Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #economism
Most recents (6)
David Roth memorably described the job of neoliberal economists as finding "new ways to say 'actually, your boss is right.'" Not just bosses: economists are a bulwark against obvious answers to our worst agonies: wages, education, health and shelter:
popula.com/2023/04/30/yak…
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popula.com/2023/04/30/yak…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mor…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mor…
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How can we solve the student debt crisis? Well, we could cancel student debt and regulate the price of education, either directly or through free state college.
How can we solve America's heath-debt crisis? We could cancel health debt and create #MedicareForAll.
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How can we solve America's heath-debt crisis? We could cancel health debt and create #MedicareForAll.
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You know how "#realist" is a synonym for "#asshole?" As in, "I'm not a racist, I'm just a #RaceRealist?" That same "realism" is used to discredit democracy, among self-styled "#LibertarianElitists," who claim that social science proves democracy doesn't work - and can't work.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/ana…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/ana…
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You've likely encountered elements of this ideology in the wild. Perhaps you've heard about how our #CognitiveBiases make us incapable of deliberating, that "reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments."
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When students of statistics are introduced to creating and interpreting models, they are introduced to George Box's maxim:
*All models are wrong, some are useful.*
It's a call for humility and perspective, a reminder to superimpose the messy world on your clean lines. 1/
*All models are wrong, some are useful.*
It's a call for humility and perspective, a reminder to superimpose the messy world on your clean lines. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all… 2/
Even with this benediction, modeling is forever prone to the cardinal sin of insisting that complex reality can be reduced to "a perfectly spherical cow of uniform density on a frictionless plane." 3/
In a @TheProspect op-ed, "What Comes After Neoliberalism?" @rkuttnerwrites writes "we’ve just about won the battle of ideas. Reality has been a helpful ally…Neoliberalism has been a splendid success for the 1%, an abject failure for everyone else":
prospect.org/economy/2023-0… 1/
prospect.org/economy/2023-0… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/ima… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/ima… 2/
Kuttner's op-ed is a report on the @Hewlett_Found's recent "#NewCommonSense" event, where Kuttner was relieved to learn that the idea that "the economy would thrive if government just got out of the way has been demolished by the events of the past three decades." 3/
FTX's collapse left a million creditors holding the bag for a chaotically managed, corrupt enterprise that created vast personal fortunes for the conspirators who ran it, even as it stole the life's savings of retail investors who bought into its lies. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/11/23/inc… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/11/23/inc… 2/
Could the unsuspecting public have been shielded from the FTX Ponzi scheme? Hindsight is 20/20, but there's good reason to believe that FTX could have been brought down in a controlled glide, rather than a nose-first crash landing and ensuing fireball. 3/
Most of us believe that we do stuff because we want to be good people, and that other people act the same. But the dominant political philosophy for the last half-century, #economism, views us as slaves to "incentives" and nothing more. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/eco… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/eco… 2/
Economism is the philosophy of the neoclassical economists, whose ideology has consumed both the Democrats and Republicans. 3/
