ON THE OTHER HAND…: ‘Economists Say’ A Lot Of Things. But They’re Mostly Wrong.

David Harsanyi:

For eight years we were persistently hearing about how “economists say” everything Democrats were doing was great (even when hundreds disagreed). Unsurprisingly, “economists” were wrong about a lot. The rosy predictions set by President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers regarding the “stimulus” weren’t even close to what happened, nor were any other of their forecasts, for that matter.

In 2009, when Democrats ran everything, the administration predicted 4.6 percent growth by 2012. It turned out to be half that. The Congressional Budget Office’s predictions about Obamacare were even less accurate. Once these prophecies were no longer politically valuable — suddenly more art than science– we were offered counterfactuals: Without Obama’s bailouts, everything would have been much worse.

Perhaps the weakest recovery in American history could have been worse; perhaps not. There are thousands of unknowns that can’t be quantified or computed, including human nature. But after decades of using data to help us think about goods and services, jobs and consumption, and our choices, “economists say” is now used to coat liberal policy positions with a veneer of scientific certitude. And since Democrats began successfully aligning economics with social engineering, we’ve stopped seriously talking about the tradeoffs regulations bring.

Getting people to “stop seriously talking” was probably the only way to get many of those scientifically progressive policies in place.

(Classical allusion in the headline.)