Robert Johnson — Dancing in the Dark: Creating an Economics for the 21st Century

Ask an economist a simple question such as “What is economics supposed to do?” and you likely will get back a blank stare or an absurdly technical response filled with meaningless jargon. Typically you also will be told economics is “value free.” Many economists believe that economics involves just this kind of analysis: objective, dispassionate, apolitical, and unbiased.

However, this is clearly not the case [cognitive science reveals that facts and values are entangled at the level of brain functioning]. Without any substantive debate, economists routinely make recommendations and decisions about what does and doesn’t count in the world. Without admitting it, or even worse, at times without even knowing it, economists make powerful value judgments about what matters in our society.

While doing arithmetic may not be a biased process, deciding what gets included in the equation can be. Yet economists use theories that freeze human values inside antiseptic and sterile notions like “utility” (a technical euphemism that replaces all the nuance of human psychology with a simple process of mental math) while pretending that they are speaking objectively about how to increase wellbeing. Working in this way, economists are simply avoiding the question rather than addressing it.

The point is that economics is supposed to serve society. But fulfilling this goal means having real discussions about controversial and at times politically contentious topics, instead of hiding in the monastery and substituting technocratic dances for debate.

INET
Dancing in the Dark: Creating an Economics for the 21st Century
Robert Johnson | Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.
He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.

George Lakoff on why moral argument beats logical reasoning about policy

George Lakoff has said this many times before. He updates it here for current events.

Read it at The Huffington Post
The Santorum Strategy

by George Lakoff

This advice also applies to promoting MMT-based policy. Don't promote opponent's frames but rather show why one's own frame is morally superior, which involves feeling, as well as economically superior which involves logical reasoning. The public goes chiefly with feeling rather than logical reasoning unless it is couched in terms of feeling.

Yglesias on the positive-normative distinction in economics

Yglesias observes that in the view of Hillary Putnam, "The reason you can't rigidly separate positive from normative economics is that you can't rigidly separate claims of fact from claims of value in general. Human language is too laden with thick concepts that mix the two."

For the record, Ludwig Wittgenstein had already elucidated this point through logical analysis in Philosophical Investigations (1953).

Read it at Slate
The Positive/Normative Distinction In Economics Is Nonsense But It Doesn't Really Matter
By Matthew Yglesias

I disagree with Matt that it doesn't really matter. It matters hugely, because obscuring the pervasiveness of the normative and prescriptive in economics and claiming that economic orthodoxy is positive while heterodox economics is not is central to the rhetoric of propaganda designed to justify neoliberalism.

Ravi Batra points out that in eras ruled by acquisitors, intellectuals prostitute themselves for fame, fortune and a share in power by justifying acquisitive behavior to laborers, who make up a vast majority of the population. They do this not through sound reasoning based on true premises and valid logical form, but by obscuring their intent behind a facade of sophistical rhetoric and displays of "expertise" designed to confuse the less-educated.

As Steve Keen artfully shows in Debunking Economics, neoliberalism rests on the "smoke" of sophistical assumptions and "mirrors" of complicated mathematical models that do not represent actual conditions. Thus, the premises are not as represented and the conclusions are also drawn by extending the application of the modeling beyond its scope in order to to convince the rubes that they are getting screwed for "scientific" reasons and there is no alternative other than the boogeyman of "socialism," which "everyone knows" ends in totalitarianism.

Yglesias says, "I think a lot of people who think they disagreement with most mainstream economists about certain things have noticed that most mainstream economists hold a somewhat naive metaphysical position and think that if they can debunk this metaphysical position they've vanquished the beast and now the doors are wide open to a utopia in which economists' critiques of their policy ideas have all been debunked. If mainstream economists are making a mistake in their analysis of the economy, you'll show that by engaging with their analysis of the economy not by engaging with their slipshod freelancing in metaphysics."

I think he is being naive here. The point of much economics is to justify a position that does not work economically, as the only alternative, for example, or the optimal solution.

TINA is often bolstered by the specious claim that every other approach leads to a socially unacceptable conclusion, like "socialism," or "totalitarianism." The focus on supply side is often justified on the basis of that this model of capitalism has generated a global system that has raised many out of poverty and produced the most advanced civilization to date, so let's leave well enough alone. These are specious arguments are successfully deployed to convine the "rabble" to vote against their own economic interests.

 A bevy of think tanks have been funded by acquisitors to justify rapacity in the name of science. They are the go-to sources for the media and their manufactured credibility is used to justify propaganda. So, yes, the blending of fact and value, positive and normative, and descriptive and prescriptive is important and significant socially, politically, and economically in convincing the unsuspecting that their leaders are acting on the best scientific knowledge rather than self-serving ideology.