Comments on: Manufacturing Fallacy

By: plektix

plektix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:13:12 +0000

I, on the other hand, am a mathematician, NOT an economist. See the most recent post for actual complexity theory, if that’s what you’re interested in.

By: Scott Schaefer

Scott Schaefer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:32:24 +0000

Two words: Category Cloud. I see a really little “complex” and a really big “Economics”. I repeat to you: “neener-neener.”

By: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:29:02 +0000

Dear Scott, You’ve been Owned. Please come again.

By: kevindick

kevindick — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:15:37 +0000

Oh, and as for our identity crisis, I think I’ll have to invoke a type hierarchy. An economy is a subtype of complex adaptive system. Rafe and I just operate at a higher level of abstraction. More folds in the old cerebral cortex, you see. (Now that’s pan disciplinary BS for you, computer science and neurobiology applied to economics and complex systems)

By: kevindick

kevindick — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:09:20 +0000

I prefer the term pan-disciplinary. I can spout plausible-sounding BS about many subjects simultaneously.

By: Rafe Furst

Rafe Furst — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:01:41 +0000

Oh please. I told you back then that you’d have to be interdisciplinary to make any progress in econ and not just drill down into mathematical minutia and models that don’t have any connection with reality. Happy to say we are all economists these days if you admit that what was called econ back then was witchcraft.

By: Scott Schaefer

Scott Schaefer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:38:54 +0000

Fair enough, but I’m still saying your blog suffers from an identity crisis. Man up and call it what it is!

By: kevindick

kevindick — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:42:10 +0000

Wait just a darn a minute. We have the same undergraduate degree in Quantitative Economics. I started taking classes for it when I was… 19. So Rafe is the odd man out here. Though you are still the three man :-)

And don’t try and play the graduate degree card. Remember, I have an MS in Engineering-ECONOMIC Systems. Of course, there’s always the PhD card. But that would just be admitting you’re the only masochist among us :-)

By: Scott Schaefer

Scott Schaefer — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:29:41 +0000

Also, your blog is hopelessly mis-named. I don’t see a thing in your Category Cloud about “Complex Adaptive Systems.” This is an economics and policy blog.

Admit it — We’re all economists now. (And you should also admit that I was the only one smart enough to start studying it when I was 19…. Neener-neener.)

By: Scott Schaefer

Scott Schaefer — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:20:45 +0000

Kevin is right. US manufacturing is incredibly productive and good. It has to be to survive, since US manufacturing workers make 20 times or more what workers in developing countries do. The reason we have been losing manufacturing jobs isn’t that we aren’t good at it. It’s that there are so many high-value-creation job opportunities for US workers in the service sector. If a US worker can earn $20 per hour working a service-sector job, then manufacturers in the US have to match that wage or they won’t get workers. It’s competition in the labor market from the service sector that’s causing manufacturing jobs to go overseas