The Glade 4.0

So you've pre-marginalized non-Keynesians?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't think I'm marginalizing them. I think it's simply a fact that most economics professors, policymakers, and financial bigwigs accept the basic Keynesian/Monetarist view of macro-economics. That doesn't mean other schools of thought (e.g. Austrian) are crazy, wrong, or completely unrepresented in expert discussions. Indeed, most of the economics commentators I mentioned reference Austrian views as a useful critique of the dominant/mainstream view. I'm just saying it's clearly not an equally dominant/mainstream school of thought.

And yet, you continue to use the word "mainstream," which has loaded connotations implying that Austrian (etc.) economics are fringe or radical.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

RangerDave:

You're simply making an appeal to popularity now. Keynesian economics is based on an absolute disregard for microeconomics, which amuses me to no end, since macro-economy is an aggregation of micro-transactions carried out at the level of individual. Or, let me put Keynes in a term at which you will scoff: Keynes is the father of Trickle Down Economics.

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I agree that Keynesian economics is mainstream - it simply is the most used and talked about and referenced economic school of thought.

It's also proven to many many times to be entirely invalid but humans are much more likely to believe the comfortable lie than the uncomfortable truth.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

People, generally, aren't that logical. It's easy for them to fall into a trap which implements appeals to authority, tradition, and popularity.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Actually, I'm not. There's a difference between saying, "Most people believe X, therefore X must be true," and saying, "Most experts, having studied the data, conclude X, therefore X is more likely to be true." The first statement is a logical fallacy; the second is not.

Yes, it is. Because it does not represent any logic. If you were being logical, you'd be able to arrive at the same conclusion by following the logic that your experts purport to.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Actually to be perfectly fair, he's right. He doesn't need to replicate the work of the experts to avoid fallacy.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

But citation is needed.

Pretty hard to prove, too. "Most" is a hard number to quantify.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That is true.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Agreed, at least in a formal context. If I was writing a paper on the subject, I'd have to provide a cite for that assertion. For a forum discussion like this, though, I don't think relatively uncontroversial statements really need to be backed up. I doubt anyone here is genuinely skeptical of the claim that most economists, policymakers and financial bigwigs today have a Keynesian-Monetarist perspective.

RangerDave:

Doesn't change the fact that Keynes was wrong.

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Ah, but this isn't the "conversational" controversy forum (as stupid as the distinction is). Furthermore, with this attitude, then you might as well stop discussing anything, and simply cite whatever is the most widely believed/practiced as the gospel truth that doesn't need to be talked about because it's right.

And even on top of that, clearly, everybody must be *right* about economics, and that's why our country is going bankrupt and we foresaw the situation years ago and worked to prevent/mitigate it. Oh, wait.

That's why it's an appeal to popularity, not even authority -- the "experts" don't have a good track record.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Exactly. All of their so called expertise is within the framework of a system that is observably broken, and never works the way they say it will.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Someone with demonstrated expertise still trumps the random blog poster.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Who has a better track record? Nostradamus? Fringe economists have always cried wolf, and it's just coincidence when they're right.

More telling is there are plenty of Keynesians that predicted the economic collapse years in advance and aren't taking a bullish stance on the current state of things. "Mainsteam" doesn't mean Keynesian, it means telling people what they want to hear. This guy, for example, got a lot of credit for predicting the crash, and has been sidelined since because he continues to insist there was negative growth in 2009 and there will be less than 1% growth in 2010.