[quote]lucasa wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I really don’t think you understand why this analysis is utterly wrong. You cannot describe a system qualitatively that is as large as the middle class.It means nothing. Viewed from far away everything looks groovy–that is essentially what this analysis is doing.
-
Boudreaux is doing things pretty quantitatively. Inherently, qualitative measurements are going to be even more arbitrary and meaningless.
-
If it is impossible with such a large system, taking smaller chunks of it (like comparing DINKs to single mothers) is like saying he can’t adequately handle the mountain of data with a bulldozer, but you’ve got a pretty good handle on it with a shovel…
It is too sythetic in it’s definition of the middle class. The economics of “the middle class” is too dynamic for any accurate measurement.
This is could be a decent argument, unfortunately, it isn’t the thema of yours. You could say nobody knows what they’re talking about because of the gossamer of the ‘middle class’, but then you only succeed in invalidating yourself in your own relativism and/or you wouldn’t need the people with one car homes and sick babies to do it. You’re arguing that no one knows what they’re talking about except you.
Economists know nothing–and the good ones know this.
If true, this presents some interesting logic scenarios.
A. The good economists are also liars. Assuming they know nothing, they immorally convince people they know something and are worth lots of money. If they are liars, then they may actually know something and just don’t tell people.
or…
B. The good economists are also poor. Assuming they know nothing and have some moral character (or lack intelligence), they appreciably convey their lack of knowledge about economics and thus go unemployed. And a fiscally poor economist is an intellectually poor economist.
I choose not to indulge in the ‘they know nothing fallacy’ and assume that good economists know something and stick with my previous analysis; Boudreaux over Dobbs and LIFTICVS.[/quote]
It is still impossible to say one way or the other whether the “middle class” is doing well or not for the simple fact that there is no hard definition of the middle class and the “system” is too dynamic and complex to sum up using three or four characteristics. It would be like a biologist describing evolution using only three or four species.
It may be possible to make quantitative measurements of certain key characteristics of one or two elements within the system but their implications and how they will be subsequently interpreted by their audience will not always be uniform. Hence Dobbs (along with other economists) says one thing and Boudreaux (and his group) says another.
The fact of the matter is that people want to interpret results of measurements either in a good or bad way so that they can have some sort of justification for the actions surrounding those measurements.
Furthermore, my reasons for using the examples I did was to show that there are measurements that haven’t been considered in Boudreaux’s analysis; not that I actually believe one way or the other. As I have stated many times in regard to statistical analysis–making qualitative correlations is not what statistics do. Whenever there is a person who decides to determine the underlying meaning of a statistics set in subjective way they may be met with objections.