Re:A strengthening dollar is bad for the world economy
by saosebastiao on Thursday December 01, 2016 @10:27AM
(#13079946)
Math is closer to the humanities than economics is. Math is not empirical, with its expanding knowledge driven more by philosophical thinking than empirical deduction.
Economics is not a hard science, and shouldn't be treated as such, but to claim it is more like the humanities is disingenuous. It is a social science. That is to say that it is still ultimately empirical, just that the empirical implications of working with humans makes the job a lot harder and ocassionally less repeatable (are we measuring innate human nature, or a fluid and ever changing culture?).
Re:A strengthening dollar is bad for the world economy
by AnimalMuppet on Thursday December 01, 2016 @01:11PM
(#13081788)
We're measuring human behavior. The problem is that, as the circumstances change, humans change their behavior. That means that economic models only work as long as the economy keeps doing what it has been, so that the humans keep doing what they have been, which leads to an economy that continues to do what it has been...
But the problem with economics is that it is often viewed or presented/used (by governments) as a hard science, while it is much closer to some humanities: a game of deducing, abstracting, and guessing.
Economies are hugely complex and intertwined systems, which are hard to understand and harder to predict, because they depend on so many variables.
Economic models often only work when everything is going well or down an established path, and not when you would actually need them.