[maxxxxx]

I know the economy is much more complex than let's say physics. But at least I would like economists to backtest things that happened. For example, the large tax cuts that happened during the Reagan, Bush and probably Trump years could be tested and it could be determined if the promised increase in investment and whatever really happened. At least the economists that make it to the media don't seem to have interest in checking whether their theories actually worked out.

[pzone]

Backtesting is a poor substitute for experimentation. We can't run back history and check what happens if the Bush tax cuts never happened. We certainly can't create a thousand parallel economies, implement the tax cuts in half the sample and not in the other.

Economists use historical data to calibrate models. Of course data from the Reagan years was used to are for the Bush tax cuts. But simple backtesting can never tell you with certainty wherever your theories worked out or not.

[specialist]

Their policies worked out exactly as intended.

Perhaps we should distinguish Economics and Rhetoric.