True but economists don't agree on much of anything, am i right?
But that doesn't change the nature of objective reality.
An apple is an apple even if economists can't decide what to call it.
There are good economists and bad economists like there is good music and bad music. The onus on the person paying attention is to fact check, not just rely on what economists say, or to look at a lot of discussion between economists and conclude that no one knows anything.
So what if i pick up an economics textbook by Bernanke (he has them) or other people you don't agree with?
That I don't agree with them is a lot less important than why I don't agree with them. The WHY matters.
Am I still learning economics?
Depends on how you treat the information. Again, if you believe everything you read, then are you really learning, or are you just absorbing?
Or am I only learning it if I pick up an Austrian textbook?
You can learn a lot from classical economics. You can even learn some from public choice and chicago school economics.
If you're clever, you can even learn stuff from Malthus and Marx, although you might learn more from them about how they were very wrong.
People confuse my interest in Austrianism with dogmatism. That's not at all the case. Right now, I am working on an approach which completely questions libertarianism and market economics. In a sense, trying to burn down what I have been very much behind for the last 6 years.
Austrian economics is fascinating for all of the stuff which is not economics. Mises came up with a completely new and radically excellent way (
Praxeology)to interpret and utilize the entire realm of social sciences, which we have only just begun to scratch away at.
I guess the best answer would be to learn both Austrian and Keynesian economics and reasons for and against the BLS unemployment algorithm and make up my own mind from there.
There are many schools besides those two. Keynesianism is based on a simple false premise, which once understood, makes many of Keynes conclusions incorrect.
Imagine it like this. You are doing algebra. X = 2. But you solve where X = 3. Your premise is wrong. Thus, all of your answers will be wrong, even though you did algebra with the correct procedures and rules.
Keynes (and many modern economists) misinterpret
Say's Law (Jean-Baptiste Say). Because they place demand ahead of supply, their theories end up the inverse of the result they want to attain.
The BLS modifies the unemployment numbers constantly to hide the true number of unemployed. The government does the same thing with the inflation numbers, GDP etc. Once you look into how they change the methodology on the fly to make it open ended and subjective, you realize these are no longer statistics, but propaganda.
Jim Williams @ Shadowstats tracks these metrics using the old standards, so that his numbers are consistent across time.
12 inches needs to be 12 inches 10, 20 and 50 years ago, if you're going to compare numbers across those periods. It can't be 11.5" one year, and 12.25" the next.
The question you should be asking is, 7.8% of what? What is U-3? What is U-2? Why do we use U-3 over U-2?
This ^^^ is why I get frustrated in debates with people re: politics and economy. The fact they are morally, logically and philosophically bankrupt aside, they don't exhibit that natural curiosity necessary to be a free and critical thinker. Not saying that is you. Just in general.
