368 US economists against Kerrynomics

[vulturesrow]

Read here (No subscription or registration required)

Here is the opening:
Bush-Cheney '04 today announced 368 of the nation's leading economists from 44 states have signed an economic statement denouncing John Kerry's economic proposals. The group boasts six Nobel laureates, including recent winner and Professor of Economics at Arizona State University Edward C. Prescott, as well as six former chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. America 's economists recognize that President Bush's pro-growth policies and across-the-board tax relief are the right policies for sustained growth – and they are urging voters not to turn back with John Kerry's tax and spend agenda.

Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia University Business School and former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, said: "Ideas and response to events are the tests of economic leadership. President Bush's focus on raising long-term growth using well-timed tax cuts, opening markets, and seeking to limit regulatory and litigation costs has furthered the global economic expansion. The administration's leadership in the War on Terror, the management of terrorism risk, and restoring investor confidence also limited potentially damaging downturns of confidence. Senator Kerry's recipe of limiting job creation by raising tax rates on entrepreneurs and our most successful global companies, while radically expanding the size and scope of government will limit future economic growth and lead to increasingly grim fiscal choices."


The list of signees includes 6 Nobel Prize Laureates: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, and Edward C. Prescott (winner of this year's Nobel in Economics)

[GWB]

I expect SaltCracka to change his tune about the reliability of what economists have to say.

[jokerswild]

So are you. Why haven't you volunteered for front line duty in Iraq yet?

Are you a hypocritical chickenhawk, ol'Yeller like your deserter?

Ha,Ha, Ha, Ha, HA ,Ha Ha, you coward!

[MMMMMM]

Jokerswild your posts are getting more ridiculous every day.

You had a good point to raise about intrusive 2+2 cookies in another thread, but you ruined it by adding some ridiculous and totally unrelated assertions about the President or some such nonsense.

A word to the wise (that is somewhere hiding in you, Jokerswild): if you want to be taken seriously when you raise a serious point, tone down the hyperbole and ridiculous assertions, else you simply manage to drown yourself out.

[wacki]

Do economists really know what they are doing? Is is possible to predict the economy to the extent that they do? So economists diagree so strongly about the Bush/Kerry economy plan I really have to wonder if the economy is just too complex to predict. Some things, are and obvious + or minus for the economy of course, but you have to admit, there are tons of economists that say Kerry, and there are tons that say Bush.

Economists 4 Kerry

[vulturesrow]

Macroeconomics is a highly complex field and I dont know of any economist that could honestly say they can exactly predict the economy. However if you look at the letter I posted one issue they raise is really more of an accounting question, in that Kerry's promises cant be covered by his pledge to raise money by only raising taxes on income above 200,000. The second question they raise is on Kerry's stance on international trade. Even the most virulently liberal economists tend to shy away from any sort of restriction on free trade.

In answer to your question, of course economists know what they are doing. Most economic theory these days is based on sound empirical methods. Just like any other field, we discover new things and new theories spring up as we learn more about economics. For instance, read my post on the this years Nobel Prize winner's in economics, whose findings would suggest that the best policy to respond to economic recession is to do nothing.

[sam h]

The don't call it the dismal science for nothing. While I definitely think economists do "know what they are doing," the amount of dissensus among them is a natural product of what it is that they are doing.

Even though economics pretends to be the "most scientific" of the social sciences, it is really a lot closer to political science, sociology, and history than it is to the hard sciences. At least in macroeconomics, the big reason for this is simple: economists must use observational data and observational research designs rather than experimental ones. I don't know what type of science you do. But the ability to perform controlled experiments is pretty huge in making inferences and getting the field on the same page as far as conclusions and results.