[justshutupandtakeit]

Economics consistently predicts and explains lots of things. But only when consistently applied to things which can be predicted. It is not engineering where the machine does what it is supposed to do. The economic machine has a large component which is determined by the human element and thus, less predictable than a purely mechanical world.

People ragging on a particular discipline are often those most ignorant of it.

[RWG]

Then what happened to the free market and where were the economists when it slowly but surely became the managed economy that it is today? The most obvious example of the crony capitalism that passes for what might have once been a free economy is the farm bill that subsidizes millionaires and billionaires. Where are the economists about this tragedy? What do economists really predict? If they could predict anything at all then they should all be millionaires at the very least and there should be a constant turnover of personnel in the field but there isn't. The bull market of the 90s had no explanation, the recession came and went with little notice. America's manufacturing base has been eviscerated and slowly but certainly the same is happening to its agicultural base. If there are economists who know what is happening why aren't they talking about how America is becoming a third world nation with regards to its working and middle classes. If the most uncertain variable in economics is human behavior then the study should be a social-political science focusing on the distribution of power and control rather than some ephemeral aggragate of something or another.