“Several economists I know seem to have assimilated a norm that the post-real macroeconomists actively promote – that it is an extremely serious violation of some honor code for anyone to criticize openly a revered authority figure – and that neither facts that are false, nor predictions that are wrong, nor models that make no sense matter enough to worry about.”
Paul Romer, The Trouble With Macroeconomics
If Bloomberg television quoted his views correctly today, then a well known academic economist they cite explains that we have full employment, even though the labor participation is so low, because the video games available to consumers have gotten so good that people would prefer to stay at home and play them rather than work.
And so they don’t work, and therefore we can ignore them and the economic engineers of the Fed can claim full employment with a straight face.
If the games were not so good, then people would get bored staying at home and would go to work. It is just a rational actor’s choice.
Since when is work, for the majority of people at least, an optional choice for one type of pleasure and entertainment and diversion compared to others? Let’s see, shall I go to the movies, go fishing, or go to work today?
This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 14 SEPTEMBER 2016.
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