traditionalism interact to forge a complementary Zeitgeist that moves history forward a step.”

What are the new insights of the new Zeitgeist? “Since most fancy assumptions we make in statistics and econometrics are wrong, we need to learn how to do simple and basic inferences, which actually makes life much easier for students of the subject ― we need to teach them basic and intuitive things, not complex models and math …”

The problem with simple and intuitive things is that they regularly turned out to be false as science progressed. This is why J. S. Mill had no friendly word for the bigots and votaries of common sense: “People fancied they saw the sun rise and set, the stars revolve in circles round the pole. We now know that they saw no such thing; what they really saw was a set of appearances, equally reconcileable with the theory they held and with a totally different one. It seems strange that such an instance as this, ... , should not have opened the eyes of the bigots of common sense, and inspired them with a more modest distrust of the competency of mere ignorance to judge the conclusions of cultivated thought.”

Common sense has never been a convincing argument in the scientific sphere, but it has always been a very effective rhetorical tool in the political sphere. All religious and political fraud in the last 3000 years has been performed by telling simple stories and by appealing to elementary emotions.

Science is different. Scientific truth is defined by material and formal consistency and not by what makes life easier for students. Lazy students have not developed aircraft and life-saving heart surgery. Neither have retarded political economists produced anything of scientific value. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and MMT are provably false. Economics is not a body of certain knowledge but a heap of inconsistent opinions.

Asad Zaman resumes: “Regarding social, political and economic thought, many if not most of the foremost authorities equate economic liberalism with Western capitalism as the dominant mode of production and also view political liberalism in the form of representative democracy being determined by capitalism as economic liberalism.”

Obviously, liberalism and democracy are political concepts or ideologies. They have nothing to do with science. Economics as a science does NOT deal with ideologies but with how the economic system works. Political agenda pushers like Adam Smith or Karl Marx cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be accepted as scientists. They were nothing but brain-dead political storytellers.

Asad Zaman is correct in his criticism of political economics. It is fake science. However, as long as he teaches his students “basic and intuitive things” economics will not rise above the proto-scientific level.#2 To replace one BS with another BS does not count as scientific progress.

The macroeconomic Profit Law reads Q≡Yd+(I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M), and it holds for Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism independently of whether the dominant belief is Islamic, Christian, Hinduistic, Confucian, Atheistic, or Pagan. Science is universal.

History tells one that human progress comes alone from science and neither from religious beliefs nor from political economics nor from philosophical Zeitgeist blather.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Why J. S. Mill had no friendly word for the bigots and votaries of common sense
#2 Zamanomics

MMT: The fusion of Wall Street and Academia

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘When two original MMT developers get together to discuss their work’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Bill Mitchell summarizes: “Last week, Warren Mosler and I had one of our regular catchups and we discussed at length the state of play in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We are quite protective of it. We mused about how we started out on this Project and where it has gone. As old stagers do when they get together. We also reflected and compared notes on what the state of MMT is now, given the increasing visibility of the ideas in the mainstream media all around the world and the proliferation of social media activists who have chosen to identify and promote our ideas. There were aspects of that development that we identified as being of concern for us and other aspects which we considered to be a cause for optimism (celebration is too strong a word).”

In other words, the two MMT chief propagandists congratulated themselves and laid down the 2019 communication strategy for the foot soldiers, a.k.a social media activists, “who have chosen to identify and promote our ideas”. Unfortunately, these activists a.k.a trolls/operatives/shills/salespeople, impair the reputation of MMT because they “use the term MMT as a slogan rather than relating to it as a coherent and body of academic work in economic theory and practice that has been meticulously developed over more than 25 years.”

In order to restore reputation and credibility and to raise the low standards of social media communication, #1 and #2, Bill Mitchell took it upon himself to lay down the joint list of essential talking points of MMT propaganda.

What appears to be a bit strange at first glance is that Bill Mitchell and Warren Mosler do not address once the lethal critique of MMT, that is, that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy. The word profit does not appear at all in the whole article. As the old quip says, Economics without profit is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

So, Bill Mitchell’s (Academia) and Warren Mosler’s (Wall Street) joint propaganda directive talks about everything between heaven and earth except MMT’s real political agenda, that is, money-making for the Oligarchy.#3 Obviously, it is intended as a user manual for disinformation and political fraud.

Accordingly, the basic principles of MMT, as laid down by the Oligarchy’s spokespersons, do not deal with how the monetary economy works but with how the state works.

Basic Principle 1: “The state, from inception, as the sole supplier of the funds needed to pay taxes or buy the debt issued by the state, must necessarily impose tax liabilities on the non-government sector before it can spend.”

This is NOT correct. A monetary economy with zero taxes is a real possibility. #4, #5, #6 So, the whole MMT “money story” breaks down already in the first sentence.

There is no need to waste time with the rest of the story.#7

MMT is simply poor science. “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) MMTers do NOT have the true theory.

This is the fact of the matter. The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law reads Q_m≡Y_d+(I−S_m)+(G−T)+(X−M). With regard to the government’s budget, it boils down to Public Deficit = Private Profit, i.e., (G−T)≡Q_m. This piece of pure economic analysis translates into the scientific insight that MMT’s foundational sectoral balances equation is false, and into the political insight that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy. In other words, “progressive” MMT policy is a political fraud.#8

The fraud is exactly located in this assertion: “In accounting terms, the government’s deficit (surplus) is exactly equal at all times to the non-government sector’s surplus (deficit).”#9

MMT is a refuted economic theory, and its proponents are either stupid or corrupt or both. Bill Mitchell’s and Warren Mosler’s joint propaganda directive is the incontrovertible proof.

The general public, a.k.a. WeThePeople is accustomed to the idea that the state is in the hands of the Oligarchy but upholds the idea of the independence, objectivity, and impartiality of science. Economics has never been a science, but what Feynman called a cargo cult science. It is NOT a coincidence that both Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the United States Declaration of Independence were published in 1776. Together, they constitute the birth certificate of the US Oligarchy.

MMT stands firmly in this tradition. Its scientific content is zero, and its scientific ethics is zero.#10

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 You are fighting for life? On all fronts? MMT can save you! Or maybe not?
#2 The Kelton-Fraud
#3 MMT: A free lunch for the Oligarchy
#4 The Third Way: Towards the Happy Zero-Tax economy
#5 The ultimate ― analytical ― origin of money
#6 Nick Rowe’s soapbubbling about money
#7 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
#8 Economics: A pointless left-right wrestling show
#9 MMT and the magical profit disappearance
#10 MMT: Time to say goodbye

Related 'MMT, Warren Mosler, and the little helpers from Wall Street and Academia' and 'Deficit-spending/money-creation is ALWAYS a bad deal for WeThePeople' and 'MMT and the promotion of Wall Street's idea of social policy' and 'MMT: The one deadly error/fraud of Warren Mosler' and 'Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder'. For details of the big picture, see cross-references Scientific Incompetence.

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REPLY to Joe on Dec 14

You say: “Imo, Principle 3 should be principle 1, as the sectoral balances is the most important economic principle, by far. It’s the basis of every single economic transaction, monetary or barter, ever done. I gained what you lost and you gained what I lost. We may decide we’re both better off but nevertheless, the zero-sum nature of it remains. This principle alone rules out much of mainstream economic thought, especially in the European continental context. Everyone can’t be in surplus simultaneously.”

Mathematically true: Everyone can’t be in surplus simultaneously.

MMTers, though, got the math wrong. The blunder is exactly located in this assertion: “In accounting terms, the government’s deficit (surplus) is exactly equal at all times to the non-government sector’s surplus (deficit).”

The axiomatically correct 3-sector relation reads (G−T)≡Q_m+S_m,#1 i.e., the government’s deficit (surplus) is exactly equal at all times to the SUM of the business sector’s surplus (deficit) and the household sector’s surplus (deficit).

The business sector’s surplus Q_m is called profit, and the household sector’s surplus S_m is called saving. The business sector’s deficit is called loss, and the household sector’s deficit is called dissaving. All combinations of the business sector’s profit/loss and the household sector’s saving/dissaving that are equal to (G−T) are possible.

The blunder of Principle 3 invalidates the WHOLE of MMT. The two storytellers, Bill Mitchell and Warren Mosler, are too stupid for the elementary mathematics that underlies macroeconomic accounting.#2 Needless to emphasize that the “social media activists who have chosen to identify and promote” their ideas understand even less. They are brain-dead agenda pushers, as the posts of S400 and Clint Ballinger clearly demonstrate.


#1 Causally speaking, it reads Q_m⇐(G−T)−S_m, but this is not the point at the moment. The point is that one has 3 sectors (government, business, household) and NOT 2 (government, “non-government”). The inadmissible collapsing of the business sector and household sector to the “non-government” sector makes profit disappear. This operation, the Humpty Dumpty Fallacy, is absolutely disqualifying for an academic economist.
#2 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism

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REPLY to Kaivey on Dec 14

You say: “Egmont says they when the government deficit spends it creates inflation …”

No, I prove the exact opposite: deficit spending per se does NOT cause inflation.#1


#1 MMT and the inflation-red-herring

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REPLY to Kaivey on Dec 15

You say: “… when the government deficit spends … the rich capture the money, but they capture most of people’s money in the end anyway. If people borrow from the banks, they capture this money as well when they buy goods and services. ”

The answer is in the mathematical truth: Everyone can’t be in surplus simultaneously.

So, if the balance of the government sector (G−T) is zero, and the balance of the household sector Sm is zero, the business sector as a whole cannot make any profit, i.e., Qm=0. This follows from the macroeconomic Profit Law Qm≡(G−T)−Sm.

So, “the rich” can capture NOTHING, i.e., cannot be in surplus, if the other sectors together are not in deficit. Profit for the economy as a whole does NOT depend on greediness or grabbiness or profit maximization or other psychological/behavioral factors but solely on the macroeconomic balances.

While it is true that one firm can increase profit by increasing productivity or lowering wages, this does NOT hold for the economy as a whole. This is the Fallacy of Composition.

“WeThePeople” can effortlessly prevent “the rich” from “capturing” profit by setting the sectoral balances right.#1 With deficit-spending/money-creation, though, MMTers do the exact OPPOSITE.


#1 How the 99 percent can bring overall profit of the 1 percent legally down to zero in 2017

Scientific ignorance is political strength

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Radical uncertainty ― a question of economic methodology’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Apr 14

Economics is a scientific failure for 200+ years. The four major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and that all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong. Methodologically, economics can be described as pluralism of provably false theories.

Economists have many explanations/excuses about why they have not achieved much of real scientific value. Here is the classical answer: “Years ago I heard Mr. Cobden say at a League Meeting that ‘Political Economy was the highest study of the human mind, for that the physical sciences required by no means so hard an effort’.” (Bagehot, 1885)

In Lars Syll’s modern parlance the chief difficulty is: “Radical uncertainty is feature of a complex adaptive system a chief characteristic of which is emergence. Emergence is at the heart of evolution theory. Emergence in this context means that there is no way to predict what will emerge from a complex adaptive system based on investigation of the past and present state of the system.” and “It’s long past time to admit that Keynes and Knight were correct …”

The fact of the matter is that it is sheer scientific incompetence that explains the persistent failure of economists. Uncertainty and complexity are, of course, real but economists abuse them as excuses. It is particularly painful when cargo cult scientists, who have not managed in 200+ years to get their foundational concepts right, blather about methodology.

But lack of knowledge about how the economy works is not seen as a disgrace among economists, just the opposite, it is taken as proof that laissez-faire is the best economic policy. After all, who knows nothing cannot do anything.

For details see
► Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses
► How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right
► To this day, economists have produced NOT ONE textbook that satisfies scientific standards
► Ontological uncertainty is NOT the problem but economists’ ontological stupidity
► What is dead certain in an uncertain world: economists’ abysmal incompetence
► Uncertainty: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’
► Economists: Either stupid or corrupt or both
► Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
► Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
► Still beyond the reach of economists: The Holy Grail of Science
► Econogenics in action

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

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LINKS on Lars Syll’s ‘John Maynard Keynes — an introduction’ on Apr 12

► How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right
► Macroeconomics ― dead since Keynes
► From Keynes’ fatal blunder to the true economic model
► The general theory of scientific incompetence
► Dear idiots, time to get saving and investment straight (II)
► From Keynes’ fatal blunder to the true economic model

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#PointOfProof

Apr 11

before

after

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

 

#Economics#FailedScience#FakeScience#Economists#StupidOrCorruptOrBoth

The history of economic thought is the history of scientific failure.

The profit theory is false since Adam Smithhttps://t.co/s3zlXjwArK pic.twitter.com/C3tZTSd456

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) November 29, 2021

For more about science see AXECquery. 

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Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?

Comment on Michael Norman on ‘Stephanie Kelton BLOCKED ME on Twitter. Wow.’

Blog-Reference

This is the normal reaction of a scientifically trained non-economist when he is for the first time confronted with standard economics: “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, 2006)

Economists, though, are a different species.

(i) The representative economist who takes his academic degree and is convinced that supply-demand-equilibrium provides an acceptable theory of how the economic system works and accepts standard economics (with the usual reservations/disclaimers/excuses #1) is scientifically incompetent.

(ii) The representative economist who communicates/defends standard economics on his own blog or on the numerous economics blogs propagates a provably false theory. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong.

(iii) The representative economist who is given proof in the course of a discussion that standard economics is false and does not understand the argument is not only scientifically incompetent but stupid.

(iv) The economist who understands the proof and deletes it from his blog or automatically filters all serious counter-arguments out violates scientific standards and undermines the claim that economics is a science as expressed in the title: “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.

The current state of economics is that of a failed science. The propagation of the four main approaches, therefore, amounts to unintentional disinformation or intentional misinformation.

Which blogs promote serious research/discussion and which are corrupted can only be found out by testing, that is, by submitting well-argued posts. From concrete experience follows this random selection of blogs that block/delete occasionally/permanently challenging contributions (last updated Sep 20, 2019):

• Economist’s View
• Uneasy Money
• Billy blog
• Real-World Economics Review blog
• Lars P. Syll blog
• EconoSpeak
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
• The Baseline Scenario
• Social Democracy For The 21st Century
• bradford-delong.com: Grasping Reality with Both Hands
• Stumbling and Mumbling
• Roger Farmer's Economic Window
• evonomics
• Critical Macro Finance
• Institute for New Economic Thinking
• Naked Keynesianism
• The Conversation
• Information Transfer Economics
• Bloomberg View
• Dietrich Vollrath
• EconBlog101
• heteconomist
• Fresh Economic Thinking
• Noahpinion
• Robert Skidelsky
• Angry Bear
• Renegade Inc
• Social Europe
• The Everyday Economist
• Dani Rodrik's Weblog
• On the Economy Jared Berstein Blog
• New Economic Perspectives
• Michael Roberts Blog
• The Harvard Crimson
• Asymptosis
• longandvariable
• taxresearchuk
• bruegel
• THE REAL MOVEMENT
• The Case For Concerted Action
• Mises Institute
• SEE IT market
• Progressive Pulse
• Mike Norman Economics
• The British Academy
• mainly macro
• J. W. Mason
• naked capitalism
• etcetera

Note that the blog owner is entitled to reject submissions for whatever reason. There is nothing illegal in selecting the content of one’s own blog. What is at issue is the violation of well-established and well-known SCIENTIFIC standards.

How to double-check the past and actual intensity of scientific corruption in three easy steps:
(1) Go to the AXEC Blog
(2) Click the label zML (ML = missing link). All posts that have been submitted but did not appear or vanished later are selected.
(3) Click Blog-Reference at the post’s header to jump to the discussion thread and look for the submitted AXEC post.

If you cannot find it, this can mean two things: (i) a technical glitch, (ii) censorship. If this happens more than two times with the same blog, it is very probable (ii). What can also happen is that a post reappears after some time. In this case, the ML label is corrected as soon as it is noticed.

This exercise confirms in greater detail what is already known since the founding fathers: economics has been hijacked and corrupted by politics. The representative economist, as he presents himself on the economics blogs, is a rather stupid flag-waving agenda pusher and NOT acceptable in the scientific community.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses

Related 'Why is economics a total scientific failure?' and 'Did economics fail? No! Yes, and everybody knows it!' and 'Profit: after 200+ years still elusive' and 'Gossip economics' and 'Economics: communication without content' and 'What comes first: eco-self-destruction or oeco-self-destruction?' and 'Oxford economics — still at the proto-scientific level'. For details of the big picture, see cross-references Incompetence and cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists and cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption.

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COMMENT on Dan Lynch on Jan 25

You say: “I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.” This is (i) not very interesting for the rest of the world, (ii) entirely beside the point.

As a matter of principle, everybody has the right to their own opinion, no matter how stupid, crazy, wrong, or absurd; the only exception is scientists. The ancient Greeks started science with the distinction between doxa (= opinion) and episteme (= knowledge). Scientific knowledge is well-defined by material and formal consistency. Knowledge is established by proof — belief or opinion counts for NOTHING.

Opinion is the currency in the political sphere, and knowledge is the currency in the scientific sphere. It is extremely important to keep both spheres separate. Since the founding fathers, though, economists have not emancipated themselves from politics. They claim to do science, but they have never risen above the level of opinion, belief, wish-wash, storytelling, soapbox propaganda, and sitcom gossip. #1

So, the point with MMT is this:
1. There is a mistake/error/blunder in the formal foundations of MMT. In other words, MMT does not satisfy the scientific criterion of logical consistency.#2
2. The formal proof has been submitted to an MMT blog.#3
3. This proof has NOT been answered but simply deleted.
4. It is against the most elementary scientific rules to suppress refutation. As everybody knows from Popper “... science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”
5. MMT is fake science or what Feynman called cargo cult science. The same holds for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism.

The point 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)

Economists do NOT have the true theory, and because of this, all economic policy proposals are worthless — nothing more than personal opinion and soapbox blather.

Economics, in general, and this includes MMT, has to be thrown out of science because of the 200+ years of violation of well-defined and well-known scientific standards.


#1 Gossip economics and Delusions of useful idiots
#2 The final implosion of MMT
#3 Modern Moronomic Theory

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COMMENT on Dan Lynch, Neil Wilson on Jan 25

Dan Lynch says, “Instead it [economics] should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.”

Now, this is exactly what has happened in the past 200+ years. #1 And this is why economics is a failed science: “... 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) In the same time span, physics went from the Law of Gravity to Quantum Mechanics.

Imagine a philosopher and a guru discussing. Says the philosopher, let’s build an aircraft and fly to a South Sea island and have a good life there. Says the guru, better let’s fly to Tibet and search for spiritual enlightenment there. The physicist enters with the remark: You folks will go nowhere because you have no idea of the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material science, etc., and because of this, you will never get anything off the ground.

The situation in economics is analogous. The discussion about capitalism and communism has always been a pointless distraction because economists do NOT know how the monetary economy works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong. Economists do not even understand the elementary algebra of accounting, as the discussion about MMT has shown. #2

The primary question is how to get out of the state of a proto-science, fake science, pseudoscience, cargo cult science, failed science ... Certainly NOT with more philosophy or religion or more sitcom blathering. #3

A side issue is how we get into this mess. The most obvious hypothesis is that both orthodox and heterodox economists are incompetent, stupid, and corrupt. Your brain-dead posts about capitalism and communism corroborate this hypothesis.

By the way, the economic laws for the monetary economy are the SAME under capitalism and communism, just as the laws of aerodynamics are the same whether one flies to the South Sea or to Tibet. #4


#1 Economics: Poor philosophy, poor psychology, poor science
#2 The final implosion of MMT
#3 From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy to Metadoxy
#4 See the First Economic Law on Wikimedia AXEC06 and the Macroeconomic Profit Law on Wikimedia AXEC08.

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AXEC144d

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#PointOfProof

#EconBlocker

Occasional Tweets: Economics ― scientific integrity is missing (I)

 

#Economics#FailedScience#FakeScience

Economics is NOT #Science. Economists are NOT #Scientists but #Clowns / #AgendaPushers / #UsefulIdiots in the political #CircusMaximus.

Feynman Integrity, fake science, and the econblogospherehttps://t.co/WaJBU0Oa6L pic.twitter.com/lrqu0VG0Df

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) August 2, 2022

Economics as a cover for agenda-pushing

Comment on Simon Wren-Lewis on ‘The new party: lessons the Labour leadership and its supporters failed to learn’

Blog-Reference

“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)

We know since the Ancient Greeks what the criteria of scientific truth are “Research is, in fact, a continuous discussion of the consistency of theories: formal consistency insofar as the discussion relates to the logical cohesion of what is asserted in joint theories; material consistency insofar as the agreement of observations with theories is concerned.” (Klant)

Economists lack the true theory to this day. 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.

Because they lack the true theory, economists have nothing to offer but educated common sense and their personal opinion. Economic policy guidance NEVER had sound scientific foundations.#1

However, those who are not fit for science may still find employment in the political Circus Maximus as op-eder, propagandist, entertainer, agenda pusher, and useful idiot. This would not be a problem at all, of course, if economists would not claim to do science. They don’t, they just put their square academic cap on and sell their right- or left-wing stuff in the bluff package of science. Fact is that political economics has zero scientific content.#2

Simon Wren-Lewis is a case in point. He has not realized to this day that both orthodox and heterodox economics is proto-scientific garbage but exhausts himself (i) with telling his audience that the BBC and the mainstream press deceive the people about Brexit, and (ii), with undermining the current Labour leadership.

These are Simon Wren-Lewis’ lessons

• “With its Brexit policy the leadership, and more particularly the cabal around Corbyn himself, failed to do this job.”
• “For Corbyn to pledge that members will make party policy, and then ignore the view of the overwhelming majority on the most critical issue of the day, just reeks of hypocrisy.”
• “Corbyn is not a natural manager of a large team, and that makes it all the more important that Labour policies keep the majority of MPs and members on board.”
• “It is almost certainly Corbyn’s biggest mistake since he became Labour leader.”

Obviously, the lessons Simon Wren-Lewis teaches have zero scientific content. But then, had Oxford economics ever any? The fact is that economists have messed up Profit Theory for 200+ years, Microfoundations for 150+ years, Macrofoundations for 80+ years, and the application of elementary logic/mathematics since the founding fathers.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
#2 For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption.

Related 'Thinking about economic policy for future PM Corbyn' and 'How Bill Mitchell stalks Jeremy Corbyn' and 'MMT and grassroots movements' and 'Oxford economics — still at the proto-scientific level' and 'Economists ― medics or barber-surgeons?' and 'Educating economists? Yes, but where is the scientific stuff?' and 'The apocalypse of stupidity' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion' and 'The economist as stand-up comedian' and 'Legitimacy lost' and 'The GDP-death-blow for the economics profession'.

Economics: The proto-scientific mob embroiled in just another gang war

Comment on William Black on ‘The Day Orthodox Economists Lost Their Minds and Integrity’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

William Black tells the world: “Something extraordinary happened yesterday. Orthodox economists, frustrated by their inability to intimidate progressive elected officials, have launched a coordinated assault on MMT in hopes of making it politically dangerous for elected officials to embrace MMT. Yesterday brought three remarkable revelations about orthodox economists’ willingness to engage in naked intellectual dishonesty in their desperation to find something to discredit MMT.”

This, of course, is risible because economists’ “naked intellectual dishonesty” is nothing new. In fact, it is their modus operandi for 200+ years now.#1, #2, #3 The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the pivotal concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong. There is NO scientific truth in economics.#4

And there are no joint efforts to do serious research and to develop the true theory about how the economy works but there is endless meta-communication.#5

• “The orthodox ‘scholars’ have found it impossible to quote MMT scholars writing something that is demonstrably false. It is child’s play …, however, for an orthodox economist to create a strawman claim that is obviously, demonstrably false.”

• “Yesterday, dozens of orthodox economists, many of them prominent, collectively lost their minds and their integrity. They coordinated their actions to create a show trial that would have warmed Stalin’s spleen.”

• “The results of that natural experiment are spectacular ― a large group of the world’s prominent economists failed the test of honesty and competence even though the test set such a low bar that they should have passed it without discernible effort.”

• “Wolfers’ dishonesty spurred Paul Krugman to tweet a level of calculated dishonesty that exceeds the term ‘disgraceful’.”

• “Every aspect of Krugman’s chutzpah is logically false, dishonest, immoral, and wackiness of epic proportions.”

This is a lot of hot air. The fact of the matter is that BOTH orthodox New Keynesians and heterodox MMTers are scientifically incompetent. Krugman has not realized that IS-LM is false since Keynes/Hicks.#6 MMTers have not realized that their foundational sectoral balances equation is false since Keynes.#7, #8

William Black is right with regard to Krugman et al.: orthodox economists are stupid/ corrupt. The same, though, holds for MMTers.#9

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 The retirement of a fake scientist and real agenda pusher
#2 There is NO such thing as “smart, honest, honorable economists”
#3 Feynman Integrity, fake science, and the econblogosphere
#4 Links on capital-T Truth, stupidity, corruption
#5 Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
#6 Mr. Keynes, Prof. Krugman, IS-LM, and the End of Economics as We Know It
#7 Refuting MMT’s Macroeconomics Textbook
#8 Paul’s and Stephanie’s economic delirium talk
#9 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT, see cross-references MMT

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AXEC144b

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#PointOfProof

Mar 18

before

after

Do not moralize — simply beat them

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Mainstream economics — nothing but pseudo-scientific cheating’

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

“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.” (Schumpeter, 1994, p. 11)

Musgrave has argued convincingly that the methodology of standard economics is defective. The key argument is this: “The implications that follow from the kind of models that mainstream economists construct are always conditional on the simplifying assumptions used — assumptions predominantly of a rather far-reaching and non-empirical character with little resemblance to features of the real world.”

What are the foundational assumptions of Orthodoxy? Courtesy of Weintraub, here they are in a nutshell: “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. (1985, p. 147)

What can be said with certainty is that this set of five hardcore propositions has proven its worthlessness. Orthodoxy is a failure according to the formal and empirical criteria that define science. So Musgrave correctly concludes: “Mainstream economics building on such a modeling strategy does not produce science.” (See intro)

But then Musgrave adds “It’s nothing but pseudo-scientific cheating.” (See intro)

This is the wrong turn. Until this point, the argument has been well-conducted, i.e., “... a critical discussion is well-conducted if it is entirely devoted to one aim: to find a flaw in the claim that a certain theory presents a solution to a certain problem.” (Popper, 1994, p. 160)

As a result, we are entitled to assert that orthodox economists have made a fatal methodological mistake and that standard economics has to be buried at the Flat-Earth Cemetery. However, any speculation about motives is pointless and misleading. With the allegation of cheating the discussion goes over the cliff.

To recall, heterodox economists have produced much debunking but until now no alternative to standard economics that satisfies the criteria of material and formal consistency.#1 Should they be called cheaters, too?

As a methodologist, Alan Musgrave should know that nothing of any value has ever come out of good/bad moralizing. This has always been the preferred method of political economics, and political economics has been outside of science since Adam Smith. The criterion of theoretical economics has always been true/false and nothing else.

First Commandment of Science: Do not moralize!

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Popper, K. R. (1994). The Myth of the Framework. In Defence of Science and Rationality., chapter Models, Instruments, and Truth, 154–184. London, New York: Routledge.
Schumpeter, J. A. (1994). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weintraub, E. R. (1985). Joan Robinson’s Critique of Equilibrium: An Appraisal.American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 75(2): 146–149. URL

#1 Heterodoxy, too, is scientific proto-scientific garbage

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ICYMI comment on Alexander Konnopka Nov 15 on Nov 17

This is an old chestnut of Heterodoxy: “But why should economic laws, or any laws for that matter, be expressed by analytical functions?” (Georgescu-Roegen, 1966, p. 123)

To merely reiterate doubt shows that Heterodoxy, too, is clueless. And this provokes the all-decisive question at the end of this 50+ years filibuster: How does the correct formal approach look like? (see for a start 2014).


References
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1966). Analytical Economics, chapter General Conclusions for the Economist, pages 92–129. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2014). The Synthesis of Economic Law, Evolution, and History. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2500696: 1–22. URL

Occasional Tweets: Economics is at odds with scientific ethics (II)

 

#FailedFakeScience#Walrasianism, #Keynesianism, #Marxianism, #Austrianism et al. are axiomatically false & materially/formally inconsistent & ALL got #Profit wrong. Academic economics is a rigged institution & #PeerReview is the selection mechanism for its self-preservation. pic.twitter.com/ElubzvAT3H

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) May 26, 2023

Ditch scientific incompetence!

Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Ditch physics envy!’

Blog-Reference

It was one of Mirowksi’s worst idiocies to introduce in his More Heat Than Light the term ‘physics envy’ in analogy to Freud’s ‘penis envy’. To psychologize derails every discussion because the focus turns from ‘Is the other guy’s argument true or false?’ to ‘What are the other guy’s real motives?’.

Schumpeter has settled this issue once and for all: “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. Kate Raworth, though, has never heard anything of Schumpeter, methodology, and the rules of scientific discourse: “… a critical discussion is well-conducted if it is entirely devoted to one aim: to find a flaw in the claim that a certain theory presents a solution to a certain problem.” (Popper)

Kate Raworth recounts the history of economic thought: “In the 1870s, a handful of aspiring economists hoped to make economics a science as reputable as physics.”

It was NOT AT ALL a problem of reputation. Economists realized that ― after Newton ― their confused psychological and philosophical blather was no longer taken seriously: “The backward state of the Moral Sciences can only be remedied by applying to them the methods of Physical Science, duly extended and generalized.” (Mill). And: “Like most of his fellow moral philosophers, Hume thought it was worth a try to make all sciences as rigorous as Newtonian physics.” (Redman)

Being scientifically incompetent, economists engaged in what Feynman called cargo cult science, that is, they imitated without deeper understanding. What hit their eyes was the most outstanding feature of the Scientific Revolution, i.e. the discovery of physical laws.

Economists’ tried to apply the concept of law to sociology or psychology or something in-between called Human Nature.

“The fundamental problem, therefore, of the social science, is to find the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place.” (Mill)

“Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.” (Marx)

“That Political Economy informs us of the laws which regulate the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. … This definition is free from the fault which we pointed out in the former one. It distinctly takes notice that Political Economy is a science and not an art; that it is conversant with laws of nature, not with maxims of conduct, and teaches us how things take place of themselves, not in what manner it is advisable for us to shape them, in order to attain some particular end.” (Mill)

“The foundation of political economy and, in general, of every social science, is evidently psychology. A day will come when we shall be able to deduce the laws of social science from the principles of psychology …” (Pareto)

“From the above considerations the following seems to come out as the correct and complete definition of Political Economy: ― ‘The science which treats of the production and distribution of wealth, so far as they depend upon the laws of human nature.’ Or thus ― ‘The science relating to the moral or psychological laws of the production and distribution of wealth’.” (Mill)

That there is NO such thing as a behavioral/social/historical law has been known to scientists (in contradistinction to economists) in ALL ages: “The bifurcation of motion into two fundamentally different types, one for natural motions of non-living objects and another for acts of human volition ... is obviously related to the issue of free will, and demonstrates the strong tendency of scientists in all ages to exempt human behavior from the natural laws of physics, and to regard motions resulting from human actions as original, in the sense that they need not be attributed to other motions.” (Brown)

The scientific incompetence of economists consisted in the fact that they defined economics as social science instead of a systems science and that they did not realize their fundamental methodological blunder to this day. Standard economics is built upon microfoundations = BEHAVIORAL axioms.

There are NO laws of human behavior/nature/action, neither psychological nor social nor historical, but there are SYSTEMIC laws of the monetary economy, e.g. the Profit Law.

To argue with ‘physics envy’ is entirely beside the point. The problem of economists is NOT envy but stupidity.

What Kate Raworth has figured out is: “People and money are not so obedient as gravity, as it turns out, so no such laws exist.” True, there are NO behavioral laws. This has been known in ALL ages. But there are SYSTEMIC laws. Unfortunately, the folk psychologist and hobby economist Kate Raworth has not figured them out.

The conclusions from the manifest failure of Orthodoxy AND Heterodoxy are: (i) to ban psychology, sociology and all Human-Nature blather from economics, (ii) to retire the whole bunch of incompetent scientists, and (iii), to focus on the question of how the market system works.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


Related ‘The Science-of-Man fallacy’ and ‘The economist as moralist’ and ‘The Synthesis of Economic Law, Evolution, and History’  and ‘Mathematical Proof of the Breakdown of Capitalism’ and 'How Heterodoxy became the venue for science’s scum' and 'How to overcome the manifest silliness of Econ 101 and save the economy'

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COMMENT on Nanikore on Apr 22

You say: “Society does not follow Darwinian Laws, which the author fails to note also had a big impact on the philosophical foundations of classical Anglo-Saxon economics that emerged during its Victorian Era formative stages.”

This is way beside the point because economics is NOT about society ― this is the subject matter of SOCIOLOGY ― but about how the actual monetary economy works. Economics is faux sociology since J. S. Mill.#1

Fact is, economists got their subject matter wrong. And this is why the representative economist has to this day NO idea what the pivotal magnitude of her/his subject matter, i.e. profit, is.

Imagine you are shown an airplane taking off for Paris. Now you are asked to explain how it so happens that planes fly. As a scientifically incompetent commonsenser you explain that this flight takes place because the passengers have a variety of motives to go to Paris, and the crew and the pilot have theirs and that the airline wants to make big profits, and so on. Everybody easily understands your ‘explanation’ because this is how Verstehen works since kindergarten.

The competent scientist, in contradistinction, avoids all Human-Nature blah blah and explains flight by the interaction of a bunch of physical laws, e.g. aerodynamics, thermodynamics, gravity, and so on.

It is the same with economics: utility maximization or profit maximization or other human motives do NOT get the economy off the ground. Only the systemic laws, e.g. the Profit Law, can explain what makes the economy fly or crash.

The fact is that neither orthodox nor heterodox economists know to this day the objective systemic laws of the monetary economy. This does not stop them from giving economic policy advice.

You say: “The natural place of economics is in the humanities”. This is true insofar as both the humanities and economics are OUTSIDE of science. The term ‘social science’ is an oxymoron and a euphemism for cargo cult science.#2 Since the founding fathers, economics is faux sociology, or metaphorically, the Forrest Gump of science.#3


#1 John Stuart Mill as a social science founder
#2 The non-existence of economics
#3 The Science-of-Man fallacy

Prophet Stephanie divines the seizure of the means of production of currency

Comment on Yuko Takeo/Masahiro Hidaka on ‘MMT’s Kelton Sees Central Banks Quietly Yielding to Governments’*

Blog-Reference

Since biblical times, prophecies are a tool of psychological manipulation and social programming. Needless to emphasize that prophets claim a higher insight and make assertions that can neither be verified nor falsified. So, prophecy is the very opposite of science.

MMT claims to be a scientific theory. The fact is that it is refuted on all counts. MMTers claim to do science. The fact is that they are in the business of political agenda-pushing. Stephanie Kelton claims to be a scientist. The fact is that she is one of the many useful idiots of the Oligarchy who populate academia.

The MMT agenda is simple and straightforward: pushing deficit-spending/money-creation by all means which includes seizing the “means of production of currency”, i.e. the central bank.#1 All else is populist do-gooder-save-the-world propaganda.

Stephanie Kelton, the public face of Modern Monetary Theory, puts the MMT mission statement into the form of a prophecy: “While they [the monetary authorities] won’t openly say that they’ve lost their independence, she predicted, ‘you’re going to see central banks responding in more accommodative, coordinating ways.’

Stephanie Kelton resolves all doubt: “Critics say that MMT is a recipe for spiraling government debt and would revive now-dormant inflation with a vengeance. There’s also growing concern about central-bank independence, driven by President Donald Trump’s Twitter tirades against the Federal Reserve, and similar pressures in Turkey and India.” and “MMT argues that government spending is the most direct way to spur growth ― and sees no reason why central banks shouldn’t support it.”

The reason lies in macroeconomics. The policy of deficit-spending/money-creation benefits the Oligarchy because it increases macroeconomic profit according to the Profit Law which entails Public Deficit = Private Profit. MMT is a free lunch program for the Oligarchy. Financial wealth and public debt grow in lockstep and the fabulous financial wealth in the USA is roughly equal to humongous public debt ($22 trillion). The Profit Law explains how billionaires are able to accumulate that much money and why they can buy all the bonds the Treasury issues and cash in the ultra-safe interest that is reliably taxed from WeThePeople as long as the debt is rolled over. This can function for a very long time but eventually, the economy breaks down. This is NOT a prophecy but a mathematical certainty.

The very characteristic of Late Capitalism is that the so-called free market economy is on the full life support of the state. Profit is produced by the government through deficit-spending/money-creation and Wall Street is kept going by the central bank. The Oligarchy, in turn, uses the opulent free lunches to corrupt what remains of the state’s legislative, executive, and judiciary institutions. The circular interdependence is self-reinforcing and politically ruinous. The logical end of the process is state capture.

In order to pull this fraud through, a snake-oil sales team is needed. Stephanie Kelton is neither a scientist nor a prophet but an agenda-pusher for the Oligarchy.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


* Bloomberg
#1 MMT’s true program

Related 'How Stephanie Kelton brain-washes a lovely young English girl' and 'The Kelton-Fraud' and 'The brouhaha about prediction: which Feynman is right?' and 'Mathematical Proof of the Breakdown of Capitalism' and 'Paul’s and Stephanie’s economic delirium talk' and 'MMT: doom or survival?' and 'The clock runs down on economics' and 'Mission impossible: economists join WeThePeople' and 'Dear idiots, MMTers are Wall Street’s agenda pushers' and 'MMT: The fusion of Wall Street and Academia' and 'MMT: A new myth for WeThePeople' and 'MMT has an offer that Labour cannot refuse' and 'State capture ― time to switch rhetoric'.

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Twitter Feb 2, 2021 Fed and Treasury: the means of production of currency

Occasional Tweets: The relationship between economics, science, politics, integrity, and dishonor

 

#Walrasianism, #Keynesianism, #Marxianism, #Austrianism, #MMT are axiomatically false & materially/formally inconsistent. Economic policy guidance NEVER has had sound scientific foundations. #Economists are #UsefulIdiots in the political #CircusMaximus. “We chose dishonor” Yes! pic.twitter.com/nzzuGh7KS7

— E.K-H (@AXECorg) October 18, 2022

For more about integrity see AXECquery. 

Economics: How to stop mental pollution and global dumbing

Comment on Brian Romanchuk on ‘DSGE Macro “Proves” There Are No Financial Constraints On Government’

Blog-Reference

Brian Romanchuk announces what he is going to do: “… I am describing DSGE models in this article. There is a desire among neoclassicals to ‘make MMT more rigorous’ by attempting to cast them in a DSGE model. If we look at the MMT academic literature, it is a subset of the post-Keynesian literature. It seems safe to say that every single behavioural assumption embedded in DSGE models is viewed as incorrect by at least one post-Keynesian. Making a literature ‘more rigorous’ by ignoring the actual contents of said literature is a very curious position for a scholar to take.”

The current state of economics is this: the major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong.

The basic idea of science is that if it turns out that a theory is either materially or logically false it is unceremoniously buried at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery and the attention turns to alternative approaches or, in Lakatosian terms, from a degenerating to a progressive research program.#1 This does not happen in economics. As Morgenstern observed back in 1941: “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.”

This refusal to abandon falsehoods has a fatal effect. Economists not only waste time and mental/physical resources by studying and teaching and communicating their defunct theories, but they also multiply the absurdity by comparing and discussing two defunct theories. This gives rise to heated debates that always end where they have started: everybody goes out with essentially the same garbage in his head with which he came in.

One example of absurd cross-talk is the recent debate between the New Keynesian Paul Krugman and the MMTer Stephanie Kelton.#2 Another example is Brian Romanchuk’s futile attempt to find common ground between DSGE and MMT.

DSGE is known to be dead because ALL microfounded models are dead, ultimately because the Walrasian axioms are provably false. It was Keynes who realized this and tried to advance to macrofoundations: “The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight ― as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. Something similar is required to-day in economics.”

The problem with Keynes’ Paradigm Shift, i.e. the move from microfoundations to macrofoundations, was that he messed it up. Unfortunately, Post-Keynesians followed him sheepishly up to MMT’s sectoral balances equation.#3, #4

The question is how can anybody take DSGE still seriously? Does any physicist at the cutting edge of research waste time commenting on the latest arguments of Flat-Earthers? The only interesting question with regard to DSGE is institutional: why are these scientific failures still around and have not been thrown out of academia long ago? Who finances and sponsors and promotes this senseless production of proto-scientific garbage? And why does Brian Romanchuk bring up Ljungqvist/Sargent’s No-Profit-Model? Have all these folks still not realized that there is NO such thing as a No-Profit economy?

It should be pretty obvious that economics can either be based on microfoundations or on macrofoundations. Any synthesis is inconsistent. The microfoundations approach is false and this is known for 80+ years. The scientific methodology requires that falsified theories are buried for good. To teach students supply-demand-equilibrium or DSGE or to recycle this brain-dead garbage again and again in economic debates or in the econblogosphere contributes to global dumbing.

Scientists don’t do this: “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.)

It means, first of all, that economists who stubbornly recycle refuted theories, i.e. Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, Austrians, and MMTers get an immediate and dishonorable discharge from the sciences.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Caught in secular intellectual stagnation
#2 Paul’s and Stephanie’s economic delirium talk
#3 Dear idiots, time to get saving and investment straight (II)
#4 MMT-Refutation for Dummies

Related 'Dead men tweeting' and 'Unsmart allocators' and 'Economists: Either stupid or corrupt or both' and 'To this day*, economists have produced NOT ONE textbook that satisfies scientific standards' and 'Occasional Tweets #210119: True macrofoundations' and 'The new economic Paradigm requires a new textbook'.