{"id":13715,"date":"2013-05-05T21:14:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T01:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=13715"},"modified":"2013-05-05T21:16:05","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T01:16:05","slug":"boom-bust-or-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2013\/05\/05\/boom-bust-or-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Boom, Bust or What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reader RichardH sent me a link to The New York Times<\/em> article Boom, Bust or What? Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard Square Off on Our Economic Future<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 It is a great exploration of the opposing economic views of Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard, and the reporters futile\u00a0 attempt to get them to reconcile their differences.<\/p>\n

As I responded to RichardH, at first it seems like the point is that there is no way to separate fact from fiction.<\/p>\n

Then I realized that this is the wrong way to look at these opposing points of view.\u00a0 We the consumers of these ideas and as voters and policy makers need to find a way to turn this away from a religious argument about two sets of beliefs and into an engineering discussion of how to get the economy and society to work best.\u00a0 Engineering is my bias, because that is my training and natural bent.<\/p>\n

As an engineering problem we need to realize that this is a discussion about choosing the right policies in the face of huge uncertainties.\u00a0 There are things we just don’t know about the future.\u00a0 There are human, social, and technological changes that will occur that we can’t predict.\u00a0 There are some changes that we cannot even imagine. This is the type of situation that engineers face every day, yet they are called on to make decisions anyway.<\/p>\n

So any policy proposal ought to be accompanied by an analysis of the uncertainties that could upset the wisdom of the policy in major and minor ways.\u00a0 In other words, what is the proposal assuming for the future and\u00a0 what is the sensitivity of the proposal to changes in these assumptions.\u00a0 The proposer should tell us what we ought to measure about the progress of the proposal after it is implemented and how are we realistically to measure it.\u00a0 What remedial steps are available when the path deviates from expectations after the proposal is implemented?<\/p>\n

What other steps can you engineers out there recommend to turn this into a discussion that comes out with a resolution instead of an argument that never moves from the spot we are currently in?\u00a0 What do people who have been trained or are experienced in other disciplines do to find a path forward?\u00a0 What have people learned from their mistakes along the way?<\/p>\n

What really makes me nervous is anybody who is so sure that a recommendation is so bullet proof that nothing could possibly go wrong.\u00a0 Hearing that kind of argument, tells me that I am hearing ideas that may turn out to be useful, but that need a lot of further analysis before trying.<\/p>\n

The role of some people is to come up with as many wild ideas as possible.\u00a0 Others must take on the role of weeding out the good ideas from the bad ones. Some of the people who come up with the ideas will participate in weeding out the good from the bad.\u00a0 Other idea people will choose not to participate. This will always be an ongoing exercise in a very dynamic world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reader RichardH sent me a link to The New York Times article Boom, Bust or What? Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard Square Off on Our Economic Future.\u00a0 It is a great exploration of the opposing economic views of Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard, and the reporters futile\u00a0 attempt to get them to reconcile their differences. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13715"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13718,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13715\/revisions\/13718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}