Reply #39: Economics is vital to understanding certain aspects of human behavior

[Hippo_Tron]

And the best way to understand this kind of behavior (at least that people have come up with) is to put everything into mathematical equations. Of course, I would argue that one is not a good economist if they are simply looking at the numbers that come out of the equations.

For example, some might look like a figure like say "10% unemployment" and think of it as just a number. I would look at such a number and think about what ramifications unemployment has not only on the people who are unemployed but for all of society. But in order to think about the magnitude of the effects, you need to have numbers like "10% unemployment".

I should add that I was wrong before when I said that "citizen" doesn't tell us anything in economic modeling. It doesn't tell us anything in these particular economic models. But it certainly could tell us something in, for example, an economic model about voter behavior.