Shackleford this is all highly irrelevant and begging the question of what the thread is actually trying to answer rationally.
No, it’s not. Economics is not a physical science. The formulas used by Keynes are not laws or highly-accurate theories of physical phenomena. You do not need proofs to disprove the assertions purported by the mathematics.
shackleford , I agree with your previous post that you don’t need math to debunk this. However it is very important for me personally and probably in general to understand how the Keynesians are reasoning and be able to point out the errors in their models. That was the purpose of my post, and any arguments in that regard are very valuable to me. So I have to disagree with your criticism.
There’s nothing wrong with using math in economics. The GDP equation, for example, is 100% true because it’s an identity.
As for Tugwit - you don’t need Tax to show up in GDP because it’s not production, obviously.
DerpStatis
Folks have been arguing logic with Keynesians for 76 years. And to what effect? Keynesians are impervious to logic, because they can always fall back on their math. But their math IS “funny”. If you look at the multiplier chapter of Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”, what he did, how he did it, and WHAT HE LEFT UNSAID, he was either a moron or a fraud. The way he did it and what he left unsaid, point to fraud.
He said that if 1 out of every $10 of income goes to investment, then 10 out of every $1 of investment goes to income. In the example he gave, there are 2 values for his “multiplier” (which is not a multiplier), 10 and 1, and he used the wrong value, 10, for the effect of investment spending on income. It’s a little hard to get $10 out of $1, so that’s where illegally putting addition first in the math order of operations comes in.
At least Keynes was clever in the way he did it. When Keynesians later added the tax variable, and then had to make it disappear, and you see the marginal propensity to consume b erroneously applied to tax, total income, and the tax rate. And when you see -bT and wonder where is -(1-b)T, and where is bT and (1-b)T? That’s when the Keynesian scam all starts to fall apart.
The software appears to be buggy. My formatting gets ignored and I no longer receive notices of replies. So this post will probably be run together as one paragraph.
Wheylous,
Yt = C + I + NX + G
If " you don’t need Tax to show up in the GDP equation because it’s not production" then what is it that government spends?
Tugwit
PS: The formatting appears to be back again.
I never said there’s anything wrong with using math in economics. But the math is only descriptive, not prescriptive as in physical science. The GDP does not accurately measure economic growth. It’s a tool used by statists to justify more government spending. Thanks, G! It seems to me that tax would be included in G. And G would include taxation as well as borrowed money.
Physical sciences are not prescriptive.
shackleford, “The equations formulated by mathematical economics remain a useless piece of mental gymnastics and would remain so even it they were to express much more than they really do.” - Ludwig von Mises
The math used in the physical sciences is still descriptive. Equations simply describe hypothesied relationships.
Yes, ultimately they are descriptive in the sense that they seek to, as accurately as possible, descripe physical phenomena. However, the key diffierence is that they can be used to accurately predict the behavior of physical phenomena. That’s what I mean when I say prescriptive. You can predict the behavior of the particle/system to whatever level of approximation that you want. This in turn lends credence to the veracity of the underlying theories, etc. Implicit in this are the physical laws that govern the behavior of physical reality. They are immutable constraints. This is not the case in economics. As far as I know, there are no immutable laws in economics because it’s ultimately based on human (ir)rationality and behavior.
Tell that to a civil engineer.
Prescriptive has nothing to do with prediction. The dichotomy is descriptive vs prescriptive, or positive vs normative.
Are we really arguing over semantics?
Physical theories use mathematical models to predict or lay down the course of action that the system/particle will follow. That’s all I mean.
If you are going to tell people that science is normative, then yes.
Let’s go with an actual standard definition of prescribe:
Science is normative? I don’t follow.
Looking at that definition, are you telling me I’m not using the correct word in characterizing the mathematics used in physical science?
Do you understand that is what the other posters in this thread thought you were saying? That is why they said you were wrong. You don’t understand that you were using the word “prescriptive”, which people understand to mean “normative”?
Yes, I am. Notice the word “should” in the definition. Science has to do with “is”, not “ought”.
I never thought people would equate normative with prescription.
I disagree to an extent. Science is about confirming that the should is the “is” and “ought.” How do you think quantum mechanics and special relativity arose? The historical classical “ought” failed to explain a new “is.” Consider blackbody radiation, angular momentum of the electron, etc. according to classical theory. The lack of correct predictability prompted new theories that then were able to correctly predict behavior and identify the failures of the previous theories. In the scientific method, you develop the should and after experimentation, you get the “ought” or you have to revise your “should.”
Yeah, it’s the standard.
The purpose of science is descriptive. Scientists use various methods to try to understand the world and describe it. Your example of civil engineer was a good example of a prescriptive use of scientific knowledge. Engineers use descriptive knowledge in order to tell people what they should do:
“This is the safest method of keeping this building up. Oh, you want me to keep it up for a lower cost X. Okay, then for X cost, this is the safest way to keep this building up. Oh, the architect wants to use certain materials? Then for cost X and materials Y, etc.”
Well to be honest economics is also prescriptive in that sense, given that it’s a science of means and their relation to given ends rather than a science of means. But yeah, prescriptive implies an element of normativity in modern day parlance, yet I can see why Shackleford used the term.