[hash872]

I don't think that macroeconomics is an empirical field, so when people say 'it's textbook stuff' that doesn't impress me. I don't believe the textbook. People want to pretend that economics is like physics or chemistry, but it simply isn't true. Imagine if I said something was 'textbook sociology', would you have to then drop all objections?

Reminder that in the last 30 years economists have variously told us that there's a (high) natural rate of unemployment that we couldn't change (has recently been completely debunked). That raising the minimum wage costs jobs. That bank deregulation is good. And so on. It's just not an empirical field, so I don't believe what's in the textbook. It's also open to lobbying from for-profit entities for specific viewpoints, in a way that a real science usually isn't

[lazystar]

> I don't think that macroeconomics is an empirical field, so when people say 'it's textbook stuff' that doesn't impress me.

Agreed, especially when the textbook being referenced was written by a polarizing figure like Kruggman. I wonder, how much "textbook stuff" was removed from textbooks after 2008?

[VHRanger]

Krugman won his nobel prize in economics for his work on international trade, and especially protectionism of infant industries:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2008/kru...

His NYT column might be controversial, but his work in international trade absolutely isn't.

It's like saying Chomsky is controversial to counter argue his work in linguistics. Chomsky might be a political hack, but his opinion on formal grammars is probablyt sound.

> I wonder, how much "textbook stuff" was removed from textbooks after 2008?

Basically nothing, to be honest? What should have changed?

The banks that collapsed into a financial crisis were effectively committing fraud. The federal reserve were publishing opinions that the housing sector was at risk as early as 2005-2006.

Also, it's difficult for a central bank to know the extent of the mispricing when there's active concealment of risks (eg. backroom deals with insurers and risk assessors) - you need full on auditing to spot that.

The bigger problem with 2008 is that almost no one responsible went to jail.

[VHRanger]

> I don't think that macroeconomics is an empirical field

If that's your opinion it's pretty clear your engagement with the field of macroeconomics is several degrees removed from the actual research.

Assuming you're here in good faith, I would ask you to actually browse a dozen or so of any recent, randomly picked papers in the field you claimed is "not empirical", skim them and note if it's empirical work or theoretical work.

Then come back here and seriously argue that the field is "not empirical". I'll give you a jump start, here's two good sources for recent macro papers:

NBER Macro preprints: https://www.nber.org/topics/macroeconomics?page=1&perPage=50

AEJ Macro: https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/mac/forthcoming

Of course that won't be your current view of the field if your knowledge comes from the opinion section of newspapers and HN comments. But, again, I'm assuming you want to challenge your views in good faith here.

> Reminder that in the last 30 years economists have variously told us that there's a (high) natural rate of unemployment that we couldn't change (has recently been completely debunked).

Not sure where you get that opinion from, the NAIRU published by the CBO went from a high of 6.2% in the energy crisis of the 1970s to around 4.4% today:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NROU

30 years ago the NAIRU was 5.4% and today it's 4.4%, saying it was "completely debunked" makes no sense and I'm seriously wondering which source you got this claim from.

Moreover, the concept of a natural rate of unemployment that's somewhere above 0% is uncontroversial: there's naturally a time gap when looking for a new job, even in an economy at "full employment capacity".

> That raising the minimum wage costs jobs.

Unless your economics education stopped at the first week of microeconomics 101, or comes entirely from the political discourse or reddit, this isn't something that is the position of basically any economist.

Seriously, here's the first recent (2024) highly cited research review I could find from 4 seconds of googling:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32878/w328...

First, note the review is 123 pages long. There's clearly some subtility past "minimum wage bad, unemployment high!" But we can skim and jump to the conclusion. To quote:

""" While the evidence is not unanimous, a reasonable conclusion from the existing literature is that minimum wage policies have had limited direct employment effects while significantly increasing the earnings of low-wage workers—at least at certain levels and in particular economic contexts.

"""

Also, by the way, the minimum wage labor effect is studied in your labor economics class, which is micro, not macro. Which points again to the question of where you're sourcing your claims from.