Mankiw's students want reality with their economics

In the middle ages most scientists thought the earth was flat.

I think that's a good analogy for the study of economics today.

In order for the economy to grow they should....

To bring down unemployment they should...

Yadayada yada.

Whatever... get a real job...

 

When you can't win an argument... drag out the middle ages....

You win. carry on.

 

It's just not a science.

Thats all.

Good day sir.

 

seems like a wise ass remark for someone like you who got their astrology degree online.

 

No. I studied it to a high level. Also crisis theory also relates to the short term issues raised in capitalism, when they artificially create problems with the business cycle.

I think this provided a good cross over Marxism/Austrian. The only thing they would agree on.

 

So price floors don't cause surpluses? Let's just set the minimum wage for unskilled labor at $1k/hr, a first step towards immanentizing the eschaton.

I guess I should have walked out of econ 101 as well.

 

min wage of 1k/hr would create problems and eventually everything would be just the same as it is now, but for a brief while, the little guy would make out very well. What other ideas do economists come up with that benefit the poor with such immediacy?

Borrowing money and giving it to the poor might trickle up and increase economic growth, but it would not be sustainable. What other ideas do people come up with that are sustainable?

My point is, we have one idea that would definitely help the poor and might help the economy. It's not even debatable. Everything else is just a theory that may or may not work and all of them will supposedly help the poor someday maybe.

So the students point may be, Econ 101 is not about helping the poor, and it should be.

 

Having seen, up close, what "helping the poor" leads to, I am not impressed.

Seems to me like Western civilization was in a definite uptrend from Greco-Roman times until "helping the poor" became an obsession among a certain class of pseudo-intellectuals. Since then, in Elliott Wave terms, the West is definitely in a "wave 2" down.

 

helping 1 bank cost more than helping 1 million poor

 

So? Helping neither of them costs nothing.

Best thing my parents ever taught me was that the world doesn't owe me anything. If it doesn't owe me anything, I have a hard time thinking it owes anyone else anything, either.