Other Margaret Thatcher Dies

^^How would you feel about being treated by a doctor with no relevant qualifications?

 

Well heres a point for you all. Would you all be typing on this forum now and have the advances in the technology we have in Britain was it not for here policies that brought about the financial boom. Closing the pits yes, but this was long overdue and frankly someone had the balls to do this, now your all not still working down there getting any more asbestos and whatever anymore in your lungs. Finally FALKLANDS. She didnt drag her heels on that one, thankgod. Even all the Americans liked her for what she was

 

Falklands I'll give you.

The pits weren't needed to be closed, many were still profitable. She wanted to peg the unions back which was fair enough, however, she goaded them into what became a war and destroyed entire communities to prove her ideaology. I also doubt there was much asbestos in the mines, that tended to be found in old buildings.

I also doubt Thatcher's policies brought about technological advances, humans have been advancing technology regardless of government policy for a while now.

 

That's a bit different from policy making though, isn't it? Like I said it's overarching policy the NHS doesn't collapse upon whether the man in charge of policy is a doctor or not but his competences in policy making and luck. Same with education. Technocratic governments don't always deliver and are definately have no greater a ratio of effectiveness than normal governments.

That kind of statement is the same as "you can't get out of a debt crisis by spending more" as a statement. As both make a micro issue out of one on the macro scale. The larger something is the more different the consequences are of an action. For example a doctor may prescribe an expensive course of treatment for someone who is deemed in need however if that policy was over the entire NHS the cost effecitveness of treatment would be diminished. Likewise with the economy it is smart on an individual level to save, reduce borrowing and decrease debt however if all sectors and all people are trying to save, reduce borrowing and decrease debt everyone ends up with less income, more borrowing or more debt( in relative terms).

The micro should never be confused with the macro as they are two extremely different creatures.

 

The sentiments of those in the Commons who disagreed with her policies would be worth a listen by all.. You can disagree with some of what she did, but she gave us the life we know and take for granted now.

And the Huhne-Eastleigh gag was top.

 

Not really that different,

Data is collected,
Analysis is performed on collected data,
A conclusion is made.
A policy is created or a treatment is prescribed.

I agree that qualifications are not the be-all-and-end-all, but in matters of great complexity & importance you would need a very good reason for using someone with no qualifications, they would need at the very least a proven & relevant track record.

Diagnosing and fixing the economy of a country is no less complex than diagnosing and treating a patient.

 

It's not all about complexity, it's about difference.

When GDP, unemployment, inflation, consumer confidence, demand etc are collected you could draw 200 different conclusions between 200 different everyday men on the street. Put 200economists in there and you get a 200 different conclusions.

It's the old winston churchil thing agian "If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions."

Are the economists going to be more correct than the everyday man on the street. Slightly by average but it would differ on a sliding scale between absolutely s**tastically wrong and absolutely correct. You'd still be nearly as likely to have someone in charge who is starkly wrong as before.

That's what I was saying about osbourne and the tory party in general because economics is such a wide feild of opinion he would still be as wrong if he were educated in the economics he propogates. Again with economics being such a wide feild of theory and opinion that ties to political orientations the economists who are wrong now would be drawn to their respective political orientation in party choice meaning you'd still have a freshwater economist in the tory seat if he were a highly educated economist. Again this person would still be wrong.

Policy is a difficult area to champion high qualification because even those highly educated in their ministerial feild have the same competency rates as those who aren't.

Regardless something has got to give in the UK's economic situation as we can't sit forever on a stubbornly high deficit that stays so no matter how much is cut and low or negative economic growth. Something has to give, we may have to walk our way to national bankruptcy but I remain in hope that we wont walk down the wrong path indefinately or long enough to leave no room for manouvre.

 

You clearly do no work with developing Policy. You'd udnerstand it's not nearly as cut and dry as you seem to think it is. Sometimes there's not even clear "data" to look at...

 

Economics is a science & no more about opinion than say arithmetic.

The differing opinions are usually generated by different agendas, certain agendas will argue & lobby for certain types of economic policy to satisfy certain interests or groups, but pure economics is a science & few economists would disagree on the basics(unless there is some agenda at play).

In certain complex cases you might find 200 doctors with 200 opinions, especially when the data is hard to collect or when the treatment has not yet been discovered.

I don' think this is even close to being accurate ...the average person ( see sun readers ) running the economy & making policy ...shoot me now. Half of the readership are almost illiterate, easily duped & possess almost no analytical skills, you don't have to look beyond this thread to find examples of what I'm talking about.

 

& with that grammar, neither do you.

In the context of the UK economy ...can you give an example?

 

But economics isn't a science, it's a fledgling. Keynes hasn't been proven wrong, freidman hasn't, fisher hasn't, hayek hasn't nor have they been proven right. It's all highly disputed. The differentiation in conclusions over causality, consequence etc are huge. For example some argue that austerity was what created the recovery from the great depression and others argue that the mobilisation for ww2 created the recovery. The same with the new deal some argue that it was the cause of the 1937 recession because it preceded it. others argue that the overruling by the supeme court and inadequecy of stimulus was at fault.

All of these theories have qualified and recognised economists behind them. It's not like physics where the cause of something is more often that not quatifiable or clear.

The economic models of the last 30 odd years was based on the idea that people are perfectly calculating and rational, which left a huge hole in the theory. As you don't need to do a scientific analysis or collect data, you just merely have to be alive to see that this is not true.

Many economists and scietists in other feilds argue that economics needs to be more evidence based before it gets ahead of itself by calling itself a science.

Basic principles of economics there are huge disagreements from the circular flow of income, the invisible hand, animal spirits, quantitive theory of money, negative externialities, market failure, the role of recession, elasticities, marginal propensity to consume etc. All are basic economic principles (the list goes on) and there are disagreements down to the existance of nearly each and every one.


Even the mathmatical models are based largely around disputed priciples such as rationality of consumers etc.

 

Inflation. It's highly disputed how accurate inflation is at measuring especially certain aspects of inflation.

Such as inflation for the poor CPI inflation is overall basket of goods for all economic players in all wealth brackets. But it doesn't tell you have much costs are going up for different economic groups as for example the bottom 20% spend larger amounts on energy, rent and food than everyone else and these are all things that rise well above CPI inflation. But there is no data set for each economic bracket and the calculation, which is complicated to say the least, hasn't been formulated for any specific group.

Then there's the accuracy and the precision of various data sets. Most macro economic figures are based on surveys that aren't all encompassing and other data sets like tax information, sales information etc but data is missed, overestimated and underestimated.

 

I'm afraid it is,

An economy has inputs, outputs, throughput & functions, all of which can be measured and calibrated ...much like an engine or any other system. Especially when everything in an economy can be reduced to a tangible quantity(money).

Also, the economy of a single household is fundamentally no different from the economy of an entire country. Both can be described and thought of using the above paragraph.

It not some kind of voodoo or random wheel of fortune. Even though is sometimes seems like when looking at past government policy.

I'm afraid I agree with this...

 

not at all, pretty straight forward, but we are covering old ground, I have already said why there are differing opinions & it has nothing to do with ambiguity or unknown quantities within economies .

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account within the economy. A chief measure of price inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index (normally the consumer price index) over time.

 

One could argue that having people going straight into politics fresh out of uni [whatever subject they studied] with little to no life experience is a bad idea. Same for social workers and teachers imo...

 

Sorry tuk, but you're absolutely wrong on this one.

The only way we can test economic theory is through econometrics, because we don't have a full information set, only a reduced form in sampling. This prohibits the scientific method of comparing prediction to empirical data, as the multitude of reduced forms can be matched with a multitude of contradictory economic theorems. Econometrics is more akin to statistical astrology and it is impossible to apply any ceteris paribus assumptions on sample sets.

However, even if we had a full information set, your comparison to a medical diagnosis is still oversimplified. Economic behavior is more like weather than anything else, prone as it is to chaotic behavior.

 

I'm more than happy to be Prime Minster, but I've got a few expenses I need taken care of..

 

1. It's not a science. Setting economic policy isn't any more 'scientific' than setting an education policy or an immigration policy.... etc. Having some scientific processes within it does not make it a science.

2. Unfortunately in modern politics it's all about opinion. The opinion of the people in power on what type of economy they are trying to create / maintain and what sacrifices they are prepared to make to get to it. Formulas and calculations may be used to shape the decisions to meet the agreed direction (opinion) but they are not the start of the process... that starts with an opinion.

Any other argument are misguided at best.

 

I think you need to go back and read what I actually said, I never mentioned prediction, only the process of making economic policy based on available data.