If we are to make choices between competing accounts, then we necessarily need to have an economics that is ethical. In a very real sense, there is no other choice.
That, as Deaton himself noted, requires that economics rethink its use of empirical methods that necessarily impose an artificial worldview on economic analysis so that economists might undertake their existing form of mathematical interpretation of the incomplete and flawed data that they collect, which they do, however, presume to be value free in almost all the exercises that they undertake.
As I have always argued, the stories that we tell each other about the economy in which we live are more important than the data we collect about it because they provide the framework within which any information is interpreted. It would seem that Deaton now agrees.
I call that progress, except for the fact that about 92% of the world’s living economists are probably now in disagreement with him now. We will just have to make progress, one step at a time.
The Nobel Laureate is now coing around to the way I’ve been telling everyone they should think therefore the world is becoming a better place.
Not that Spud has understood, in the slightest, what the Nobel Lareate is saying (umm, chaps, maybe we should think a little more about distrobution, not just efficiency?) but Charles Pooter lives on.
’tis the Narrative dear plebs that matters most, the stories that the Illuminati (to which Spud aspires) paint in shadows and fire upon the cave wall.
Ignore those who would tell you different, they seek only your soul with their Satanic tricks of data, facts and other forms of “Malinformation”. Listen only to “My Truth”.
I am your single source of “Truth”.
Above all, ignore the man behind the curtain.
You get economics- what’s going on, how this affects that. You get politics, i get to play with some levers, but only by promising xyz. Yes i can understand why political economics is a thing. It should be a specialised subject based if you pull down on that lever this is what you can expect to happen so bear that in mind when out there on the soap box.
However Politics Politics is what that guy once said, how can i promise stuff to get in and then explain afterwards (convincingly) why it didn’t happen. Richard Murphy is in the latter camp.
Richard Murphy’s Economics competence:
potential Nobel Prize , or Log Lady?
“necessarily need”
Give me strength…
Why do I find the use of the words economics & mathematics in the same sentence so terrifying?
You owe Pooter an apology. Richard Murphy is more William McGonagall than Charles Pooter.
William McGonagall had both a sense of humour and style.
Spud is a humourless automaton.
“…and ninethly…”
William McGonagall was a delusional grifter on the edge of being seriously mentally ill.
If that doesn’t describe Richard Murphy to a “T”, then nothing does.
How can economics be “ethical”? Can maths also be ethical? Can 2+2=4 be altered to suit the political tastes of the time?
“Can 2+2=4 be altered to suit the political tastes of the time?”
Of course, was always the case. For example, during Covid 2+2=5 and if you denied that you were most certainly a bad person.