Practical Economics 101

By Jim Selman | Bio

I am not an economist. Thank goodness. This is not a good time to be one. There is a wonderful overview of the field, “How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?”, by Paul Krugman in the New York Times. The bottom line is that the current situation “which nobody could have predicted” was predicted and it doesn’t take an economist to know that:

  • Nothing goes up forever,
  • People aren’t always rational,
  • We should learn from the past, and
  • The ‘house’ always wins. 

With all the theoretical back and forth between the various ‘schools’ of economic theory, one word jumps out at me: “technocrat”.

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