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Old 05-08-2008, 05:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JavaBlack View Post
It is however important to note the ways in which economists rarely agree and even more rarely predict anything accurately.
Economics is as problematic as any social science. But many in economics continue to pretend that it's akin to physics.

I don't see how you can claim it not to be abstract.
History is not a science at all. It tends to give some understanding but not without being placed in context. Too many mistakes are made by generalizing history and attempting to use it as a predictor of the future.
That's bull(*)(*)(*)(*). Economists are predicting the outcome constantly. Usually when an economist disagrees it's because they're talking about a different point in time. You need to be able to understand the difference between the short run and the long run effects - which is very very hard. For example, I know oil is going to go down in price, but it may take 10 years to do it. So does that mean that it's a bad idea to buy an oil stock? No, because in the next two weeks oil could go up to $150 a barrel. So is it right to say oil is going up to rise in price? Yes. Is it right to say oil is going to fall in price? Yes.

Don't try to bad mouth economists unless you are one.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by catawba View Post
I never claimed that 100,000 civilians died by American hands. I merely state the fact that our invasion and occupation has resulted in 100,000 civilian deaths.

This is figure approximates the numbers from Iraq Body Count, the most well documented, and highly regarded, source of civilian Iraq deaths from violence during our war with Iraq.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
So your logic is that if we are not there, the number will go down... That makes perfect sense... not.
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