• rbb36@lemmy.world
    20·
    2 days ago

    Try Thomas Piketty, or Emmanuel Saez. Or if you want someone older, try Jean Jaurès. Just because rich people love sociopath economists doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones out there.

    [edit: adding a snippet]:

    Together with economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, Saez’s work claims top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much economic inequality as before the Great Depression. Saez recommends much higher marginal tax rates, of up to 70% or 90%. Among other honors, he received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009 and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2010.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      131·
      2 days ago

      I’d be happy with calling them economic anthropologists, haha. As far as I’m concerned (and I’m sure it’s more complex than this) the ones interested in people are anthropologists and spreadsheet humpers are economists. But I respect them swimming upstream in their field, being surrounded by economy bros has to suck so hard.

      • rbb36@lemmy.world
        8·
        1 day ago

        The loudest economists use economic theory as a cudgel. You are right to find them infuriating. They assert certainty where economics does not, and cherry pick exceptions to hold up as rules. They are to economics as RFK Jr is to medicine.

        The math of economics is more like the math of epidemiology or fluid dynamics than the math of mechanical linkages. It describes how things tend to interact within a system, but a given element or interaction is unpredictable. Even concrete sections, like price theory, have contradictions like the velvet rope effect. It describes probable outcomes in a chaotic system running on irrational humans.

        Meteorology is still a math-based science that makes useful predictions, even though it cannot say with certainty whether a particular tropical depression will become a hurricane.