Economists don't know what's going on
170 comments
·April 26, 2025Gualdrapo
BSOhealth
Probably not "incredibly stupid"
But, "the economy" is generally just a descriptor for what people need/want, and what they're willing to do for it.
A phrase like "slaves of the economy", with the implication that someone should be entitled to escape that condition, is about as ridiculous as thinking you are a "slave to nutrients" or a "slave to oxygen" or any other physical constraint. You can't escape it; you have to eat--what are you willing to do to get food?
However, what I think you're probably more upset about, and what you probably should instead be phrasing it as, is economic manipulation. That is something that can legitimately be unjust. Power and information are some tools to manipulate or benefit from economic conditions to a greater extent than others, and therefore have more boats or leisure time or political positions (or food or N95 masks or jobs etc etc)
surgical_fire
I understand GP's post in a different way - While I consider economic indicators to be very important, I think they fail to measure properly "quality of life" while ate the same time being used as surrogate for it.
For example, a public park may be a great asset to the people that live around it. But it generates little to none in terms of GDP. Privatizing it and turning it into a parking lot has more economic activity, while making the lives of people meaningfully worse.
That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction is what turns us into "slaves of the economy"
anonymars
Feels like a cousin of the McNamara fallacy: what can't be (or simply isn't) measured may as well not exist. (Probably most people who have encountered OKRs are familiar with this). RFK (the original one, not the brainworm one):
> The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
danans
> That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction
We do have many measurements to reconcile that.
We know how much particulate air pollution from fossil fuel combustion increases health care expenditures. We know how not having save places to exercise outdoors affects general health and results in sedentary lifestyle diseases.
But most of our decisions, individually and as a society, are predicated on short term convenience and gratification, not long term health, so we ignore the measures we already have.
leereeves
When someone complains about "the economy", they aren't complaining about the abstract idea of an economy, they're complaining about a particular economy (usually the one they live in). One could literally be a "slave to this economy" in a slave-based economy, or figuratively in an economy where other people own the land (for example) and force them to work.
spwa4
But that makes these claims of "slavery" even more absurd. Would you have to do more or less living as a subsistence farmer? Would you have better or worse quality of life?
That's an easy one: no way in hell, it'd be SO much worse. Our society can only exist with extreme specialization.
Hell, if we take into account that the land available couldn't even remotely support the people living on it (~2km2 per person per year), so there'd be a famine under those conditions and you'll what's being suggested as "alternative" is effectively extreme suffering followed by death for 95%+ of the population, maybe 99%+.
null
mystified5016
[flagged]
decimalenough
If you think the cushy white collar jobs most of us HN readers have "mangle and shred your body", try non-mechanized subsistence agriculture for a few years and see how that compares.
BSOhealth
I mean, I see what you're doing there. But it is more of a fallacy of language to get to accusing me of rationalizing human slavery. So that is a bit crappy.
Again, "the economy" is just supply/demand. "The economy" exists with or without humans. Animals are subject to natural resources around them. A human living "freely" in the forest is subject to it.
What you did in your later lines was fulfill my exact original recommendation to OP -- they are not talking about "slave to the economy", they are talking about "slave to the slave masters who manipulate our economy to a greater extent than we have resources to overcome".
It's all semantics, but phrases like "slave to the economy" come off as something a 13-year-old shouts after seeing a couple pop-psych youtube vids.
jokethrowaway
Go in the woods, hunt and forage your food.
As long as you have no monetary income and cause no trouble, the people with guns won't persecute you. The people with guns still persecute you? Try another country with a less competent government.
It's not slavery as long as you have this choice - but I don't think you'll like that existence.
You are not a slave to the economy, you are a slave to violence.
Other people with a capacity for violence will hurt you and claim the land where you live. And that's nature.
The economy is just the soft-core version of that - with extra rules.
pbh101
And a fish doesn’t recognize water.
AnimalMuppet
Oh, baloney. "Slave of the plantation" is different from "slave of the economy" because one was, you know, literal slavery. And the other isn't.
> If you don't participate in the economy, you die. Not through some physical impossibility, but because the owners and masters will not allow you food, water, shelter, medicine. If they could control air they'd sell that too.
It's not that they won't allow you food, as if they are consciously controlling whether you get a morsel today or not. It's that your food supply is not their responsibility. It's yours. You want food? Go do something to get it.
You know who is responsible for feeding others? Slave owners.
You have that control; they don't. Be glad of that, even if it means you have to go to work.
> If you don't get a job and sacrifice 98% of the income generated by your work to your owner and master, you die.
Not at all. You can work for yourself - start your own business. Most people won't take the risk - or take on the work - to do it. That doesn't make them a slave, though.
And, 98%? Have you seen the profit margins of, say, grocery stores?
looping__lui
Do you know how to grow vegetables, how to produce antibiotics, how to diagnose and treat diabetes, how to operate a farm, how to build up and run an electrical power grid, how to build a fridge, a TV, a car or a motorcycle?
No?
The “economy” allows you to trade something that YOU are capable of into an imaginary representation of currency which you can trade in return for things you need but are incapable of doing yourself.
And it does that so well and so effectively, that mankind has achieved a quality of life unseen in human history. Children don’t randomly starve to death during a winter, your mom doesn’t just randomly die from an infection any more and we have a pretty chilled live compared to our ancestors 10 thousand years ago I believe.
Yeah, I don’t know what the economy has given me in return either.
dottjt
I guess the issue regarding the OP is that there needs to be some kind of balance. It's great that we have all these things, but it's at the cost of ever-increasing productivity and time. Perhaps in the modern age this trade off no longer seems fair, at least at current proportions.
Braxton1980
There is a balanace, the size of entertainment markets, like video games, shows that
AnimalMuppet
No, I think the issue is a bit different.
You used to start out at an entry level job, and work your way up to something better. You could see how to get to "better" from where you were, and what it would take. When you got to "better", you were glad for the improvement. Yeah, the guy owning the factory had it a lot better than you. But as long as he gave you a route to a better life, that was good enough for almost everybody.
What changed? In my view, three things.
First, the route to "better" is a lot narrower these days. People are a lot less convinced that they can get there from where they are.
Second, people don't expect to have to work their way up. They expect to have it all on day 1. They expect instant success. When they don't get it, they get discouraged.
Third, people are finding that the promise is empty. A better job gets you a nicer apartment that feels just as empty as the previous one did. You're just as lonely there. Your job feels just as much like a soul-crushing grind as it did, maybe more so. In some fundamental way, the stuff you can buy with money isn't enough. People don't know where to find it, but they kind of expect that their job will give them what's missing. And it doesn't.
monero-xmr
It’s bullshit that I’m not able to watch Netflix all day and write poetry. My ancestors worked hard. So many people are so rich. The government should tax billionaires and give it to me
alecst
I recently read a book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabloona) about a "modern" (1930s) man who sought out the Eskimos to check out their way of life.
They have nothing you describe -- no agriculture, no antibiotics, no farming, no electricity. (The fridge, however, they got covered.) They are quite happy that way. Certainly happier than the people around me in NYC.
Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods.
nkurz
I read Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins a couple decades ago and it's stuck with me ever since. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned online before. It's high on my list of books that should be top-rated classics, but as far as I can tell it's basically unknown. If you've never heard of it, seek it out, it's fabulous!
Edit: Since alecst has obviously already read Kabloona, I might as well list a few more that are on that "list": Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker, Goatwalking by Jim Corbett, and Hyssop by Kevin McIlvoy. Maybe you'd like one of them too.
spwa4
> Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods.
With subsistence agriculture the US can support maybe 2-3% of it's current population. The EU is (far) worse on this front. And with the Eskimo's way of life it can support 0.01%. So what about that little problem? And this can't be fixed without changing that lifestyle ...
That this superior way of life is suffering and death for nearly everyone never seems to get discussed for some reason.
user32489318
There’s a difference between “knowing how to”, “been able to” and make financial sense to do it. What you’re describing is a “society”, ie everyone has a dedicated purpose, that’s similar to yours “knowing how to” and “been able to”. Do you really need a monetary systeem, ie economics, around this? I’m not making a case for North Korea/Soviet Union, but do we as a humanity really need a lever (money) to push the society forward
dheera
Currency as a way to trade value and skills is a beautiful invention, and that is to be credited for a lot of modern quality of life.
But everything else in the economy (extreme taxation, medical care, housing) has become increasingly predatory over the decades.
> how to diagnose and treat diabetes
Take this as an example. The "economy", as a machine, has learned to subsidize corn syrup, infiltrate every food with forms of sugar including what children eat at school (fuck chocolate milk, PB&J sandwiches, canned fruit in sugar syrup, none are healthy), then profit off of them when they get diabetes later in life. Insurance-scam them by making them pay premiums per month but still not cover their medical costs in full, make them pay for any preventative care they want to have because a doctor didn't "prescribe" it and it wouldn't be profitable to prevent disease. Make healthy food expensive, so that you can get as many people to get diabetes as possible. Lobby against having kitchens in schools so that they are forced to serve even more unhealthy shit. This is what capitalism as a machine has learned.
Diabetes shouldn't even be such a pervasive thing. It's highly preventable. It is in fact of the most preventable of common diseases. The economy machine, however, has realized that diabetes is profitable for the people who own and control the machine (Wall Street, insurance companies, banks).
This is just one example, but the entire system has become predatory.
Braxton1980
>extreme taxation
Can you provide an example of this?
looping__lui
In most countries it is not.
In the country with the highest GDP per capita it may appear to be prevalent more because people seem to make VOLUNTARY choices with respect to their diet and exercise regime that do not tend to go well with their health.
Capitalism is not equal to “the economy”. “Currency” on its own doesn’t increase the wealth of a society. It is correct that unconstrained capitalism is unstable. Most countries in the world understand that.
pbh101
Occam’s razor has a simpler explanation that this conspiracy.
thegreatpeter
Seems like you’re struggling
skrebbel
Because generally, in broad strokes, a good economy causes good everything else. If it's easy for people to get a decent job, then people lead happier lives, fewer homeless, lower crime etc. If goods are accessible and affordable, everybody goes yay. Diseases get treated, lower suicide, etc.
Obviously when you zoom in it's not black and white at all, eg the US has incredible GDP but also lots of abject poverty. But even in some imaginary proto-USA where the inequality is 10x worse, if the economy shrinks, fixing that is going to be harder than when it expands.
I agree with your objection that it's ridiculous to do "everything" for the economy. But wanting the economy to be healthy should be a thing everybody can get behind, from far left to center to far right, even if they violently disagree about how to take it from there. So a paper called "the economist" worrying about the economy sounds pretty sane to me.
testing22321
I’ve spent decades thinking the same, and decided I don’t want to be a part of it. I work as little as possible and spend my time exploring the world, hiking, camping, eating cheap street food.
Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year, so I don’t need to work much.
I just don’t participate in the things I don’t want to - no phone, no tv, no new clothes, used car.
I Enjoy time, not money & things.
pbh101
Cool, that’s your choice. But it also exists within the economy. Nobody demands you to play a particular part in a democratic market-based economy, but you exercising your ability to buy cars, hiking gear, airfare, tents, and cheap street food and your choices are all just as much part of the economy as the choices others are making.
pbh101
Further, all those choices are only available to you because others are ‘part of it’ and making services available to you.
kilroy123
Hear, hear. I've worked for software companies for 18 years. In that time, I've taken 4-5 years off on sabbaticals to travel the world.
Life is too short to _not_ do that, in my opinion.
Braxton1980
So you participate, just with less hours, that's part of the economy
slibhb
> Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year
20k is higher than 90% of the global population.
testing22321
Absolutely, I’m well aware that what I’m doing is only a choice for people in the developed world.
Of course if I were content with walks in the park, I’m sure $10k/year would be enough.
znpy
More people should know, think and reason about this. As soon as you reach about 34-35 k$/year you’re in the top 1%, globally.
Most people thinking “the top one percent” are the problem don’t realise they are part of the one percent (and thus part of the problem)
colonCapitalDee
It's given you a place to live, and groceries, and plane tickets, and magazines, and allergy medication. Modern consumers have been desensitized by abundance to the point where they are detached from physical reality. The economy is real, and damage to the economy has real consequences. Growth of per-capita GDP almost always leads to increased living standards, and shrinking per-capita almost always leads to decreased living standards. What are "decreased living standards"? It's more paying more for the conveniences of modern life like plane tickets, or restaurants, or homes with useful appliances. At the macro scale, it's having less money available for medical research and welfare. It's rising prices, without a corresponding raise in income, resulting in less to go around.
HEmanZ
The economy is the abstraction for all aspects of getting people the goods and services they want and need. Literally everything you don’t produce on your own. How did you access this website if you have never received anything from the economy?
“But I can’t see what is what the economy has given us in return” is such an absurd statement that the only generous interpretation is that you really didn’t think through it before posting.
People rightly care a lot about the economy because they care a lot about the goods and services that they consume but don’t produce themselves. We don’t sacrifice everything to the economy, no country in the world does, but it holds extremely high priority.
spacebanana7
Political power is a function of economic strength. This is as true for individual politicians as nation states.
Victorian Britain has the biggest navy in the world because it could afford the biggest. Tony Blair has the most political discretion of any modern PM largely because the economy was so strong during his tenure.
hollerith
Another reason it had the biggest navy is that it didn't need to spend much on an army to prevent invasions because it has no land border with any other power.
smj-edison
I think of "the economy" as a set of emergent principles that come from many people trading goods and services. For example, the USSR had a black market, which was an economy. No matter how much regulation was put into place, an economy (though hobbled) still emerged. Economists study this emergent behavior and use economic principles to accomplish their goals (whether that's to improve the well-being of people, or to increase a company's size, they're both applying these studied principles).
robocat
Our human systems are too complex for us to comprehend. So everybody's internal models of the world are often radically/tragically incorrect.
And our words are necessarily poor at defining an abstract conceptual system that defies our comprehension. The definition of emergent as apples to an economy is hard to grok. And hard to communicate, even when the two communicators have a common mental model (sometimes education, sometimes acquired via social media or propoganda).
You can see politicians on the receiving end of systemic forces - where it seems like the politician doesn't comprehend what is happening because their model is wrong. We then create stories about their incentives - layering unintended misdirection on top of our collective ignorance.
smj-edison
> We then create stories about their incentives
Reminds me of Heinlein's razor, lol: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
On the topic of communicating complex systems, Dynamic Land[1] is explicitly working on explaining systems through interactive visualizations (among other things), you might find it interesting! It's still in the research phase, but I love that it engages as many senses as possible to help build intuition.
AndyKelley
It's quite simply growing wealth inequality, and economists don't know what's going on because they use mathematical models that don't account for this. Recommend this video if you are curious to learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CivlU8hJVwc&list=PLXuOBKrmFY...
intended
Not entirely true regarding the criticisms of economists. I am not dinging Gary, and I think he’s done a solid job of putting this topic front and center.
There are very specifically people who raised the issue of wealth concentration in economics, (Piketty) and theres been a Nobel as well (Bannerjee and Duflo).
PaulKeeble
A lot of the riches income depends on the volume of the working class, they destroy the value of that work at their own peril and would be wise to restore sharing some of the benefits of growth or they might find things sharply snap against them.
Trekkie101-B
The ONS get some of their data on jobs by surveying a ton of companies each month. However the survey has gone from being a page or two to around 10 pages.
I sense the data quality being returned may have fallen off a cliff edge.
ludicrousdispla
if you fill in the questionnaire indicating that everything is great then nothing needs improvement
leereeves
Why would more data imply worse data?
ooklala
I think the implication is that it’s gotten so long that people can’t be bothered to finish filling it out… (Anecdotally I can back this up—the one time I’ve remembered to fill it out in time, it took like 10 minutes…I haven’t bothered to fill it since)
leereeves
Oh, I assumed it was mandatory, like tax returns or the census.
eightysixfour
People don’t fill out the 10 pages accurately, they just want it off their to-do list.
matt-p
Because it lands on the desk of the head of HR, assistant to the COO, or MDs desk and in all honesty there not going to spend more than half an hour on it - so you've got 30 mins / number of questions.
IshKebab
Because people aren't form-filling robots.
ludicrousdispla
hey, I just had an HN AI startup idea! /s
28304283409234
"Economics is not a science. It is an uncontrollable force of nature." -My mom, ca 1992
fidotron
> The episode hints at a wider trend: global economic data have become alarmingly poor.
Isn't the cause of this obvious? There is so much political interference in the metrics. Inflation, unemployment, whether it is officially a recession or not - all of these have been manipulated out of all relationship with reality.
The article goes on to wonder about the decline in citizens participating in surveys. If the obvious is going to be ignored then why bother helping them fabricate the lie?
There has been a culture of way too much interventionism that has crept in to too many parts of the structures for economic governance. Now it's a miracle that what remains of the free market pricing mechanism works at all given how many fingers are trying to tip the scales all over the place.
PaulKeeble
It suggests that the politicians aren't interfering with the statisticians but I have seen such manipulation occur multiple times in the past few years on important topics. We have been talking about the increasing bad definitions of "in work" in the UK for over a decade and the situation continues to get worse. The politicians are clearly "strong arming the nerds" and there has been plenty of evidence of it.
null
Havoc
You’d think it improves over time with more digitization.
benator
This article is interesting to me mostly because it appears totally incoherent.
> “Western politicians do not appear to be strong-arming the nerds to produce favourable numbers. At the same time, international statistical bodies worry about the example of Dominik Rozkrut, who at the end of last year was mysteriously dismissed as Poland’s chief statistician.”
At the same time as not strong arming these bodies, at least one might be? What is the implication here?
> “Economic “surprises” in rich countries, where the reported data point either beats or falls short of analysts’ expectations, soared during the pandemic. Years later, surprises remain 30% bigger than before it. The confusion represents a reversal of a trend. In 1941 Britain’s…”
How is less trust/revisions in the data today connected with what Britain was doing 70+ years ago? We seem to just have two things said next to each other as if they were related?
Am I just being dumb or is this just ramblings, whether or not you agree with the headline?
frereubu
> At the same time as not strong arming these bodies, at least one might be? What is the implication here?
Yes, exactly. Most don't but one looks like it might be.
> How is less trust/revisions in the data today connected with what Britain was doing 70+ years ago?
Because up until the pandemic the data had been getting steadily better with fewer "surprises", now it seems to have stagnated: "Two factors have now brought progress to a halt."
benator
On the first point, ok sure - it may be the case that most aren’t but one is. So… what’s the reader supposed to take away from that? What’s the problem we’re looking at here - malpractice or corruption? Just both but maybe one more than the other? Seems like bad writing to me.
Second point - ok, great. Let’s actually structure the article around that. “We think that cuts in statistical departments, coupled with lower and more complicated survey engagement, have made it harder to rely on the data those departments produce”. Great, nice, coherent argument.
I’m totally not trying to get at you, I just think TFA did a pretty bad job of explaining the problem it’s trying to highlight.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
<< What is the implication here?
Hmm. I am trying not to assume too much, but I will attempt to respond based on summaries of some real events in Russia and corporate America.
In organizations, where leadership style resembles Christmas tree more than a pyramid, people invariably are beholden to the leader. Depending on the organization's culture, the leader may allow little to no dissent. While leader may not explicitly tell you to do X, their wishes are known and some people do respond with trying to 'guess' what their leader wants.
In other words, the implication may be that no one is overtly influencing other people, but, in an attempt to save their positions, people produce documentation their leader may want to see.
Which, honestly, happens a lot more often than it should.
benator
Thanks and yes, I agree with you! Reality is muddy and complicated and political tendrils reach deeply into all government functions. I would like to ask though: what do you think the author wants us to believe? a) that data is more unreliable because of corrupt influence, or b) data is less reliable because of statistical department cuts and a partisan audience? If it’s b, why mention a? It’s not that I disagree with b or a, just that if you are arguing for one, why mention the other except to say “yeah, this happened but it doesn’t contradict my view because x”
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
I re-read the article. I will admit that this question stumped me, because the answer here is an honest: I am not sure.
kmckiern
Data is useful! But it seems like (I am not an economist) the incentive structures around these offices are failing. Maybe the benefits need to be more immediate / obvious / visceral.
grakasja
I don't think they ever did.
Frieren
> Budget cuts meant that America stopped publishing some national-accounts data last year
Governments need to invest money to properly work. many countries have been following neoliberal policies, not only the USA. Cut everything that the government does to cut taxes for billionaires and to not fix the mega rich getting loans instead of profits to not be taxed, and countries will fall.
A modern country needs investment. Accounting is just one of the many things failing.
programmertote
That's true. I currently work for a boutique real estate consulting firm. A senior guy, who has been working with Census-sourced data for two decades or more AND has good sources within the Census bureau--of the firm told me that Census department is considering of stopping some survey data (some sections of American Community Survey or some sort is what I recall as an example he used; but please don't quote me on that) due to lack of sufficient budget.
One trivia that I learned: some parts of the Census building permits data is collected in the old fashioned way via mail. The Census bureau has to consolidate these disparate sources of building permits from 3100+ counties and deliver monthly, annual revised monthly, annual summary values. It's kind of labor intensive and error prone (and thus, revised data is released once a year) to collect.
s1artibartfast
The US federal government, broadly speaking, does not invest money. It is an insignificant part of the budget.
For example, infrastructure is ~2% of the budget, and that includes both maintenance and waste.
The vast majority of federal tax funds are spent on non-investment welfare consumption of one form or another.
Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy". We are modern day slaves of "the economy". Many old people were left to die in the COVID-19 because of "the economy". The climate is going worse and the environment is being destroyed because of "the economy". But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return.