Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Welcome to the Amusement Park at the Edge of the Abyss

I tried to tell them. I really did. I wrote a letter to Paul Krugman that he never replied to. I carried on an email exchange with Jonathan Portes, who graciously indulged my ignorant, obviously fallacious opinions. I nattered at Brad DeLong, who blocked me on twitter. I posted to EconoSpeak. All to no avail. Knee-Oh-Liberal Uber Alles...

The experts were not even wrong. They didn't know what they were talking about. They just copied from one another, assuming the guy they were copying from had the right answer. But that guy was just copying from somebody else...

On June 24, the day after the Brexit vote, I wrote:
So it turns out the establishment telling people they are a bunch of foolish xenophobes is not an effective electoral strategy. I wonder if the DNC is paying attention? I doubt it.
It turns out the DNC was not paying attention. I was not surprised.

Here is the thing... on July 3, I asked, "Why Are Experts Ignoring Voters?" correcting the title of an LSE blog post that wondered why voters were ignoring experts, as if it was the voters job to listen to the experts and not the other way around.

Then on August 31, I asked "Did Jonathan Portes Cause Brexit?" I answered my own question by concluding that he probably didn't because probably nobody paid much attention to him.

But my point in all this is that the BOGUS "lump-of-labor fallacy" is a weapon of mass destruction that can do tremendous harm in the wrong hands and the "experts" irresponsible handling of this canard insured that it would get into the wrong hands.

In another post from June 24, I quoted Ann Petifor:
If, as a result of Brexit, the economy crashes it will not vindicate the economists, it will simply illustrate once more their failure.
The big secret consensus behind "free trade" agreements, flexible labor market policies, austerity and expedited immigration is the professional faith of economists that wages are too damn high,  that lower wages will be good for GROWTH and growth is good. Wage earners are not supposed to notice or, rather, are supposed to be grateful for the bounty that the restriction of their wages has unleashed.

To the great dismay of the experts, the voters were not grateful. Thanks, experts, you did this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So it turns out the establishment telling people they are a bunch of foolish xenophobes is not an effective electoral strategy. I wonder if the DNC is paying attention? I doubt it.

Perhaps one of the smartest things said about the US election but I am biased since I reached the same conclusion about the US even before Brexit.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Obviously this proves that you too are not a scientist, Sandwichman. Welcome to the club and shame on you, :-).

Sandwichman said...

Barkley, your observation that I am not a scientist presupposes that there are Sandwichmen who ARE scientists. I envision a phalanx of them marching around with lab coats on under their sandwich boards, perhaps holding aloft test tubes or whatever other scientific instruments scientists hold aloft when they are sciencing.