I really like economics. I think about the field a great deal and read loads of books, papers and articles about it.

However it is a field with a lot of potential, but perhaps no future, because it is full of liars — and the best sorts of fabulists, too, as they don’t even know they are making things up.

Like this. The data is fine. Nothing wrong with it. The interpretation however leaves much to be desired.

Funny how decreases in productivity growth have nothing at all to do with vast increases in inequality, the weakening of labor and various “free” trade treaties that discourage automation.*

No, this of all things is the explanation.

Rather, the important factor after 2003 is slower growth in innovation.

No. This is stupid. The benefits of innovation have barely even been realized because we never even tried it. Instead, we destroyed labor, thus making it artificially cheap and then thought it was great having 20 burger flippers making $7.25 an hour rather than two robot burger flippers and a single human robot minder.

The paper I linked is mendacious by omission; it ignores many of the largest factors causing a productivity stall in Western countries and cites the one that almost definitely is not true.

Some way to run a “science.”

*If all the gains accrue only to capital owners, it’s not clear that automation is actually beneficial and almost certainly would not be as things stand now.