Economics is NOT a Science

Whatever you think of the sexual habits of Dick Morris, I agree with Bill Clinton that Dick is one hell of a pollster and political analyst.

Now, of course to the Democrats, Dick has gone over to the “dark side” by now helping Republicans – and anyone can question his motives if they wish (I don’t – he was thrown to the wolves), and I’ll take my political knowledge where I can find it.

Recently, Dick wrote:

“It should be evident to all that Obamanomics is a disaster. It reminds one of nothing so much as the medieval practice of bleeding the patient to make him well by expelling the evil spirits that dwelt within. When the patient did not recover, they just bled him more and, when he died, they just said that the spirits killed him. The practice of spending, borrowing and then taxing to fuel job growth is the modern analogy.”

There is a lot of wisdom there.

Left to its own devices, markets recover. Even with help – or in spite of it – markets recover. (Eventually)

Most markets recover in 18 months. This one is taking much longer and it can be argued that what has been done was no help at all.

One of the problems with problems is that we can’t run simultaneous solutions to see what works, what works best, and what does not work. Every problem leaves us with the argument that “it would have been better if…” but no one knows, and no one ever will.

What we know is when something absolutely fails, and even then we don’t know all of the facts. In the case of the American economy we do not know the impact of the varying parts of the international economies.

Economics is not a science.