Reply #38: Reminds me of what Michael Hudson wrote

[hfojvt]

"Graduate economics courses have become classes in rhetoric. The idea is to make plausible and logical arguments based on assumptions that need not be realistic at all. The criterion for economic theory is simply whether it is internally logical, not its realism. That is what makes economics a non-science in the sense that the physical sciences require not only a consistency of assumptions, but realism as well. The task of economists is to come up with a set of assumptions that will lead to the conclusions promoted by their employers."

But I do not think, from my graduate level education, that our side is as far removed from reality as theirs. I do not think my own studies are ideologically tainted. The question is whether the numbers can be honestly twisted. Not everybody is using statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp-post, more as a means of support than illumination. Admittedly I am biased in at least two ways in that I actually care and belong to the working class, unlike, say, George Will on both counts - he neither belongs nor cares.