Politicians and economists pretend forecasts are facts. But they’re not. They’re guesses – and running the economy on guesses guarantees failure. In this video, I explain why fiscal rules based on forecasts are absurd, why Rachel Reeves is already using them to justify austerity, and why we must plan on the basis of present needs, not imagined futures.
Planning is impossible therefore we must plan.
Everyone else failed but my plan will work! If only they would install me as dictator for life we would have utopia always almost within reach!
Real guessing has never been tried!
That did make me ROFL
“Plan for present needs” – can I introduce the concept of lead times?
And how many computers did IBM think the world needed? 5 wasn’t it? Something tells me we wouldn’t be walking around with God knows how much computing power in our pockets if we’d listened to people like that.
As a complete aside, how far back would you have to go before a single current smart phone exceeds the computing power of the entire world? 50s? 60s? 70s even?
Umm, remind me again, isn’t the whole CATASTROPHICMANMADECLIMATECHANGE grift based on forecasts?
As was the entirety of the COVID scam
Forecasts aren’t guesses, they’re predictions. Usually with a margin of error which increases as the complexity of the system increases.
Simple mechanical systems can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy – its easy to model a crane arm and find a safe working load.
Large systems involving millions of independent actors, such as ooh, I don’t know, a country’s economy? are incredibly hard to predict accurately.
Though as always, his magnificent spudliness is smarter than everyone and knows the correct answer to help right the listing economy… MOAR TAX!!!!
It’s part 237 of why we can ignore fiscal rules and spend infinity money. To highlight the absurdity it was “because quantum” last time.
Is people being sectioned still a thing? No particular reason, just wondering.
What unmitigated garbage. For example if a current need for a new road between A and B is deduced and building work commences it does not immediately resolve that current need, but it should remove that need at a future date when it finally opens. While the road is being built and its causing disruption there may be another perceived need for a road between C & D. Only a fool would start building that road without considering the impact of the completion of the road between A & B. Plans need to make guesses about the future needs that can be solved not the current ones that can’t.
Just a thought on planning. The state pension rises in April line with the earnings print from the previous September, and the earnings rise is deduced in large part from survey data. About 72k people a year respond to the Labour Force Survey each year last time I checked.
So if you’re a year off retirement age and the LFS selects you, then it’s in your interests to lie and say your earnings rose from 37k to £3.7million in the last year. The ONS feeds that into their calculator of average wages and hey presto, happy days the year after.
running the economy . . . means run by the state.
Not buyers and sellers in the marketplace making millions of decisions based on their own unique interests.
His core belief is that economies should be run. I’d say running the economy gives it away, except we all already know he is Marxist. He spins words all day trying to get people to accept it. Tomorrow, he’ll be pushing that rock up the hill again.
Petitio principii.
Let’s remember the NHS’s long-term utter failure to plan to train the number of doctors needed. Despite being an almost entirely government system, where they know the age profile of all their active doctors, and it being a pretty simple projection.
That’s how useful government planning is.
No, the failure of the NHS to train enough doctors is not a failure of planning, it was (and is) an active decision. Its cheaper to import fully trained (ha ha) doctors from the Third World than train UK citizens to be doctors. Its also entirely rational in some ways, because training Brits to be doctors results in lots of them then disappearing to foreign climes themselves, because other healthcare systems pay far better and offer far better working conditions than the sh*t hole that is the NHS. Whereas as if you are operating a Third World standard healthcare service, who better to staff it than people from the Third World? In fact the further down the quality barrel you go the better, as the recipients will be more grateful to be getting a ticket to the West, less likely to complain about the pay and conditions, and more likely to stay put.
There’s also the point that the people in charge of this sort of thing will actively hate the native UK population and want to import foreigners as a general principle.
Its all entirely rational from the bureaucratic point of view, as long as you realise their aims have nothing to do with the provision of healthcare for the people of Britain.
Exactly, which is why my fledgling doctor daughter will be off to Oz in two years like a cork out of a bottle.
Now apply this to climate “science”.
Ritchie is completely around the bend. Please stop wasting time and space on him.
ZT, oh come on, as with a particular commenter on Guido, it’s entertaining, in a “the Victorians used to pay to look at the lunatics in Bedlam” way……
Tim conveniently heads such posts as “Ragging on Ritchie.” If you observe that heading, skip over the post. It’s not that hard; you can learn to do it.
“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure always comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of worry and desperation.”