Re:Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now
by cwp on Friday September 09, 2011 @08:11PM
(#2980309)
Economics is exactly like religion. There are correct and incorrect answers, but most people ignore them, and believe something that makes them feel good about their place in the world.
Re:Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now
by notahacker on Saturday September 10, 2011 @05:13PM
(#2982499)
There are correct answers to questions like "will redistributing income from group X to group Y improve overall productivity?" but they're neither necessary nor sufficient criterion for policy formulation. (Keynesians, like their neoclassical economist critics tend to be favourably disposed towards assessing policy impact based on empirical evidence; Austrians on the fringe Right argue the economy is too complex to act as a testing ground)
Questions like "is better aggregate economic growth a justification for disproportionate tax increases for these people?" or "if the bottom percentile are hungry, should feeding them take precedence over growth objectives?" are inherently moral
"we can let them keep it and allow people to suffer."
Using your feelings to guide your monetary policy decisions is no better than the creationists forcing ID to be taught in schools. If your hunch is that a Keynesian approach is ideal, cool. Many would agree. But choosing it because it's the obvious "moral" choice just dumbs down the whole debate, opens the door to all sorts of emotional reactionary ignorance, and doesn't get us any closer to the right answer.