Most Math is Not Hard
But economics is absurd
Math and I have never gotten along terribly well. It’s not that I’m particularly bad at it since even as an English major I actually do okay in some realms. I like the stats involved in sports analysis - at least when they are used in accurate and valuable ways to evaluate performance and guide training. As opposed to being used haphazardly to make faulty judgements that drive poor decision making. (Sorry, went a little volleygeek there for a second.) And those of you who know me might assume I like the hard data and facts that can usually be found there. Data doesn’t lie, right? If that were true I would certainly fall into line. And I am fascinated in some ways by the way in which theoretically concrete and undeniable information can turn out to be malleable. But therein lies my problem. I take no issue with the unpredictability of other fields like sociology, philosophy and, my first true love, literature, because it being infinitely debatable without any definitive truth - despite some people’s approach to such things - is far more interesting to me than the ostensibly cut and tried nature of mathematics. I have a story for you.
On the accelerated math track in middle school, I took algebra in 8th grade then geometry in 9th - I was in a 6-3-3 school system so 9th grade was still middle school - and got As in both despite little interest or enjoyment. I did like geometry better since there was at least a visual component but saw both mostly as a chore. (It is worth noting that things probably would have gone much worse if it hadn’t been taught by this great surfer-teaching-to-have-summers-off cat, complete with Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops in class, that kept it mellow and cool. Thanks, Mr. Hinds.) The track was designed to continue into high school with Algebra 3/Trig, then pre-calc, than calculus to get all of us so-called advanced kids - do NOT get me started on that whole tracking bullshit - into our colleges of choice. So there I was dutifully taking algebra 3, doing my homework (in the music room after school, I don’t remember ever, and I do mean ever, actually taking books home) and checking my work from the answers in the back of the book when I finished what was a challenging proof only to find the actual answer to be “no answer”. Excuse me? Or more probably what the fuck? This was my first encounter with the abstract side of math and I was outraged and offended as only an overconfident 16 year old boy can be. Wasn’t the whole point of math to be able to be solve things in undisputable ways? Have hard answers not subject to debate? I literally went to my guidance counselor the next day to get out of the class. Since I did not have lofty college aspirations and never had any intention of taking calc anyway, when I learned I had met my math requirements already I was gone. This should illustrate my core feelings about math - it is definitive until it isn’t but won’t admit it and that pisses me off - and provide some context for my even deeper contempt and hatred for economics.
Good old Merriam-Webster tells us that economics is:
“a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services”
which brings me to my first and possibly principle complaint. Like mathematics, there is a pretense of infallibility that doesn’t quite hold up, but economics doesn’t even pretend. They want to be a subset of math and are loathe to cop to the “social science” definition. Which, by the way, is ridiculously perpetuated by the Nobel folk for giving a prize in it, even going so far as to dub it “economic sciences”, Oy. Yeah, I know they also have a Literature category, but don’t pretend it’s science. Most economists would have you believe that the crap they come up with is concrete, provable and based on hard science. If this were true we wouldn’t have competing system theories and people joining factions to claim the superiority of their theory. The Keynesians vs the Marxians vs the Neoclassicists all claiming theirs is right and true. Again, I am in no way against this in principle, and is in fact why I love literary analysis so much. Deconstructionism, structuralism, formalism, historicism, etc. all have their say and critics certainly get dogmatic about their chosen approach, but very seldom claim infallibility or the ability to prove that their way is the only way. But economics and its practitioners have no such qualms. This annoying failing is shared by statistics, another branch of mathematics that too often refuses to acknowledge its own inherent fallibility and susceptibility to bias and influence. Don Henley, of all people, sums it up nicely in Garden of Allah:
“There are no facts, there is no truth, just data to be manipulated. I can get you any result you like, What’s it worth to ya?”
(This is an excellent song, btw, and all too relevant today. The video is wildly obtuse and self-indulgent, but worth it for the lyric and one of the great cameos of all time.)
The economists I like are the ones who are very aware of the shortcomings of their not-hard science and build it into their analysis like Paul Krugman. He did win a Nobel and is a pretty strict New Keynesian so maybe I’m digging myself a hole here, so I will put down the shovel. My favorite economist ever is the fictional Meyer from the John D. MacDonald “Travis McGee” books. Must reads! Both are readily willing to admit the failings of the system and respond to results and data rather than theory. Which brings me to our current lunacy.
There is a very old joke that says if economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses but rather sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘what would I do if I were a horse?’. Definitely too true to be funny. And nowhere is this more evident in the supply-side economics crowd. Also known as trickle down, - which I think is appropriate as it is a great metaphor for the poor and middle class being pissed on by the rich - it had knocked around in various iterations for quite a while but really came into fashion under Reagan. (Add it the very long list of things he should answer for in the circle of hell reserved for his kind.) They changed the name because trickle down turned out to be a hard sell. Go figure. It is also known as horse and sparrow economics, which is even better since the metaphor is that if the sparrows don’t have enough grain to eat the solution is to feed the horses more so they will eventually crap out enough for the sparrows. Perfect. There is a boatload of math and modeling to prove that it works, but the economists are still contemplating the idea of the horse instead of looking at one, because here’s the thing. It does not work. For the people in the back: IT DOES NOT WORK!
One of the things you can count on from Republicans when they are in power is that they will trot out the old trickle down schtick. The other is that the deficit hawks that squawk and screech about any Democrat plan that might add a penny to the deficit suddenly pull in their talons when it is their turn. You can set your watch by it. This time around it is a record-setting 3.5 trillion dollars - or so, depending on who you believe. What’s a couple hundred billion here and there? They claim that tax cuts - that always give the biggest benefit to the rich - will stimulate spending, spur growth and that any short term budget shortfalls will be covered by all the resulting increased revenue. Normal person’s version: the rich folk and corporations will take all that extra money they’re getting, put it back into the economy in the form of jobs and wages, we will all make and spend more money and all will be hunky dory. Oh, and it will benefit all Americans. I’m sure you see a couple of flaws.
The rich folk and corporations don’t do that. They keep it! Or worse, they give themselves dividends while continuing to screw their workers and the gap grows.
Even if they did, they leave out the last tricky little bit. After it trickles down to us the only way it will result in more revenue is if we then pay more taxes. Convenient to leave that out, huh?
Reagan did it in 1981, W in 2001 AND 2003, and Felon47 in 2017. In all four cases, not only did all the rosy predictions not come to pass, but the exact opposite happened. The debt ballooned, growth stagnated and income inequality worsened. Every time. There are a couple of fun details to look at though. Under Ronnie Raygun, the projected surge in the GDP and fall of unemployment went specifically backwards - GDP fell, unemployment rose AND revenues declined. Huh. This led to an actual increase in taxes that congress insisted on, the first in decades. Oh, the irony. 2001 is even worse. Bush2 inherited a budget surplus. Yes, you read that right. Clinton eliminated the deficit in his second term and there was actual extra money, something that defies imagination these days. W thought this would be a great time to undo that progress and go back to the same old tax cuts. When it quickly went south - again - he doubled down and cut even further in 2003. Do you remember the economic collapse that he left behind when he left office in 2009? I can here you yelling “But that was the banks and housing, and blah, blah, blah.” And whose economic policies allowed all that to go down? All part and parcel of the regressive thinking that supports trickle down. And before I get into 2017 and you start in on “but, COVID”, Lord Dampnut’s glorious cuts were already having the usual effect - slow growth, less hiring and falling revenues in 2018 and 2019, pre-pandemic.
In the last fifty years, the US economy performed the best under Clinton - wage increases, whopping growth and surging private investment - AND the aforementioned budget surplus (just writing that gives me a weird cognitive dissonance). What magic did he do? What genius plan did he enact to produce such miraculous results? He raised taxes. On high earners and big corporations. Oh and got rid of the downright absurd Medicare cap and, hold on your butts, CUT defense spending. Bubba did some crappy stuff - welfare cuts, DOMA and bombing Iraq - but he deserves props for one of the greatest economies in US history. And he didn’t even have to go to war to get it.
So the fact that these assholes are trotting out the same old bullshit projections and promises that we KNOW don’t work is idiotic, insulting and shockingly deluded. But that is decidedly not all, folks. They are also doing it on the backs of everybody but the rich and are slashing the safety net to pay for it. Hundreds of billions of dollars in food benefits will disappear, 11 million people will lose their health benefits and the tax cuts will benefit those very same people the least. It is also notable that while many of the benefits mentioned above, not to mention the previously sacred Medicare and Medicaid, were considered liberal handouts to the poor, they are increasingly being used by working-class families. Also known as the people who voted for these fuckers. It is also terrifying to me that while this would have been political suicide two decades ago, it is very possible that the very people taking the biggest hit from this will continue to guzzle the Kool-Aid and believe every lie spouted by their Great Leader. I might even posit it beyond possible into likely.
So, yeah, the economists need to face reality, stop claiming shoddy “science” to defend the indefensible and take a stab at beating some sense into the pols who keep using this repeatedly disproven approach to screw working class Americans. It is said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result. If that is true then these bastards are bat-shit barking crazy. But we knew that. Sigh. Thanks for reading.