Checking in.

[Cleita]

Hoping for social change in our country starting with single payer universal health care.

[Tyler Durden]

1. A good start.

If we can get that, who knows how far we can go?

[Madspirit]

2. Also checking in

I won't be around much today because I have errands to run but just wanted to say...Whoohoohoo...we got our group!
Lee

[Odin2005]

3. About F-ing time we have our own subforum!

[burythehatchet]

4. check -2 - 3

[scarletwoman]

5. Also checking in. I'm delighted to see this group! (nt)

[LWolf]

6. That's a great start! n/t

[westerebus]

7. Room for one more?

Checking in,please. Big thanks for this forum to both its' advocates and sponsors.

[Imperialism Inc.]

8. Fellow traveler here.

I think modern economic theory has a lot of problems. The assumption that people are utility maximizers is a very poor model of a human being. In fact I think work in the social and psychological science shows that it should basically be abandoned as a core assumption. If you've ever taken an econ course or talked with anyone who wants to "teach" you about econ it always starts with that. A big, huge, false assumption. People care about a lot of things other than maximizing utility.

There are other technical problems as well (such as marginal utility theory) but my main objection is not any of these types of problems. My main objections is how the current political climate views the role of economics itself. As the end all, be all of society. I want to be clear and not blame academic economists for this as I think they are well aware. Economics is not well equipped to capture our morals and values. It is devised to measure certain things and not others. It measures costs of raw materials or the price of labor but it doesn't measure things like human costs of poor working conditions or costs to the environment.

[Greyhound]

9. From a scientific POV, the field of economics is fundamentally, and therefore,

fatally flawed. It attempts to calculate patterns of worth and movement, without accounting for a diversity of motivation or objectives, indeed, without any tools for making such calculations, so (false) assumptions are substituted.

Meteorology and Economics are the only two professions that allow one to be wrong a majority of the time and still collect a paycheck, and the meteorologists are getting better all the time.

[Cleita]

10. A lot of core assumptions need to be re-examined in the light

of evidence to the contrary.