{"id":26100,"date":"2017-09-25T18:33:55","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T23:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26100"},"modified":"2017-09-25T18:33:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T23:33:55","slug":"if-economists-are-so-smart-why-are-they-always-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26100","title":{"rendered":"If Economists Are So Smart, Why Are They Always Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2017-09-25\/if-economists-are-so-smart-why-are-they-always-wrong\">If Economists Are So Smart, Why Are They Always Wrong?<\/a><\/h3>\n<section class=\"node node-type-blog node-full node-nid-604150\">\n<div class=\"content\">\n<p>When I took Econ 101 and 102 as a young college student back in antediluvian times the textbook we were assigned was Paul Samuelson\u2019s\u00a0<em>Economics: An Introductory Analysis.<\/em>\u00a0This book is the all-time best selling economics textbook and is still around today (19th\u00a0ed.).<\/p>\n<p>I had the 1961 edition. In it, Samuelson, a prominent Keynesian economist who won the Nobel prize in economics, predicted that the economy of the Soviet Union would overtake the U. S. economy in 23 years (by 1984). Even as late as the 11th\u00a0edition (1980), Samuelson\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1517983\">stood by<\/a>\u00a0his prediction.<\/p>\n<p>As anybody who knows anything about the Soviet Union, their top-down centrally planned economy was a disaster that left its citizens in poverty. It was inefficient, wasteful, driven by coercion, politics, corruption, and cronyism. Consumer wishes were ignored. Goods were under-produced or overproduced. There were shortages of everything, except vodka and hydrogen bombs.<\/p>\n<p>There was a joke floating around Moscow at the time about shortages: Yuri Gagarin\u2019s daughter (he was the first man in space and hero of the Soviet Union) answers the phone: \u201cNo, mummy and daddy are out,\u201d she says. \u201cDaddy\u2019s orbiting the earth, and he\u2019ll be back tonight at 7 o\u2019clock. But mummy\u2019s gone shopping for groceries, so who knows when she\u2019ll be home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They were far, far behind us.<\/p>\n<p>So how is it possible that Samuelson and his fellow Keynesians could even consider that a planned economy could work better than a free economy? For 11 editions he persisted in believing that failed theory. And a generation of students left school with the idea that a centrally planned economy could work.<\/p>\n<p>Mainstream economists today aren\u2019t much better.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Economists Are So Smart, Why Are They Always Wrong? When I took Econ 101 and 102 as a young college student back in antediluvian times the textbook we were assigned was Paul Samuelson\u2019s\u00a0Economics: An Introductory Analysis.\u00a0This book is the all-time best selling economics textbook and is still around today (19th\u00a0ed.). I had the 1961 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[125,2085,458,467,16154,742,827],"class_list":["post-26100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-planning","tag-economists","tag-john-maynard-keynes","tag-keynesian-economics","tag-paul-samuelson","tag-soviet-union","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26101,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26100\/revisions\/26101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}