Mathiness

[supergee]

Economics vs. astrology

Thanx to Metafilter

Comments

[johnpalmer]

Herm. Once again, I feel a bit of an urge to argue this, but it's not like you're the one making the statements.

Economics has a great many sound results. That economists haven't always behaved well, and not all economists restrict their activities to what they can do well, doesn't change that.

Then again, maybe if enough people rail about economics vs. astrology, people will stop listening to economists just because they like the results. Krugman points out in his 101 text that economists *do* disagree - but generally not on the numbers. One economist will agree that public transit should be higher cost to the rider because s/he believes in one of those dumb-ass individualism philosophies, while another believes it should be lower cost to the rider, because it demands that the costs of externalities be shared. But this disagreement has nothing to do with the net cost of public transit, expected ridership, reductions (or increases) in traffic, and other things that an economist can legitimately predict.

(I consciously chose *not* to pick the "we want to make sure it's not too easy for 'those people' to get into our better neighborhoods" as one of the possible economist motivations - but I've heard it said, especially in public transit, this plays a bigger role than we'd like to admit.)