Economics as Science

[spike]

I just read an article whose gist was that economics is not science because it doesn't or can't predict. But a nobel laureate in economics argued that a science doesn't necessarily need the ability to predict to be considered a science. Science also explains. Economics explains.

The examples our economist used to show other sciences that can't or don't predict, but can and do explain, are seismology and meteorology. Similarly, economics' function isn't to predict, but to explain.

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Thing one: sciences observe and measure real things and then theorize and then design experiments to test the theory and only then predict the outcome of test cases. And then adjust or discard the theory if it proves inconsistent with facts.
Economists do none of that - especially not the last bit.

Thing two: I bet the guy has, too, tuned in on the weather forecast sometimes. And I bet his pants stayed dryer dressing on the advice of a meteorologist than investing on the advice of an economist.

Thing three: economics describes transactions in a given environment; sociology explains them. The explanations by economists of how human interaction works are about as useful as the explanations by theologians of how the world was created.

[tbieter]

http://www.whatiseconomics.org/

I'M INTERESTED IN THE BANKRUPTCY FILING BY THE CITY OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit

What conditions could have been identified as factors upon which decline could have been predicted?

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What conditions could have been identified as factors upon which decline could have been predicted?

All of them. In broad strokes:
- concentrating too large an industry all in one place, and then running that industry stupidly (Seriously - who didn't know, back in the 70's that Japanese and German cars were better than American cars? And what did the too-big-to-fail auto industry do about that? Way too much more of the same.)
- very bad mortgage financing policy, all the way back to the 1930's: The skilled and white collar (and white skinned) workers moved to the growing suburbs, which didn't contribute taxes to the city where their residents made their living; the poorest and darkest people whose jobs were first to be cut, were left in the downtown core, where services were first to be cut, in rental properties owned by absentee landlords who didn't give a damn.
- graft and corruption - obviously
- the exporting, from the late 1980's, of US industry southward, then eastward, in pursuit of ever-cheaper labour
- the flight of capital to tax havens and tax exemptions for big profit - but not for small salary
- the breaking of American trade unions (and auto industry bailouts based on cutting even more jobs, but not changing direction)
(The really big fun will be had by the rich bastards who buy, at a fraction of the value, all of the public assets on the construction of which they themselves had already profited.)
Detroit isn't alone, btw.