Elitist view or rational thing?

[tedteague]

So let me get this straight. You're saying that economics, like religion, is all smoke and mirrors? Fantasy and fairy tales? Myth and make-believe?

That explains a lot!

hmm . . . not trying to be attacking here, but either you completely misunderstood what I said or I didn't say it very well. you missed the forest for trees.
Economics is a science. It is rather unique, however, because you can't have a real control variable. No two countries have identical economies, so what works in one may be disastrous in another. Its not like one can observe two independent timelines, one with a bailout and one without.
It's still using past behavior to attempt to predict future behavior

[Thorne]

hmm . . . not trying to be attacking here, but either you completely misunderstood what I said or I didn't say it very well. you missed the forest for trees.

Wouldn't be the first time I've done that! But you did compare economics to religion, after all. And at least twice you used a religious analogy to illustrate something.

Economics is a science. It is rather unique, however, because you can't have a real control variable. No two countries have identical economies, so what works in one may be disastrous in another. Its not like one can observe two independent timelines, one with a bailout and one without.

I don't know if you can call it a science, then. If you can't have controls, and you can't duplicate experiments, then there's little that is scientific. From where I sit it sounds more like Astrology than Astronomy. You use scientific sounding terms, but in the end it's all guesswork. When you can say, "Given these conditions, you will get this result; changing that condition will change the result in this manner", then you are working scientifically.

It's still using past behavior to attempt to predict future behavior

Lot's of processes do that, including religion. That doesn't make it science.

[tedteague]

well, 1. i dont know how religion tries to predict anything, unless you want to include those guys who calculate when the world will end by dividing the number of vowels by the amount of times the name of the book is mentioned.
To call i astrology is saying theres a room of people who just randomly assign meaning to certain things
Liken it more to physics. We have general ideas where the electron will be at given moment, but we can't know for sure. And we're still trying to figure out quarks.
Psychology has the same difficulty in controlling variables as everyones mind is different. However, there are many things you can still prove as more or less true, like getting shot in one lobe may impair vision or cause a personality change. The same general rules can be applied to economics like price ceilings will lead to shortages. You then use these relationships and trends to determine the effect any action will have on an economy