The inadequate response to the Great Recession reflected policymakers’ then-acceptance of Friedman’s analysis of the Great Depression which had little to do with evidence...
"The dominance of Friedman’s ideas at the beginning of the Great Recession has less to do with the evidence supporting them than with the fact that the science of economics is all too often tainted by politics."
I think there is very little science practiced by economists, and the recognizable science work is more like scientism than science.
IIRC, the UK experience was that the stagflation of the 1970s ended the belief that Keynesism worked which led to the Tory party adopting Monetarism in teh 1980s under Thatcher. It may have been more about trying any other policy lever in the toolbox, and Friedman's influence in Chile, especially as Pinochet was a friend of Thatcher, to select Monetarism as the preferred tool. How much was also influenced by Reagan's administration IDK, but we know that Reagan and Thatcher were friends. My experience of UK policies as a layperson until I emigrated in the late 1980s was that almost every grand economic policy by the UK chancellor of the exchequer, of whatever political stripe, seemed to fail, especially by the 1960s.
Is there counterfactual evidence that invalidates my perception of this period in the UK?
"The dominance of Friedman’s ideas at the beginning of the Great Recession has less to do with the evidence supporting them than with the fact that the science of economics is all too often tainted by politics."
I think there is very little science practiced by economists, and the recognizable science work is more like scientism than science.
IIRC, the UK experience was that the stagflation of the 1970s ended the belief that Keynesism worked which led to the Tory party adopting Monetarism in teh 1980s under Thatcher. It may have been more about trying any other policy lever in the toolbox, and Friedman's influence in Chile, especially as Pinochet was a friend of Thatcher, to select Monetarism as the preferred tool. How much was also influenced by Reagan's administration IDK, but we know that Reagan and Thatcher were friends. My experience of UK policies as a layperson until I emigrated in the late 1980s was that almost every grand economic policy by the UK chancellor of the exchequer, of whatever political stripe, seemed to fail, especially by the 1960s.
Is there counterfactual evidence that invalidates my perception of this period in the UK?