Ignorance

smiles

Following my usual rant on people misunderstanding [edit:] and having made a big misunderstanding myself! [/edit] I've been looking at alot of posts on this forum.

Mainly I'm a would-be economist, and there's a few posting, but are most of them/us partially (completely!) economically ignorant? [and yes economics is the basis for all politics.]

Do people just mouth off and hope that the sheer volume of their posts will force peope to listen? (Think Occy!)

And further to that point, is the entire country ignorant as to what is actually happening in the country, I mean studying basic economics made a huge difference to me in understanding what was going on in the world.

Should this be compulsory to the entire population?
A "Understand your country" TV-series to go along with the "Read Write Now" one?

opinions?

<< Fio >>

sceptre

I'd like to think that I know a little about economics, enough to get by in a CS course at any rate:)

I wouldn't make all that many pronouncements or rants on the subject, but I'd like to think that when I do (like here, the last economics post I made before correcting you on what the CPI represents), I know exactly (or at least close to it) what I'm talking about.

dahamsta

Spin is the basis for all politics Fio. Everyone knows that.

adam

bonkey

Originally posted by smiles
And further to that point, is the entire country ignorant as to what is actually happening in the country,

Yes.

Most of them/us, however, either don't know what they don't know, or just think they understand more than they do.

jc

mr_angry

You can push two or more opinions onto almost any set of economic statistics, though. Economics is hardly an exact science (i.e. x = y = z). If my memory serves me right, the definition of Economics goes something like:

Economics is a social science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between aims and scarce means, which have alternate uses.

Plenty of scope for opinion there. Of course, thats not to say everybody's opinion is correct, but neither one nor the other can usually be substantiated as absolute fact.

pencil

Originally posted by smiles
And further to that point, is the entire country ignorant as to what is actually happening in the country,

I believe I have a pretty good (if basic) understanding of economics - is your post just a general rant (type) about the 'general-unwashed-masses' (easy!) or do you believe that we here (among the opinionated/semi-educated) are missing some major point?

I don't mean this in a bad way (I am interested) but - 'I'm all ears' - what exactly do you mean by the quote above.

swiss

I'm curious. How much economic knowledge would you deem satisfactory in order to speak with some authority on matters that brush this subject? I did Economics for the Leaving Cert, even considered it briefly as a career choice, but I would not feel justified in saying that this knowledge makes my views any more or less authoritive than others on many of the topics raised here.

Don't get me wrong. Having a firm grounding in the basics of Economic theory is extremely useful when it comes to analysing political systems, but some matters extend beyond money.

The definition of Economics I was given for the leaving cert (as close to verbatim as I can recall) is:

"Economics is a statistical science that examines how the worlds scarce resources can be distributed in order to satisfy the needs and wants of mankind."

whereas Politics is characterised by the following definition (link).

The art or science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs.

Some issues simply extend beyond money, societal issues such as crime, age profiles, population distributions would be examples of these. Although these are arguably important in economic terms as well as political terms, one does not necessarily need to know a great deal about Economics in general to comment on any of these issues.

I do accept your point however, that many people do demonstrate ignorance of basic economic tenets, such as price/demand relationships, inflation, budgeting (inflationary and deflationary). Rather than berate this ignorance, I think we should incorporate several economic concepts into our education system, perhaps even at primary level.

sceptre

Here's something I do believe to be true: 90% of the population are totally or relatively ignorant about any particular issue at any given time. The rider is that we've all been part of that 90% at one time or another.

What galls me in general are the people who can never admit that they're wrong and will insist that black is white even when it obviously isn't. You see it here too obviously. I've great respect for people with an awful lot of knowledge (especially if they aren't too cocky about it all the time) but I've just as much respect for people who, having taken a point and having been proved wrong just come out and admit it rather than trying to ride an obviously dead horse through town. That's integrity and it's worthy of respect (nods to Fio as a worthy case in point). As for the others, well <shudders>, some of them will probably end up running the country.

shotamoose

I don't know that a crash course in economics would really raise the level of debate on the politics board. Most of the problems really come from people being uninformed, prejudiced or unwaveringly dogmatic. I've taken part in conversations about political and economic issues without a formal economics training (and often discussing or disagreeing with people who HAVE had such training) without feeling out of my depth. Clear thinking, consistency and open-mindedness are what I value most in other people's arguments. As long as you're willing to learn about something you don't know very well there should be no problems.

Anyway, having applied that logic to myself and recently begun a course in economics, I'd be even more careful about putting it forward as the bedrock of common sense. At it's most basic level, mainstream economics is based on a few rather nutty assumptions, but a lot of people are content to blindly (and blandly) draw general conclusions about the world from this. I think only if you realise the limitations of the early stuff and approach economics with a very critical attitude will you get much out of it.

And I disagree that economics is the basis of all politics. Politics is partly about defining the limits of economics in deciding how our societies are run. And lots of economists I've read seem to have been blissfully ignorant about politics. In fact, I think someone who believed that politics could be reduced to economics would be flirting with my own definition of ignorance.

bus77

Id personally like some sort of economics crash cource to help me see the big picture.
I think Im the sort of person yous are talkin about.

I still have't worked out why countrys cant just add a few zeros to their budget if they need a few more bob.
Is it "The World Bank" that keeps an eye on this stuff?

sceptre

Originally posted by bus77
I still have't worked out why countrys cant just add a few zeros to their budget if they need a few more bob.

Have a look at the links in this google search for a brief idea of why (look for the bits on printing extra money). I'll get back to you but it might be next week.

swiss

I usually use the labour theory of value to answer this question. This theory basically states that the value of a good is equivalent to the amount of labour it can demand in exchange for itself. Although this is not universally accepted (Marx argued that this did not adequetely encompass the different labour patterns that might exist in order to create a particular commodity) it does allow a sense of how a country can value it's produce as well as it's services.

You see, if you add one "zero" to your budget, you're essentially saying that goods are effectively worth 10 times as much in your economy. Nobody, however, has worked any harder to produce those goods, nor does their value relative to commodities produced by other economies change. Therefore, all you are going to do is create the same goods, but at 10 times the price. The result is that your currency is worth 10 times less. Money will lose it's value and in some cases you can get hyperinflation as a result. Hyperinflation is the most extreme variety of inflation. In extreme cases it can lead to the breakdown of a nation's monetary system. One of the most notable examples of hyperinflation occurred in Germany in 1923, when prices rose 2,500% in one month.

I just hope I got that right from what I can remember of economics class .

Anyway *cough* back on topic .

I would agree with most of what shotamoose had to say. Although a knowledge of the basics of economics is useful, many of those basics are common sense axioms, the archetypal example of this would be the Law of Demand - that lower prices result in a higher demand for a given product/service. There are exceptions to this law, but I think everyone can see the validity of this tenet.