“The award was for their work on the pricing of financial assets. Together they concluded that predicting the price of stocks and bonds in the short term is virtually impossible. But they showed it is possible to forecast the broad course of prices over longer periods, such as the three to five years.Shiller was among those who warned in the 1990s that the run-up in stock prices as part of the Internet stock bubble was the result of "irrational exuberance."Last decade, Shiller made similar warnings about the run-up in U.S. home prices. That proved to be correct when the housing bubble burst and plunged the nation into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/14/news/economy/shiller-nobel-economics/index.html?iid=s_mpm
Our expectations and standards of economics and economists
really has reached an all-time low when we hand out Nobel prizes for work on
how to improve one’s gambles in the financial market and for predicting
failures in our economic system.
While we still haven’t mastered basic resource management,
whereby we ensure that everyone has got access to those resources which
safeguard human subsistence – we rather place value and importance on the
speculative side of economics which only cares about profit and unsubstantiated
growth at the expense of issues of real importance, such as eradicating poverty and starvation.
We entertain ourselves with the fringe side of economics
while we haven’t even got the basics in place. Resource inequality and living
standards disparity are skyrocketing. We’ve never had this many people living
in poverty and we’ve never had this much wealth and ‘know how’ in the world.
And still, even though we have everything in place to create a world where everyone lives a life of comfort and dignity, we’re not moving the puzzle pieces in place to bring a better world into being.
And still, even though we have everything in place to create a world where everyone lives a life of comfort and dignity, we’re not moving the puzzle pieces in place to bring a better world into being.
Economics as a discipline has failed us in every way.
Economics should be disqualified as a field from receiving any form of
recognition of praise until we have put into place the basics as a foundation
where everyone is able to secure their life. This should be the primary focus
of economics, and so long primary structures and logistics are not in place to
support life on earth – we shouldn’t bother indulging ourselves in fictional
economics pertaining gamble and speculation.
If we really want to do something worthwhile in the name of
economics, we would start with providing a safety net such as a Living Income
Guaranteed, which practically ensures that everyone is provided with the means
to live their life, without being deprived of basic necessities and living in a
survival state of being - the way life is supposed to be lived.
To find out more about the Living Income Guaranteed, visit:
Economics is about, or should be about, how to employ the available means in such a way that no want more urgently felt should remain unsatisfied because the means suitable for its attainment were employed - wasted - for the attainment of a want more urgently felt. That's what it means to economize: to allocate a finite quantity of resources in their most productive/urgent use. "Most urgent use" is determined by supply and demand on the free market. I agree with the criticism of modern empirical economics, they seems frivolous and misplaced. But I disagree with the conclusion; there is only one way to make the world more wealthy - increase the ratio of capital to people through saving and investment. This is only accomplished through market processes. Wealth redistribution will only succeed in making us equally poor. Well written piece, though, thank you for a thoughtful opinion.
ReplyDeleteEconomics is about, or should be about, how to employ the available means in such a way that no want more urgently felt should remain satisfied because the means suitable for its attainment were employed - wasted - for the attainment of a want less urgently felt. This is what it means to economize: to allocate scarce resources to their most productive/urgent use. "Most urgent use" is determined by supply and demand as established on the free market. I agree with the criticism that empirical economics seem frivolous and misplaced. But I disagree with the conclusion of this article; the only way to make the world more wealthy is by increasing the ratio of capital to people through investment and savings. Wealth redistribution will only succeed in making us all equally poor. Well written piece, though, thank you for a thoughtful opinion.
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