One of the major problems the whole Brexit debate has highlighted is that there is NO agreed basis of fact.
Economics is pretty much a sham subject, which can almost cope whilst it is still dealing with fact, but once it sallies off, on the basis of the more contentious facts it thinks it has perceived, into prediction, its lack of science is betrayed as it veers massively away from what actually comes to pass.
Depending which figures you take and how you choose to interpret them, France is either an economic tiger starting to roar, or a basket case of unemployment, bureaucracy and resistance to change.
Our own productivity plunges us right down the European league table, but the figures used aren't the same across the continent, they aren't collected in the same way and our apparently lower rate of unemployment actually counts against us when the final results are collated. So, should we worry, or not? What does this *******s mean?
Misuse of data is common throughout the EU, because it is common across the social sciences. We turn the contentious into fact by glueing a thin-air figure to it, extrapolate to the next supposed conclusion, which should then have a massive + or - in red alongside it, but we disregard that and in the end, by force of rhetoric and inertia, we end up somewhere we may, or may not have intended.
We see no irony in campaigning against fixed-odds betting terminals being able swallow a hundred pounds every twenty seconds of some punter's money in a world which is ruled by men sitting at terminals watching mathematical constructs flash up coloured lights as they buy and sell products they never own or see, gamble on the rise of fall of currencies that may either enrich, or impoverish entire countries across the globe and make huge profits which will be pumped into more and quicker ways of carrying out the same dark magic.
And we poor saps let it happen. We debate the mess it creates as though it has some external relevance, which sadly it does, because we decide it should. Wars start, people starve. We're the chimps who discovered fire and won't stop playing with it till everything burns.
How long does growth rate matter when your planet stays the same size?
Economics is pretty much a sham subject, which can almost cope whilst it is still dealing with fact, but once it sallies off, on the basis of the more contentious facts it thinks it has perceived, into prediction, its lack of science is betrayed as it veers massively away from what actually comes to pass.
Depending which figures you take and how you choose to interpret them, France is either an economic tiger starting to roar, or a basket case of unemployment, bureaucracy and resistance to change.
Our own productivity plunges us right down the European league table, but the figures used aren't the same across the continent, they aren't collected in the same way and our apparently lower rate of unemployment actually counts against us when the final results are collated. So, should we worry, or not? What does this *******s mean?
Misuse of data is common throughout the EU, because it is common across the social sciences. We turn the contentious into fact by glueing a thin-air figure to it, extrapolate to the next supposed conclusion, which should then have a massive + or - in red alongside it, but we disregard that and in the end, by force of rhetoric and inertia, we end up somewhere we may, or may not have intended.
We see no irony in campaigning against fixed-odds betting terminals being able swallow a hundred pounds every twenty seconds of some punter's money in a world which is ruled by men sitting at terminals watching mathematical constructs flash up coloured lights as they buy and sell products they never own or see, gamble on the rise of fall of currencies that may either enrich, or impoverish entire countries across the globe and make huge profits which will be pumped into more and quicker ways of carrying out the same dark magic.
And we poor saps let it happen. We debate the mess it creates as though it has some external relevance, which sadly it does, because we decide it should. Wars start, people starve. We're the chimps who discovered fire and won't stop playing with it till everything burns.
How long does growth rate matter when your planet stays the same size?