watched bad empanadas video befor this one and it didn’t made the impression on me that every economist is lying to you with statistics was the message. just that some do to prove their opinion.
To me it looked like he was quite clearly focussing on these typed of neo-liberal pop-economists. There’s plenty of people who do decent work, he just used a mildly click baity title, but does focus on the people with the largest impact.
@@BlueHawkPictures17you have to understand his community.. as someone who’s had one foot in that community for a few years, I can tell you that there’s A LOT of sh!t posting, and intra-community memes (like any online community), and of course some people who are more deeply ideologically biases (like any online community). We can look at the comments section of any online political community, and frankly come away thinking quite negatively about the perspective of that community, based on our own biases, especially if were particularly uncharitable (not saying that’s you, that’s just the internet). As far as the perspective of people in the community on economics, it’s varied, but overall it’s not like there’s a wholesale dismissal. The primary means by which they are critiquing economics is via Marxist economics/political economy, so they at least accept Marxists. Some of the people in the community surely are more hardline, and some less so, like myself (though I agree with the general Marxist criticism of the modern field of economics, I’m not dogmatic, and I’m open to MMT, or other left adjacent theories and practice, without changing the communist horizon of my politics).
"You can't just accuse someone of lying when they intentionally uncheck boxes on a graph to hide the that the opposite of their argument is true" Yes I can
This video is the definition of splitting hairs. I didn't know what to expect coming in but I was not expecting this. BE points throughout are solid in his vid and a holistic view of it is "be wary of simple graphs and ask questions about what you see and how they came to such conclusions" which is entirely valid.
Economists are, by and large, usually pretty well off people, so the idea that many, or most, of them might not be as rigorous as they should about endorsing info that supports a system they are benefiting from, isn't hard to believe. For example, the US govt arbitrarily sets the US poverty line ~$14,600 and average cost of rent is ~$16,000. So you can be homeless but still above the poverty line. You'd think something so ridiculous would be constantly derided by economists.
Yeah, I think it’s a little harsh to call leftists “conspiracy theorists” for information like this. The imperial core has literally invaded and overthrown several countries to benefit their economic system, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they would have some influence in the types of economic conclusions that the prominent economists in their countries have, even if it’s not direct threats or gifts.
Regarding 1:40 - what I understood from badempanada's video is that this global extreme poverty line is supposedly *already adjusted for inflation*, which would imply that it should be an objective criterion, that is independent of place and time - or at least this is how it is presented. Therefore it is weird, not to say suspicious, that it is "updated" repeatedly.
PPP can only adjust for inflation at any given time. If the cost of x goes up worldwide due to factors independent of any give countries economy, then the purchasing power regarding that thing will change. For example, regardless of where you are in the world, the cost of semiconductors increased during covid, so normalizing *between* countries doesn't matter, because the cost increased literally everywhere. Meaning the hypothetical PPP dolar had inflation
@@nickwilson7241 "PPP can only adjust for inflation at any given time." Yet the graph goes back to 1820 "normalizing between countries doesn't matter" Normalizing between countries absolutely does matter because the price of things is never the same everywhere nor are the same things consumed. Did the cost increase everywhere. Ok, by how much..? The exact same in every place? No. Are the price of superconductors relevant to extreme poverty in Botswana? No.
@@BadEmpanadaLive I only said that normalizing between countries doesn't matter when we are talking about the amount of purchasing power of a specific commodity over time. If we imagine it like a "PPP dolar" that is normalized between all currencies, that PPP dolar can still have inflation (or deflation) over time due to various factors So, with the semiconductor example, the price jump of semiconductors doesn't have to be completely uniform across all countries, but because the price did increase everywhere the purchasing power of ALL currencies in regards to that specific commodity fell. Just because it isn't exactly the same difference everywhere doesn't mean that inflation didn't happen, even when normalizing between currencies
@@BadEmpanadaLive I'm pretty sure now you're the one who misunderstood Nick's comment. As he explained, he didn't mean that normalizing between countries is not important (it obviously is), but that it does not necessarily mean that the PPP is an objective criterion that is independent of time. Is Nick right? I'm not sure, since I am very ignorant about these issues. But this entire discussion so far has unfortunately not made me any less ignorant, and it seems like some of my favorite creators are for some reason talking over each other instead of actually engaging with the nuances of the subject matter, which is disappointing 😕
@@BadEmpanadaLive "Yet the graph goes back to 1820" BE not realizing you can look into the past but not scry the future as a "historian" oml, dying of laughter
@@gregoryjon4346This guy is not very good. See Brandon Lee's "Unlearning Economics Gets Marxism Wrong: A Response (purely about his video on the Labor Theory of Value)." He is beyond naive in his Thomas Sowell video. He doesn't have the slightest suspicion that Sowell is a propagandist. He calls central planning "morally reprehensible," and has nothing bad to say about markets (all market economies are capitalist). There's nothing mutually exclusive about markets and central planning. Huge corporations, famously Walmart, use central planning because it's more efficent. He calls himself a "socialist" even though he has no understanding of what that term means, and is an anti-Marxist. He's just a liberal. He crumbles whenever ventures even slightly out of the realm of economics. He is an idealist (in the idealism vs materialism sense). I don't wish any harm or for him to lose his income but he's just a liberal, sorry buddy.
@@Alan-Classified Dear god, not another "he's a liberal" nonsense spouter. People are allowed to be leftists and be less of a leftist than you are, or disagree on certain things!
@@DrTssha If somebody is in favor of liberal capitalism, they are a liberal, sorry to say. Not as in a curse word, not as in a pejorative, just, objectively fitting the dictionary definition of a liberal - and yes, social democrats are also liberals. That's just what the word means. UE is a liberal.
@@DrTsshaI personally like UE and think he does generally good work, but if you watch his videos and come away thinking that he's anything but a liberal you are completely off of your rocker. He's one of the best examples of "guy with a big brain and a good heart nevertheless remains in the liberal mind prison".
I'm not particularly biased towards Empanada, nor you. I've definitely watched more of your vids than his, but on this one I'm sorry to say, you seem to be taking it way to personaly. What I understood is that you basically agree with everything he said but overall disagree and disprove because of... vibes? You can't seriously think that because of his video everyone will now think all stats and every economist lie? He is just encouraging ppl to think critically and maybe fact check when possible.
I think this is just a conflict between lefties having a "cut the crap" tone and calling out dishonesty/lying through omission or fudging numbers when they see it, and UE's more professional cautiousness about calling people liars outright and wanting perfect proof. They're both on roughly the same team, but they have difference instincts/approaches.
@@satyasyasatyasya5746 How you wanna proof something when they, capitalists make the statistics who cleary lying for decade now just to stay in power ? When you look at the news "Russia" they tell you "Lose alot of people" "Bad weapon" "Bad everything" they wining right now and when we look in the future and nato stops attacking russia further, what braindead youtuber history will write about the Russia vs Ukraine war? Only the Propaganda what they have see from the news and we see right now they are ALL WRONG!
I found the part where he accuses the video of being conspiratorial regarding the IMF really reaching. Isn't it obvious that institutions that have a vested interest in promoting privatization might have incentives to produce data that shows said privatization to be good? I'm not sure how that's conspiratorial in any way, it's just recognizing the biases inherent to an institution
I thought it was pretty clear that bad empanada was showing how that guy used another set of data as an argument and that his own data proves the point of the original graph, because when you take out the top earners the both sets of data shown basically the same thing.
I think your scrutiny is a little disproportionate towards bad empenada when it comes to the yearly income/hourly wages point as opposed to the person he was criticising. Like the original tweet clearly uses this single graph to "disprove" a point that Regan's policies made wages/income stagnate. All your criticism applies to that tweet just as well if not much more than to bad empenada's point.
23:40 "I don't think it's particularly helpful to accuse people of lying when there are just so many different ways to slice and and dice this" Dude you just admitted lying is so easy in economics
@@APaleDot have you ever heard of questionable research practices, researchers' degrees of freedom, P-hacking and other kinds of biases that run rampant in many fields of science, economics included?
@@rcapt Well the critique wasn't that the data was collected incorrectly, and p-hacking has to do with statistical significance which also isn't what's being claimed by Darling here. UE's point is that you can't prove malpractice by simply choosing a different metric and seeing that it doesn't support the argument given. It could easily be argued that BE is the one cherry-picking the data so that it comes out in his favor, but it wouldn't be a good argument against him to say that if you slice the data some other way it comes out against him. Lots of data is like that, the point is to pick a slice that is representative or somehow relevant to the question at hand.
@@rcapt yeah, but who are the people who can determine what is valid and what is not? it's the same people, because you certainly don't have the expertise to make that assessment out of field.
Average vs median makes a world of difference! When we are talking about the working class, we are interested in median wages over time, not average total income. As an example of median vs average: The median US household net worth is about $150,000 The average US household net worth is almost $1 million! See the difference?
This. Extreme wealth inequality heavily skews the average upwards. The median is not only an entire order of magnitude smaller, it also tells us that 50% of the population earns _increasingly less_ than that
I actually very much enjoy both your respective channels and videos. However if you are familiar with Bad Empanada he definitely has a sense of humor and tone in his videos. Yet at the same time usually his key statements and videos can be taken at face value. I took his conclusion to be that we should be skeptical of claims economists make and acknowledge that it is a social science. He even said that there are good economists and economic data can be useful. Much respect to both of you.
As a psychology student I know the agony of seeing your entire field under (rightful) attack, but there's acknowledging issues with it while persisting about its potential value, and there's grasping at straws to split like hairs to defend it outright. This video does little but the latter.
I disagree completely. In my opinion Bad Empanada's video made claims of data manipulation and intentional falsehoods when this wasn't warranted, and in his demonstration showed how little he understood the tools and methodology used to make said claims. To be frank, his entire thesis comes across as anti-expert (when he says anyone can dismantle this argument, whereas if someone were making this argument against climate change, we'd obviously laugh) and while there's many economists who could could use a good excoriating, he builds his argument on a shaky foundation with clear gaps of knowledge. I mean, he grasps some of the principles he's using here, but where his argument falls flat is clearly at the line of his own ignorance. He oversimplifies what he doesn't understand, then uses that simplified understanding to accuse them of lying. He gets the basics right, then doesn't get the higher level stuff. No shame if he doesn't understand the higher level stuff (that's why I watch Unlearning Economics, because he spots stuff I wouldn't), but if you're gonna accuse people of lying, you better have a rock solid understanding backed up either by your own expertise, or in consultation with experts. Again, if he was arguing against climate scientists instead of economists, he'd be laughed out of the room. Admittedly, economists are more impeachable here, but this is not how you do it!
@@DrTssha I reckon it's the "intentional falsehood" matter that is the gripe here? It honestly surprises me that we can watch a man with clear ideological bias and a history of arguing for specific policies and economic views presents statistics in a skewed way that makes his ideological framework look better, this by showing data that does not actually address the subject matter but simply makes it seem that way to the casual observer by being tangentially related, and the person folks are upset at is the one demonstrating that checking the actually relevant boxes to the subject matter (on the claimant's own source page) shows something different, and then dares to call this little trick deliberate. Is it really too far to say that a rabid, out and proud neoliberal doing a little bit of box checking magic to make his own position look better by virtue of line going up is, maybe, some form of dishonesty? Conversely, the comment thread here is also ripe with people effectively claiming that the screenshots are doctored or taken outside of their context, which shows that the gripe is less with the method BE ostensibly used to show the little trick done to polish the line, so to speak, and more like it's a matter of them thinking he is the dishonest one, on a personal level, cobbling together his own narrative from disparate threads. The reason laymen can partake in the material in question is because it is indeed at a level where it can, unlike the intricacies of climate science, actually be grasped by those who simply take the time out of their lives to acquire the necessary basic knowledge to call certain matters into question. For instance, it does not take an economics degree to question the poverty lines set by the World Bank and the discrepancies therein. As mentioned, I myself have a background in psychology, meaning I am a glorified statistician that tries to make numbers work with people, and I can rather easily parse the issue of how the poverty line is clearly inadequate at best. Crucially, it does not take an economics degree to find other economists that are criticizing the numbers therein either, or those in the field who call for the use of other measurements that more represents the material conditions for ordinary people, like BE does plenty in his video. This whole thing seems more and more like certain people with economics degrees are taking personal umbrage with the fact that certain aspects of their field aren't exclusively in their purview, and that certain economists' utilization of certain measurements are portrayed as dishonesty borne from ideological conviction rather than, I guess, these economists simply not being very good at their own field? Those with a chip on their shoulder would, of course, note that BE wouldn't be arguing against the climate scientists in question given how it's a field of hard science and the consensus there is rather stark - they might even point out that he wouldn't say that literally anyone can debunk climate science, because it is very different from the soft, squishy metrics showcased in his video by economists. Look, when out and proud neoliberals preach the merits of capitalist market economies and applaud when comprador governments are installed in the third world for the purposes of resource extraction while claiming it's for the betterment of the people living there, the issue is less that their educational background might be economists and more their ideological adherence - the former simply allows them to be better at box checking tricks to present their views in a better light.
@@DrTssha I doubt you could even comprehend the response Asrahn made to you. You sure seem like a parasocial goon after that tbh. Mask off, good riddance
You basically agreed with his points while saying you're not sure if he's correct. He's not saying all economists are full of shit, it's just that MANY of the economists that the public is exposed to end up falling into this weird bracket of using economic data to make their political goals; Can this be denied?
He agreed with SOME of his points, and pointed out areas where BadEmpanada's argument fell short. Bad Empanada seemed to get the basics right, but seemed to be reaching in some areas and assuming intent in others. Intentionality bias is a thing, and it's good that Unlearning Economics is aware of that and isn't willing to commit to the idea that economists are lying to advance their own agenda (sure, some probably are, but I'd need proof for any individual accused and Bad Empanada doesn't do that, as Unlearning shows). Besides, what about the point that the World Bank has abandoned practices that are widely agreed to be ineffective (made near the end of the video)? This implies to me that the World Bank, a bunch of people with liberal biases, tried something they thought would work (because of their ideology), then it didn't, and they changed tactics as soon as that was clear. There, I've laid out an equally plausible non-intentional explanation for the same events. You have to be wary of intentionality bias, it's pernicious. Never assume intent when it can be equally explained by other means.
@@DrTsshabut the world bank didn't just change. They are still giving out billion dollar loans with stipulations that the debtor must change their labour market, make it more "flexible", allow more foreign investment and less state ownership. These loans are still happening right now. So the world bank is in fact intentionally doing these things regardless of consequences for the debtor.
I'm not sure what the point of doing a commentary / reaction video on a video like this if you've not watched it and are going into it with a predisposed attitude. Like from the start he pretty clearly states that the global poverty line is already adjusted for inflation, but they keep adding to it beyond that. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but you just immediately misunderstand what's being said and follow it up with "does he think poverty is bad?" like that's even the question at hand here? It's very obvious from the start that 'poverty going down' is a good thing, but that the ways people use to argue about quantifying it and the trend can be deceptive. I find that immediate reaction videos where interjecting into it repeatedly before watching it doesn't really provide much constructive aspects, and so it ends up being for entertainment at most. Especially when it appears to be you coming in with the assumption that he's wrong and then going to justify it as you go - which maybe it's not what you intended, but it's how it comes across. Would be a lot more useful to at least watch the whole video beforehand, see that you actually disagree on specific stuff, and then focus on that in a stream of it.
Yea if he approached it differently than a react lord it probably wouldve gone better. But maybe it would’ve gone exactly the same since BE criticized a friend of UE
Been watching both your and Badempanada's videos for a while now. I have to say, I'm extremely disappointed in this. Many points he's making are verbatim points you've made before. Is it just economist fragility? I don't get it, because I genuinely expect better from you. Seems to me you have some economics to unlearn. Edit: Regarding your conclusion - because I can kind of see you weasle out of this by saying "okay, I was too harsh, but I just don't want him to dismiss the whole field of economics as pseudo-science" -, no, I also disagree with this. We can say and you should admit that there isn't one scientific field that is as infested with ideologically driven liars as economics. We should be very skeptical about any of its output, because - disregarding the mistakes that scientists can make in any field - we have to be aware of the possibility of economists consciously trying to manipulate words and statistics to mislead the public. The field of economics' notoriety is of another level than that of other fields of science. You should face that fact.
He thinks people dismissing economics are akin to climate change denialism and creationism, forgetting that economics is social science (if even that) and nothing more
He wasn't arguing that there was or wasn't progress. It was clear that he was arguing that a graph for total earning was used to counter an argument for hourly wage (which is deceptive, if that was what was happening.)
Hey do you still think that the IMF earnestly wants to help third world countries and just had the wrong idea about how to do that, rather than using that as a front to force US-dictated economic reforms on them? Just wondering if you've learned anything from this experience
It says it in the title "Do Economists Lie with Statistics? Commentary on Bad Empanada". You're getting what you're paying for. It's a commentary, not necessary a disagreement or critique.
Does he tho? UE loves to rant about Marxists mainly because he sees them as political zealous that aren't commited to his values. BE, while not claiming that he is a Marxist, uses most parts of Marxist theory UE has a problem with. Especially being in opposition to liberal institutions, which UE libels as conspiratorial as shown here.
i understand the professional urge for not making bold statements, but BE was very solid here, and UE was mostly splitting hairs and policing the vibes. the conclusion that BE thinks that *all* economists are lying/conspiring is just out of nowhere. BE presents fairly clear cases where the data is manipulated and that's pretty much it.
Its worse actually. UE , in an effort to “own” BE, actually backpedaled on criticisms of capitalism that nearly every leftist is familiar with. And ignored stats and facts to cherry pick for his own argument. I can tell he learned economics on cracker island lmfao
@@richhornie7000 i'll prob never understand bald men being jealous of men with hair. like it's not a bad look for a man to be bald (imo, bald women also look fine, but many ppl disagree)
Oh come on. If you want to show that AVERAGE people's lives have gotten better, and you intentionally include the incomes from billion dollar investments of rich people in your dataset, you are obviously lying.
GDP is of relevance today, because it is an indicator of the wealth of capitalists - so capitalists care about it and consider it the most important metric its pretty much irellevant for the working class... but i guess its a bit of an indicator of how much you are being exploited?
And the true reason why GDP growth is so important is because the modern economy is built on debt, so countries need to keep growing faster than the rate of compound debt growth. "GDP as a proxy of living standards" is just a convenient excuse used to justify the pursuit of continued growth, ignoring that in reality there are several other factors involved in improved living standards.
GDP is important for international relationships. Also if you are poor in a high GDP country it literally means you are being exploited by your countrymen
As a professional economist, I think that all of Bad Empanada's points were valid and argued well enough. You seem to be missing the point whenever you express disagreement. By the way, highlighting an increase in disposable income in the US where there was a concurrent rise in constrained private sector expenses for things (education, healthcare, housing, filing taxes, etc.) that in other western countries are financed at least in part by taxes is highly misleading, and an argument typically presented by advocates of free market capitalism.
I think you're making the same mistake as BadEmpanada though, and assuming ill intent. This was covered during a live stream, watched live, and there seemed to be bits that Unlearning Economics misunderstood honestly. I think this can be chalked up to the live format and not having the time to go in depth here. Errors are understandable, in that light. The criticism is fair, but I also think BadEmpanada overplayed his hand. He's accusing others of lying when they could simply be making understandable errors in the face of their biases. Not to mention we have no context for the tweet that was being critiqued, that limits UE's ability to respond somewhat.
@@DrTssha That’s just cope. The live format doesn’t magically make someone suspend their supposed expertise if its a topic they are supposed to be an authority on. If i was a professional economist and couldn’t successfully critique an amateur like BE, i wouldnt be showing my face so proudly on the internet anymore lol. Embarrassing
Yep. What BE was essentially alluding to is the unfortunate reality that economists are often used to justify neoliberal policies to legitimise the interests of the capitalists, similar to how priests in the medieval times were used to legitimise the divine rule of kings. Economics is a soft rather than hard science, meaning it has no truly immutable laws like physics, yet people often seem to act like it does.
@@GTAVictor9128 What's funny is that Unlearning Economics has made the same point (more or less) in numerous videos, only with expertise in the field. I dare say, maybe unlearning this kind of attitude is the goal of the entire channel...like unlearning an uncritical reverence for economics. Nah, it couldn't be as simple as being in the name of the channel...could it?
@@DrTssha You yourself made a false equivalence between climate science and economics to me in another comment under this video. Quote: " . . . his entire thesis comes across as anti-expert (when he says anyone can dismantle this argument, whereas if someone were making this argument against climate change, we'd obviously laugh) . . . " You should take your own advice.
so, wait 6:45 your argument, then, is that china's standards of living (take your pick of them) were superior prior to the Great Leap Forward / Cultural Revolution? like... what is one famine - and fair to condemn that - against a state in perpetual famine all of the time? and how exactly do you propose that one achieves what China has now without something like The Great Leap Forward? they didn't have a wealthy benefactor like South Korea, nor did they have an abundance of wealth and land to simply steal like we did in the Americas we love to criticize The Great Leap Forward while remaining silent on the matter of how it might compare against something like Manifest Destiny, or how you'd lift a country the size of China out of subsistence agriculture with no associated costs / externalities
You can increase the standard of living without agrarian collectivization policies (which have literally never actually increased production) that kill millions of people. This is like if I hit myself in the face with a hammer, and then afterwards I properly hit the nail, someone laughs and goes, "wow, hitting yourself in the face with a hammer was really dumb and counterproductive." and then you come along and go, "oh, oh, are you arguing that the nail didn't hit? Sure, maaaaybe hitting himself in the face with the hammer wasn't the best decision, but the nail eventually got hit, so obviously hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is a necessary process of hammering in a nail"
Nobody mentions that under Mao, life expectancy *DOUBLED* , population size *DOUBLED* and in 1976, the conditions were such to fully exploit the demographic dividend that economists today claim India has (LOL).
@@nickwilson7241LMAO thanks for your debunked Black Book of Communism figures. The reality is that the population under Mao went from 400m to 800m and life expectancy more than doubled.
@@nickwilson7241"that kill millions of people" [citation needed] What a dishonest analogy, that could only come from the mind of a liberal. Why don't you try to count the history of famines of Russia BEFORE and AFTER the Soviet Union, for example, before you come up with such pathetic analogies?
@@MikaelLima2210 the agricultural collectivization plan of the great leap forward inarguably killed millions of people. That's not a disputable fact. Nobody has ever made the argument that famines didn't happen in China or Russia prior to collectivization. The argument (which you have clumsily attempted to sidestep) is that the process taken to industrialize was bad and unnecessarily led to millions of deaths as a result of bad policy. Lots of places managed to industrialize and prevent future famines without causing millions of starvation deaths in the process
Hi, UE, do you think there should be more focus on the material state of the (natural) world when it comes to stats and economics like this? As in, what good is line goes up when 'fresh water, good soil, air quality, insect population, climate stuff etc." line goes down?
Definitely, this is something that the present system we live under seems to place no priority on at all whatsoever, when it should be at the *top* of the priority list!
yeah that sounds like a good idea, if only there was an economic tradition that focused primarily on the material conditions that a society finds itself in and how that constrains and conditions what's possible for that society, and how those conditions change accross history as the society develops in a sort of mutually interdependent relationship, like some sort of _dialectical materialism_ if only
I've gotta be honest, this responding in real time to the video was just not at all what was required. I get you've got limited time and it's good for clicks, but watch it once, get your thoughts reasonably clear then respond. The hourly wages stagnation chart for the US that he's referring to is SUPER well known, it's been everywhere online for years (yes, he should have shown it). Very strange that you talked around in circles giving the guy you know the benefit of the doubt. The graph in question is almost certainly the hourly compensation vs productivity and can be found on the AFL-CIO website and states: "Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution." The original chart was indeed looking at a section of wage earners excluding a top proportion. There's no justification for the guy Bad Empanada is critiquing for adding back in the highest earners and and all their sources of income to skew the results.
Not even conservatives would gaslight themselves into believing that their standard of living has been constantly increasing in the last few decades. Graduating with honors on economics degree just mean you've been brainwshed completely and successfully.
The stats themselves may not be a lie but the attribution of the improvement to capitalist policy typically is, in my experience. Life is getting better despite privatization, contrary to the spirit of these graphs and reports.
I think the point of the video was to dissect some of the arguments made by BE, not to definitively prove or disprove anything. Having a discussion about the validity of different arguments is extremely productive and valuable. We shouldn't just degrade the discussion to personnel attacks based on what opinions we hold our self.
What personal attacks? I havent seen anyone make fun of UE’s appearance, just his conduct and statements. Criticizing someones public conduct and statement are not personal attacks and its actually very disturbing to suggest that they are.
GDP per capita is considered a useless metric before capitalism even in mainstream economics. Even if we had access to good data from the past, then mainstream economists, according to the Malthusian hypothesis, think that any rise in household wealth (numerator of GDP per capita) would cause a rise in offspring - and subsequently the population (denominator of GDP per capita) - enough to offset the rise in wealth. GDP on the other hand could be a kind of useful metric, but of course the data quality problems make it useless too.
24:42 Yeah sure disposable income increased but that's hardly a sign of an increase in purchasing power or living standards, if asset inflation outpaced disposible income, (like it has done) then is your buying power more? Probably not, I think it's an irrefutable fact that the slice of the pie the median worker recieves is diminishing and has been diminishing rapidly since the 70-80's, people may have more money, better living standards and a better quality of life but they are recieving less of their production and asset prices have skyrocketed, this is evident by rapidly rising inequality and house prices for example. Economists shouldn't just look at the physical situation for median workers and people, they should look at the amount of output capital they revieve per labour hour, etc.
Indeed, and this is not even factoring in the massive glaring matter of private debt that is skyrocketing across the board, something economists seem to want to pretend does not even exist as a matter.
@@Asrahn Yep, most economists are so deluded from actual reality, it's insane. They stick to their fundamentally flawed models and analysis and wonder why the general populace is telling them the economy is shit. Their whole education is focussed on maximizing profits for the top 1%, they think that's what makes a good economy.
This is a very good point, but that data wasn't looked at during the stream. Worth following up on though, that's for sure, I hope your comment gets a look-at by UE.
24:20 How tf would you even measure disposable income?? Is that the money I don't spend? That's hardly disposable if it's savings or put aside. Is it money I spend on leisure or entertainment? That seems like a BS metric to me. 30:00 Also, it's kinda incredible you basically just said, more GDP more gooder. GDP might be at the highest point ever, yes and? That doesn't help me at all. My quality of life isn't better just because GDP went up. That just means more stuff moved around. What he said is not extreme at all. You keep saying he sounds "conspiratiorial". What is that even supposed to mean? Conspiracies happen all the time. Is thinking someone might be lying a conspiracy theory? People lie all the time. "There is no right decision" Yes, it just depends on you bias. People who prioritize stuff like Income are biased towards "rich" people. I'm biased towards the working class so i find wage the correct choice. If you claim to represend the interest of the "poor" (read working class) and use metrics like income you are just plainly wrong.
@@gregoryjon4346 Interesting, so disposable income doesn't include expenses? Makes the name a bit misleading. It sounds like it's money that can be spent after everything else has been taken care of. "Necessary expenses" also sounds like something unmeasurable.
@@Mattia_98 it's the amount of money you have left over after you've paid your necessary expenses. This can include (but is not limited to) power, utilities, rent, food, transportation costs, and other basic living expenses. Whatever's left over (that isn't claimed by debt servicing or other claims on your income) is your disposable income. This can go to savings, eating out at a restaurant, buying video games, etc.
Are you trying to tell me that Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan eating poop on the street for 100 dollars each isn't good for the economy? That's insane 😂
The biggest and fastest improvements in living conditions in human history were China under Mao, USSR under Lenin/Stalin, and China under Xi. China and the countries in the USSR were all significantly worse off before their communist revolutions. The life expectancy in China before Mao was less than 35, and Russia before Lenin was 32. Every brainwashed westerner loves to talk about how evil Stalin and Mao were but they never mention how much worse the living conditions were in the countries before. People only compare them to the imperial west which built its wealth off the backs of mass slavery, genocide, land theft and colonialism. The Xi Jinping era brought about further improvements in living conditions with the poverty alleviation program that lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty, but Mao made huge improvements to China as well. Without the communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China would be no different than India at the moment.
With all respect but... SOURCE!?! Like I'm a communist, ngl. And I pretty much knew about very much important impact of October Revolution on living standards in USSR, and Mao's reign + plus great impact of Cultural Revolution in the field of education of common folk in the countryside. Just curious.
I think the bigger problem was pointedly illustrated by that combined graph on the poverty tracking site. Top-earner income increased MASSIVELY faster than bottom-earner income. Which compounds on itself. GDP obviously grew with technological innovation, growing workforce population and ENERGY BUDGET! Everyone forgets the energy budget of our planet; it's a perfectly correlated line with global GDP growth.
4:00 No, this is just horrible. Practices of academia shouldn't be confined to academia. If they set something called the "poverty line" - its definition being "the income under which people are considered to be in poverty, and above which not in poverty" - then that should instruct where the poverty line should be set. I don't think the language of academia should be completely disconnected from everyday language. Sometimes sciences come up with new concepts which can be given confusing names like "gravity field" which has nothing to do with fields whatsoever, but the "poverty line" is quite clearly referring to that thing that everyone thinks of when they hear "poverty", and it is explicitly claiming to do so.
6:54 - The point of BE here is the decline starts at the greatest height of the Soviet Union and the victory of a marxist-leninist revolution in CHina. After that it is still declining in the graph even before the fall of the Soviet Union and the neoliberal reforms of Deng Xiaoping.
one thing on those income graphs... even the available settings obfuscate some interesting information... like: what is the lower and upper bound on the segment in question? like - you look at the bottom 50% and on average their income has gone up a bit - is that because things have improved for everyone, or because a gap in between extremes has widened upwards? because what that line being an average means is that a LOT of people will be below that line by possibly a big margin... and bottom 50% is a large chunk of the population - a distribution within that group might be interesting as well
24:32 This might be, but it's still extremely misleading - borderline lying - to show a graph where number goes up from 45k to 90k, when for majority of people the real numbers are 17k to 25k. And now we're comparing apples and oranges again, because I don't know if the rise of disposable wages isn't steeper too for the top 10%. Edit: Yes, the disposable income of the top 10% tripled and grew hard during the Reagan era, so the total graph is still gonna be misleading by any standard.
When you agree with everything a dude says but you gotta disagree on principle. Never let anyone tell you those econ bros ain’t got spines. Brother is standing on business here.
8:50 i may be wrong but there is no link between structural adjustment in the original video. i believe he was pointing out the fact that the world bank might have been ideologically motivated by using structural reform as an example. even if they abandoned structural reform, there's still evidence that points to the fact that the world bank is pro-neoliberal. good critique, but i disagree on this part.
Yeah, but that can be explained by the fact that those who go into finance are more likely to have liberal to neo-liberal biases. That falls short of the accusation of lying or intentionally upholding unequal structures of power. It's very possible they just believe this will make the world a better place. If their goal was otherwise, they wouldn't have abandoned structural reform. It's an indication that they're constantly trying to do better, and have a less accurate framework to view the problem with than people on the left, a far cry from the lying that BadEmpanada accuses them of doing.
I'd normally agree, but I've seen these conversations go badly before and it's always BadEmpanada's fault. The guy just won't listen to anyone who disagrees with him, and his engagement style comes across as childish. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and he and Unlearning Economics could have a reasonable discussion. His own reply to this video belies this point, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong. I'd like to think better of the man.
He won't, because he has no actual rebuttals for BE's arguments (which mostlyvmirror his own arguments from early videos). It's mostly vibe policing and tribalism.
Nah UE doesn’t respect him, which is why he didn’t even bring real effortful arguments. UE thinks his view is automatically superior without having to actually do due diligence in justifying it
19:42 - I mean, yes, it is, but the point was to show how real wages has been in stagnation, so more women in the workforce it's just more people with real wages that will be in stagnation. All of this to debuk the claim of the neoclassical liberal that was saying during Reagan's presidency real wages went up. It's a bit weird having Unlearning Economics not getting to the point here, maybe he was tired? I mean, he's a human after all that was doing a livestream with raw thoughts instead of making one of his videos, but it's reckless, though.
So for example, Javier Milei is supposedly an economist, I don't know, I'm not an economist, but I would bet that what he is doing will mean years of poverty for the masses, specially we will see a generation absolutely hurt by this politics, I mean, right now we are in winter, and since the start of this government the people have been protesting and struggling because there was a Ministery in charge of distributing a part of the food to millions of people, and this economist presided government, chose to just let tons of food rot... you know what? this people love thatcher... And you are criticizing this as a defense for economists but I wonder how many in twitter have any consideration of how many millions of people are suffering, in palestine, ukraine, kenya, Africa, middle east and the world, while you claim don't attack my poverty statistics in which my profession are based which are clearly biased. But yeah maybe it's not just economists the issue, but you should admit your professions is being slaughtered in twitter and used to spread dissinformation and just bullshit, like javier milei... is javier milei a US puppet or is he just throwing "austerity measures" theories to keep the population "under control" with hunger, fear, crime, and poverty? While Argentina keeps getting the narrative that their are not a credit worth nation but their only saviors are the IMF and the investors that won't invest ever in here, until they destroy every stone left of the constitutional powers and the Argentinian sovereignty to completely take over... and maybe slave the rest of us of just keep us, the eternally exploited youth, in absolute poverty... The Global poverty line doesn't represent the thousands or millions of kids getting mutilated and losing their whole family, and countries in some cases, absolutely abused by the capitalist system, from the extreme of the kid living on palestine to the kid being grown on the streets of some other nations capital... I wonder which economist cares to register infant poverty and can say their statistics have global accuracy... I would bet 90% of graduated economists are biased and have no notion at all of what poverty is causing to the majority of the world and they are clearly underrepresented by your most basic economics...
I worked for a while for the UN creating metrics like this. There's always criticisms of metrics, and it is possible to address them. But things get complicated really quickly, and that adds its own risk of researcher bias and reducing transparency. ESPECIALLY for advocacy and public debate, I think it's actually better to use a metric like the poverty line because it's so simple that the flaws basically don't need to be explained.
Economics as currently practiced in the west is pseudoscience. Economics could be as useful as other social sciences, but there’s too many institutional biases for that too happen. You need to work a little harder on Unlearning Econ.
Maybe it's time to just listen to Korean, Chinese, and Japanese economists instead of Western economists whose policies have kept Latin America in debt and poverty.
I really don't think zooming in on the graph does it any favours. If there is a trend there, and the variation makes it hard to tell, its a very weak one, and when we pull out we can compare it to how things could be if there was a more equitable distribution. So is it inaccurate to say that the bottom 50% made no gains? Maybe technically if we strictly compare end points for last year, but in terms of deciding on policy it seems what we have been doing is failure for that demographic (and I have to be careful not to call it a total failure because that's unfair since it could be worse!). Women going into the workforce is good. The fact that we can only make more by working more (when society is more productive) is not. The fact that we can only say we are better off if we include tax credits also isn't great because the budget still matters. So every gain has a cost, and if a neoliberal's costs are not born at all by the rich I don't care if they are nice or trying their best. Taking a microscope to a graph to show the gains is not what I want for people. I don't think they can really appreciate that when we could be doing better. I still liked the video because its good to hear the nuance.
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see a take on this when UE has had time to do more research and think on things, as well as take into account valid criticisms. This unfortunately is the downside of live content production, there's just no time for in-depth research and it's always gonna be surface reads. Granted, UE dove deeper into this than I expected, but this is definitely a topic that could be explored better with more in-depth research.
Why are you trusting the institutions that gather this statistics so faithfully is the question... if the reason is that it's the only available data source maybe you should consider that that's a fact, and maybe this institutions are the source for propaganda... I don't know maybe you should check more often how this statistics graphs are manipulated often choosing very arbitrary starting years to represent this data...
@@OGAshton haha I guess I'm just a sucker for "vaguely mad guy staring down at me" xD although, UE did get me a long time ago when I discovered him with his voice/accent too, so there's that, so yeh, Britishness helps haha I'm... oversharing... 🤐😅
"Economists lie with statistics" actually motte and bailey. Worst cases of economics fans using misleading statistics are fully incapable of disproving any particular statistical argument made by economists.
why are these comments so full of people who think this is meant to be some full critique? It's just a live commentary adding some further information/understanding from an actual economist, why are y'all talking abt this like it's some sort of clash/beef?
Because BadEmpanada fans are used to beefs (he does have rather a lot of them), so that's the lens they view this entire discussion through. There's a few who have valid critiques, but again, this is a live format, not a fully researched video! The critiques are valid, but the sass isn't warranted!
Asking if the guy you’re reacting to likes poverty and saying that distrusting the motives of the wto and imf are obviously ridiculous. This isn’t worth anything.
@@DrTssha no need to be self righteous. You arent better than other people because you decline to be sassy. Being sassy isn’t inherently disrespectful, and most people here are responding to tangible things that UE said that dont make sense. I actually think that dismissing people and generalizing them as “all seeing this whole thing through the lens of a beef” is much worse than simply being sassy. I’d rather be around people who are sassy than around people who deny basic human agency to those they disagree with
Because no matter how you look at the video UE comes off as a moron. I mean, "he has said the poverty is bad I guess" cannot be interpreted in good faith.
The short answer is yes. I'm not sure what BE is going to say and I'm not sure i care. He's extremely insane. However, once you understand economics and how things function it becomes quite clear that kost economists that exist to create headlines that back up the status quo are paid to obfuscate using statistics. The classic one is to say "GDP is up" as some kind of measure on if the average working person is doing well. Yet it will be used to kake this point time and again in major publications. There are many more examples of this. But GDP is the most obvious and frequently used
I'm not all that plugged into the left sphere drama and I see people saying this about BE all the time. Why is he insane? As far as I've seen, he's made some good videos, probably one of the best researched videos in the so called "breadtube"
@@manchesterunited9576 he thinks socialism is a viable mode of economics, he has massive sociopathic tendancies. Constantly cries fascist at everything while unironically being one of the most authoritarian personalities on the platform. I could go on
I agree with you that he was a little to harsh. In my experience, though, all discussions about wages and income are obfuscated by the use of such graphs. It would have been nice if BE would have given more information on wages vs income . Instead he did the same thing he's condemning, "I'm right and he's wrong".
I think the point of using hourly wages or income after taxes and trasfer for the median vs total is that with total you mask the increase in enequality
It's nothing to do with inequality it's to do with comparing compensation for time worked directly with compensation for worked rather than something entirely different.
Bad Empanada is capable of making good videos, but he has no restraint and that hurts the points he is trying to make, your criticism was very balanced.
BE did have two channels. The #1 channel was for long firm videos and was scripted and full of citations. It was extremely good yet it's difficult to make a living from it. The other channel/s were about internet drama and obviously paid the bills. Best to avoid those and concentrate and support his good body of work
@@jeffbain6817 Tbh if he correctly criticizes a poor takedown made by a self proclaimed economist, thats not drama. I dont think it’s helpful to act like this is mere drama. It’s actually very elucidating of how economics fits into UE’s worldview and what psychological triggers he has around the topic
I used to watch a lot of BadEmpanada bc he's fairly entertaining and in this video his broader point of "laypeople should be skeptical of economics graphs" is spot on. That being said, he has a few things working against him: He's an anti-USA campist as a first principle (don't get me wrong, their government is *very* bad in a *lot* of ways, both historically and presently, but he operates from the assumption that the USA is *always* in the wrong, no matter the situation); he also regularly uses the same dishonest representation of the facts that *he* teaches other people to look out for.
You clearly never watched badempenada’s content he is fearly nuanced like his new vidéo on venezuela where he clearly criticize maduro. He made many video criticizing anti us campism, like « anti american is not an ideology ». I agree with you tho that he’s insane on Twitter and social media.
@@ultravioletiris6241 1. Fighting Serbia to prevent the genocide of Kosovars. 2. Ending Sadam's genocide of the Kurds. 3. Supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend themselves from the Russian invasion.
From what I've seen, badempanada tends to respond to critique with anger and contempt. He seems to always assume that anyone who questions him does so in bad faith. I stopped watching his videos because of it, even though I mostly agreed with his arguments. I hope he takes this critique as an opportunity to expand the dialogue. We'll see.
@@ultravioletiris6241 idk much about UE aside from his poor conception of marx, but I do know of BE's selective antiimperialism, electoralism and moralism. I'll admit though, BE is funny as hell and transparent with the fact that his relationship with his audience is inherently manipulative. UE seems boring as hell and not super clever either
@@ivan_ivankovichNeither of rhem is a lib. Not being "leftist" enough in whatever definition you're using in your head,. doesn't automatically translate to liberalism.
Bad Empanada is a perfect example of someone who can be like 80% correct about the facts of any topic he covers, and then construct an argument which is completely insane by extrapolating beyond the stuff he's actually correct about
@@communist754 Nah. They think its insane that economists could use stats to lie , clearly their threshold for determining if an argument is insane or not is sketch at best.
The entry of women in the workforce absolutely was not a good thing. Unless you think depressed wages, sub-replacement fertility rates and over-worked population are good things, that is.
Bad wages and over-work could (and did) happen without women in the workforce. The good aspects are obviously what concern gender equality, allowing women to not be subjugated to men as much as before, for example.
@@00Platypus00 yes, but: the two income household is a terrible standard. 40 hours in total for a household should have been the goal, not "everyone works, always"
@@00Platypus00except they still are The problem is that work is coercive under our current system Our system is also built on hierarchy, patriarchy being one of them So sure, women are more equal in being in exploited, while being more "free" to escape exploitation I'd say its overall good But that incrementalist mindset really ignores the real problems Another way to have looked at it would've been women should not have been forced to join the workforce so that hopefully men could've been freed from this coercion And instead women could've been freed from patriarchy by being given guaranteed income That would've actually done some good and progress
@@thomaswikstrand8397 What the goal should be is something completely different... As far as I am concerned we should minimize how much everyone works while we provide everyone's needs, including to those who are incapable of working. And we surely should question and reconsider how we organize society with arbitrary nuclear families without cooperation for things like child and elderly care. But that is beyond the point - denying that there has been positive aspects of women being allowed to join the workforce is shortsighted, especially in misogynistic societies.
@@Goofy8907 I never implied it is a thing of the past :) I agree that our system is bad, mate. My point is that there were material improvements in the lives of many women due to that - and sure, there are the bad things about being exploited for work (which women have endured before that with unpaid house work). A win in equality between genders is not necessarily a win with regards to class and exploitation, you are completely correct. I simply opposed the class reductionist view of things... there are other aspects to be considered.
@@Tasmantor Canberra (maybe some states?) has now introduced carbon-emissions based registration, but those numbers are a long way from accurate. Canberra's system is based on the idea of discounting for low emissions vehicles, not charging more for ICE vehicles. A Ford Ranger costs the same to rego now as it did under the old system.
high alchoal & smoking tax keeps people in poverty Australia ! claymore a suburb in south west sydney home ownrership 10% it very bad area everyone smokes & drinks alot why the alway in poverty
@@coopsnz1 there is no carbon tax in Australia, prices aren't up because of a tax that hasn't existed for a decade and Australian alcohol taxes aren't a stand out globally so that's not what makes that expensive. Cigarettes and tobacco products are taxed very highly here with the end goal of reducing use and it has worked very well so too bad, don't smoke. If the transport is what's making the beer expensive then why are so many imported beer cheaper than locally brewed ones?
![ARGENTINA vs. BOLIVIA [6-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 10](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C3wPtKNbAOA/mqdefault.jpg)
watched bad empanadas video befor this one and it didn’t made the impression on me that every economist is lying to you with statistics was the message. just that some do to prove their opinion.
To me it looked like he was quite clearly focussing on these typed of neo-liberal pop-economists. There’s plenty of people who do decent work, he just used a mildly click baity title, but does focus on the people with the largest impact.
idk man, the impression seems to be quite diff in the comment section
@@BlueHawkPictures17you have to understand his community.. as someone who’s had one foot in that community for a few years, I can tell you that there’s A LOT of sh!t posting, and intra-community memes (like any online community), and of course some people who are more deeply ideologically biases (like any online community). We can look at the comments section of any online political community, and frankly come away thinking quite negatively about the perspective of that community, based on our own biases, especially if were particularly uncharitable (not saying that’s you, that’s just the internet).
As far as the perspective of people in the community on economics, it’s varied, but overall it’s not like there’s a wholesale dismissal. The primary means by which they are critiquing economics is via Marxist economics/political economy, so they at least accept Marxists. Some of the people in the community surely are more hardline, and some less so, like myself (though I agree with the general Marxist criticism of the modern field of economics, I’m not dogmatic, and I’m open to MMT, or other left adjacent theories and practice, without changing the communist horizon of my politics).
@@nikolademitri731 It is mostly sh!t posting and teaching people about Yakub and the evils of tricknology.
He never claimed “all economists” do it.
"You can't just accuse someone of lying when they intentionally uncheck boxes on a graph to hide the that the opposite of their argument is true"
Yes I can
Oh hi bro👋 y tf is the comment to the reaction to your video in the shadow realms lol
Yeah pretty sure that is lying and a rather malicious form lmfao
More taxes & regulations shrunk wages in australia bob hawke growing government bigger 1986 caused it and more lose there home & businesses 1987
@@coopsnz1 Thanks JDPON Bob
Could you timestamp in your video when you show the context of the tweet?
This video is the definition of splitting hairs. I didn't know what to expect coming in but I was not expecting this. BE points throughout are solid in his vid and a holistic view of it is "be wary of simple graphs and ask questions about what you see and how they came to such conclusions" which is entirely valid.
According to UE its bad to be wary of graphs from economists lol
Next thing he gonna say is that CIA is a credible source of information 😂
Economists are, by and large, usually pretty well off people, so the idea that many, or most, of them might not be as rigorous as they should about endorsing info that supports a system they are benefiting from, isn't hard to believe.
For example, the US govt arbitrarily sets the US poverty line ~$14,600 and average cost of rent is ~$16,000. So you can be homeless but still above the poverty line.
You'd think something so ridiculous would be constantly derided by economists.
Yeah, I think it’s a little harsh to call leftists “conspiracy theorists” for information like this. The imperial core has literally invaded and overthrown several countries to benefit their economic system, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they would have some influence in the types of economic conclusions that the prominent economists in their countries have, even if it’s not direct threats or gifts.
@@Ebowman1129 If he thinks its a conspiracy he needs his economist card taken away ASAP
Regarding 1:40 - what I understood from badempanada's video is that this global extreme poverty line is supposedly *already adjusted for inflation*, which would imply that it should be an objective criterion, that is independent of place and time - or at least this is how it is presented. Therefore it is weird, not to say suspicious, that it is "updated" repeatedly.
PPP can only adjust for inflation at any given time. If the cost of x goes up worldwide due to factors independent of any give countries economy, then the purchasing power regarding that thing will change. For example, regardless of where you are in the world, the cost of semiconductors increased during covid, so normalizing *between* countries doesn't matter, because the cost increased literally everywhere. Meaning the hypothetical PPP dolar had inflation
@@nickwilson7241 "PPP can only adjust for inflation at any given time."
Yet the graph goes back to 1820
"normalizing between countries doesn't matter"
Normalizing between countries absolutely does matter because the price of things is never the same everywhere nor are the same things consumed. Did the cost increase everywhere. Ok, by how much..? The exact same in every place? No. Are the price of superconductors relevant to extreme poverty in Botswana? No.
@@BadEmpanadaLive I only said that normalizing between countries doesn't matter when we are talking about the amount of purchasing power of a specific commodity over time. If we imagine it like a "PPP dolar" that is normalized between all currencies, that PPP dolar can still have inflation (or deflation) over time due to various factors
So, with the semiconductor example, the price jump of semiconductors doesn't have to be completely uniform across all countries, but because the price did increase everywhere the purchasing power of ALL currencies in regards to that specific commodity fell. Just because it isn't exactly the same difference everywhere doesn't mean that inflation didn't happen, even when normalizing between currencies
@@BadEmpanadaLive I'm pretty sure now you're the one who misunderstood Nick's comment. As he explained, he didn't mean that normalizing between countries is not important (it obviously is), but that it does not necessarily mean that the PPP is an objective criterion that is independent of time.
Is Nick right? I'm not sure, since I am very ignorant about these issues. But this entire discussion so far has unfortunately not made me any less ignorant, and it seems like some of my favorite creators are for some reason talking over each other instead of actually engaging with the nuances of the subject matter, which is disappointing 😕
@@BadEmpanadaLive "Yet the graph goes back to 1820"
BE not realizing you can look into the past but not scry the future as a "historian"
oml, dying of laughter
"He hasn't answered the question, does he think poverty is bad?" I would assume yes
I love you UE but you deserve every comment here lol
@@gregoryjon4346This guy is not very good. See Brandon Lee's "Unlearning Economics Gets Marxism Wrong: A Response (purely about his video on the Labor Theory of Value)."
He is beyond naive in his Thomas Sowell video. He doesn't have the slightest suspicion that Sowell is a propagandist.
He calls central planning "morally reprehensible," and has nothing bad to say about markets (all market economies are capitalist). There's nothing mutually exclusive about markets and central planning. Huge corporations, famously Walmart, use central planning because it's more efficent.
He calls himself a "socialist" even though he has no understanding of what that term means, and is an anti-Marxist.
He's just a liberal.
He crumbles whenever ventures even slightly out of the realm of economics. He is an idealist (in the idealism vs materialism sense).
I don't wish any harm or for him to lose his income but he's just a liberal, sorry buddy.
@@Alan-Classified Dear god, not another "he's a liberal" nonsense spouter. People are allowed to be leftists and be less of a leftist than you are, or disagree on certain things!
@@DrTssha If somebody is in favor of liberal capitalism, they are a liberal, sorry to say. Not as in a curse word, not as in a pejorative, just, objectively fitting the dictionary definition of a liberal - and yes, social democrats are also liberals. That's just what the word means. UE is a liberal.
@@DrTsshaI personally like UE and think he does generally good work, but if you watch his videos and come away thinking that he's anything but a liberal you are completely off of your rocker. He's one of the best examples of "guy with a big brain and a good heart nevertheless remains in the liberal mind prison".
Economists are probably the worst group of people to say anything about human affairs.
I'm not particularly biased towards Empanada, nor you. I've definitely watched more of your vids than his, but on this one I'm sorry to say, you seem to be taking it way to personaly. What I understood is that you basically agree with everything he said but overall disagree and disprove because of... vibes? You can't seriously think that because of his video everyone will now think all stats and every economist lie? He is just encouraging ppl to think critically and maybe fact check when possible.
He's currently fighting against his own indoctrination hahaha..
I think this is just a conflict between lefties having a "cut the crap" tone and calling out dishonesty/lying through omission or fudging numbers when they see it, and UE's more professional cautiousness about calling people liars outright and wanting perfect proof. They're both on roughly the same team, but they have difference instincts/approaches.
Had the same feeling. Why is he taking this so personaly? Bad Empanada can be annoying sometimes, but the points he made were solid.
@@satyasyasatyasya5746 How you wanna proof something when they, capitalists make the statistics who cleary lying for decade now just to stay in power ? When you look at the news "Russia" they tell you "Lose alot of people" "Bad weapon" "Bad everything" they wining right now and when we look in the future and nato stops attacking russia further, what braindead youtuber history will write about the Russia vs Ukraine war? Only the Propaganda what they have see from the news and we see right now they are ALL WRONG!
I found the part where he accuses the video of being conspiratorial regarding the IMF really reaching. Isn't it obvious that institutions that have a vested interest in promoting privatization might have incentives to produce data that shows said privatization to be good? I'm not sure how that's conspiratorial in any way, it's just recognizing the biases inherent to an institution
I thought it was pretty clear that bad empanada was showing how that guy used another set of data as an argument and that his own data proves the point of the original graph, because when you take out the top earners the both sets of data shown basically the same thing.
I think your scrutiny is a little disproportionate towards bad empenada when it comes to the yearly income/hourly wages point as opposed to the person he was criticising. Like the original tweet clearly uses this single graph to "disprove" a point that Regan's policies made wages/income stagnate. All your criticism applies to that tweet just as well if not much more than to bad empenada's point.
You've been rizzed by Baby Gronk
I swear UE has made the same or similar points as BE, yet somehow UE makes this video. Feels weird man
23:40 "I don't think it's particularly helpful to accuse people of lying when there are just so many different ways to slice and and dice this"
Dude you just admitted lying is so easy in economics
No, it's just that data is multifarious and complicated. It's not lying. It's legitimate disagreement about how to interpret the data.
@@APaleDot have you ever heard of questionable research practices, researchers' degrees of freedom, P-hacking and other kinds of biases that run rampant in many fields of science, economics included?
@@rcapt
Well the critique wasn't that the data was collected incorrectly, and p-hacking has to do with statistical significance which also isn't what's being claimed by Darling here.
UE's point is that you can't prove malpractice by simply choosing a different metric and seeing that it doesn't support the argument given. It could easily be argued that BE is the one cherry-picking the data so that it comes out in his favor, but it wouldn't be a good argument against him to say that if you slice the data some other way it comes out against him. Lots of data is like that, the point is to pick a slice that is representative or somehow relevant to the question at hand.
@@rcapt yeah, but who are the people who can determine what is valid and what is not?
it's the same people, because you certainly don't have the expertise to make that assessment out of field.
Average vs median makes a world of difference!
When we are talking about the working class, we are interested in median wages over time, not average total income.
As an example of median vs average:
The median US household net worth is about $150,000
The average US household net worth is almost $1 million!
See the difference?
This. Extreme wealth inequality heavily skews the average upwards. The median is not only an entire order of magnitude smaller, it also tells us that 50% of the population earns _increasingly less_ than that
Lmao did Unlearning Econ suggest otherwise? If so that’s a bad look.
@@chrisperez3614 why would you be confused on whether it happened or not? you watched the video, didn't you?
I actually very much enjoy both your respective channels and videos. However if you are familiar with Bad Empanada he definitely has a sense of humor and tone in his videos. Yet at the same time usually his key statements and videos can be taken at face value. I took his conclusion to be that we should be skeptical of claims economists make and acknowledge that it is a social science. He even said that there are good economists and economic data can be useful. Much respect to both of you.
As a psychology student I know the agony of seeing your entire field under (rightful) attack, but there's acknowledging issues with it while persisting about its potential value, and there's grasping at straws to split like hairs to defend it outright. This video does little but the latter.
The field isn’t under attack my friend, manipulating datasets is.
@@Lioish Hyperbole, I'm aware. I just wish UE wasn't reacting like it's just been owned with facts and logic or whatever.
I disagree completely. In my opinion Bad Empanada's video made claims of data manipulation and intentional falsehoods when this wasn't warranted, and in his demonstration showed how little he understood the tools and methodology used to make said claims. To be frank, his entire thesis comes across as anti-expert (when he says anyone can dismantle this argument, whereas if someone were making this argument against climate change, we'd obviously laugh) and while there's many economists who could could use a good excoriating, he builds his argument on a shaky foundation with clear gaps of knowledge.
I mean, he grasps some of the principles he's using here, but where his argument falls flat is clearly at the line of his own ignorance. He oversimplifies what he doesn't understand, then uses that simplified understanding to accuse them of lying. He gets the basics right, then doesn't get the higher level stuff. No shame if he doesn't understand the higher level stuff (that's why I watch Unlearning Economics, because he spots stuff I wouldn't), but if you're gonna accuse people of lying, you better have a rock solid understanding backed up either by your own expertise, or in consultation with experts. Again, if he was arguing against climate scientists instead of economists, he'd be laughed out of the room. Admittedly, economists are more impeachable here, but this is not how you do it!
@@DrTssha I reckon it's the "intentional falsehood" matter that is the gripe here? It honestly surprises me that we can watch a man with clear ideological bias and a history of arguing for specific policies and economic views presents statistics in a skewed way that makes his ideological framework look better, this by showing data that does not actually address the subject matter but simply makes it seem that way to the casual observer by being tangentially related, and the person folks are upset at is the one demonstrating that checking the actually relevant boxes to the subject matter (on the claimant's own source page) shows something different, and then dares to call this little trick deliberate. Is it really too far to say that a rabid, out and proud neoliberal doing a little bit of box checking magic to make his own position look better by virtue of line going up is, maybe, some form of dishonesty? Conversely, the comment thread here is also ripe with people effectively claiming that the screenshots are doctored or taken outside of their context, which shows that the gripe is less with the method BE ostensibly used to show the little trick done to polish the line, so to speak, and more like it's a matter of them thinking he is the dishonest one, on a personal level, cobbling together his own narrative from disparate threads.
The reason laymen can partake in the material in question is because it is indeed at a level where it can, unlike the intricacies of climate science, actually be grasped by those who simply take the time out of their lives to acquire the necessary basic knowledge to call certain matters into question. For instance, it does not take an economics degree to question the poverty lines set by the World Bank and the discrepancies therein. As mentioned, I myself have a background in psychology, meaning I am a glorified statistician that tries to make numbers work with people, and I can rather easily parse the issue of how the poverty line is clearly inadequate at best. Crucially, it does not take an economics degree to find other economists that are criticizing the numbers therein either, or those in the field who call for the use of other measurements that more represents the material conditions for ordinary people, like BE does plenty in his video. This whole thing seems more and more like certain people with economics degrees are taking personal umbrage with the fact that certain aspects of their field aren't exclusively in their purview, and that certain economists' utilization of certain measurements are portrayed as dishonesty borne from ideological conviction rather than, I guess, these economists simply not being very good at their own field?
Those with a chip on their shoulder would, of course, note that BE wouldn't be arguing against the climate scientists in question given how it's a field of hard science and the consensus there is rather stark - they might even point out that he wouldn't say that literally anyone can debunk climate science, because it is very different from the soft, squishy metrics showcased in his video by economists. Look, when out and proud neoliberals preach the merits of capitalist market economies and applaud when comprador governments are installed in the third world for the purposes of resource extraction while claiming it's for the betterment of the people living there, the issue is less that their educational background might be economists and more their ideological adherence - the former simply allows them to be better at box checking tricks to present their views in a better light.
@@DrTssha I doubt you could even comprehend the response Asrahn made to you. You sure seem like a parasocial goon after that tbh. Mask off, good riddance
You basically agreed with his points while saying you're not sure if he's correct. He's not saying all economists are full of shit, it's just that MANY of the economists that the public is exposed to end up falling into this weird bracket of using economic data to make their political goals; Can this be denied?
He agreed with SOME of his points, and pointed out areas where BadEmpanada's argument fell short. Bad Empanada seemed to get the basics right, but seemed to be reaching in some areas and assuming intent in others. Intentionality bias is a thing, and it's good that Unlearning Economics is aware of that and isn't willing to commit to the idea that economists are lying to advance their own agenda (sure, some probably are, but I'd need proof for any individual accused and Bad Empanada doesn't do that, as Unlearning shows).
Besides, what about the point that the World Bank has abandoned practices that are widely agreed to be ineffective (made near the end of the video)? This implies to me that the World Bank, a bunch of people with liberal biases, tried something they thought would work (because of their ideology), then it didn't, and they changed tactics as soon as that was clear. There, I've laid out an equally plausible non-intentional explanation for the same events.
You have to be wary of intentionality bias, it's pernicious. Never assume intent when it can be equally explained by other means.
Right but they haven’t moved away from structural adjustments, UE was just wrong about that
@@DrTsshabut the world bank didn't just change. They are still giving out billion dollar loans with stipulations that the debtor must change their labour market, make it more "flexible", allow more foreign investment and less state ownership. These loans are still happening right now. So the world bank is in fact intentionally doing these things regardless of consequences for the debtor.
I'm not sure what the point of doing a commentary / reaction video on a video like this if you've not watched it and are going into it with a predisposed attitude.
Like from the start he pretty clearly states that the global poverty line is already adjusted for inflation, but they keep adding to it beyond that. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but you just immediately misunderstand what's being said and follow it up with "does he think poverty is bad?" like that's even the question at hand here? It's very obvious from the start that 'poverty going down' is a good thing, but that the ways people use to argue about quantifying it and the trend can be deceptive.
I find that immediate reaction videos where interjecting into it repeatedly before watching it doesn't really provide much constructive aspects, and so it ends up being for entertainment at most. Especially when it appears to be you coming in with the assumption that he's wrong and then going to justify it as you go - which maybe it's not what you intended, but it's how it comes across. Would be a lot more useful to at least watch the whole video beforehand, see that you actually disagree on specific stuff, and then focus on that in a stream of it.
Yea if he approached it differently than a react lord it probably wouldve gone better. But maybe it would’ve gone exactly the same since BE criticized a friend of UE
Huge Common L Unlearning Economics 😂
Been watching both your and Badempanada's videos for a while now. I have to say, I'm extremely disappointed in this. Many points he's making are verbatim points you've made before. Is it just economist fragility? I don't get it, because I genuinely expect better from you. Seems to me you have some economics to unlearn.
Edit:
Regarding your conclusion - because I can kind of see you weasle out of this by saying "okay, I was too harsh, but I just don't want him to dismiss the whole field of economics as pseudo-science" -, no, I also disagree with this. We can say and you should admit that there isn't one scientific field that is as infested with ideologically driven liars as economics. We should be very skeptical about any of its output, because - disregarding the mistakes that scientists can make in any field - we have to be aware of the possibility of economists consciously trying to manipulate words and statistics to mislead the public. The field of economics' notoriety is of another level than that of other fields of science. You should face that fact.
Self reflection is rare tho. He’s probably just gonna double down
He thinks people dismissing economics are akin to climate change denialism and creationism, forgetting that economics is social science (if even that) and nothing more
Im not holding my breath, but it would be nice for the channel host to self reflect. I bet whats actually going to happen is self victimization tho
He wasn't arguing that there was or wasn't progress. It was clear that he was arguing that a graph for total earning was used to counter an argument for hourly wage (which is deceptive, if that was what was happening.)
Hey do you still think that the IMF earnestly wants to help third world countries and just had the wrong idea about how to do that, rather than using that as a front to force US-dictated economic reforms on them?
Just wondering if you've learned anything from this experience
2:24 "Does he think that poverty is bad?"
I mean, I would assume that everybody would consider poverty a bad thing, but I guess UE disagrees.
@@vanjagalovic3621neoliberals, libertarians, and ancaps: “Allow us to introduce ourselves.”
What is this video? This isn't even leftist infighting, its just a man stumbling over his own words while watching a Bad Empanada video lmao.
I would understand if he was watching some meme video about Yakub, but this is just... weird.
Yea people saying this is a real beef are delusional. UE didnt even make any substantive criticisms other than vibe check
He's coping over the fact that his economics degree is worth less for humanity than toilet paper
Liberals aren't leftists bro.
It says it in the title "Do Economists Lie with Statistics? Commentary on Bad Empanada". You're getting what you're paying for. It's a commentary, not necessary a disagreement or critique.
Alternate title:Unlearning Economics badly tries to disagree with someone he otherwise agrees with.
Cuz he's not evil authoritarian totalitarian tankie commie. He's a friendly wholesome lukewarm LGBT friendly neo keynesian liberal 😂
Does he tho? UE loves to rant about Marxists mainly because he sees them as political zealous that aren't commited to his values. BE, while not claiming that he is a Marxist, uses most parts of Marxist theory UE has a problem with. Especially being in opposition to liberal institutions, which UE libels as conspiratorial as shown here.
Vaguely Yakubian and vaguely economist vs Definitely Yakubian economist
i understand the professional urge for not making bold statements, but BE was very solid here, and UE was mostly splitting hairs and policing the vibes. the conclusion that BE thinks that *all* economists are lying/conspiring is just out of nowhere. BE presents fairly clear cases where the data is manipulated and that's pretty much it.
Its worse actually. UE , in an effort to “own” BE, actually backpedaled on criticisms of capitalism that nearly every leftist is familiar with. And ignored stats and facts to cherry pick for his own argument. I can tell he learned economics on cracker island lmfao
No hair to split though 😂
@@richhornie7000 i'll prob never understand bald men being jealous of men with hair. like it's not a bad look for a man to be bald (imo, bald women also look fine, but many ppl disagree)
Oh come on. If you want to show that AVERAGE people's lives have gotten better, and you intentionally include the incomes from billion dollar investments of rich people in your dataset, you are obviously lying.
Bro the guy he is defending from this critique is his friend
He’s not interested in the truth he’s interested in creating a convincing narrative.
Not to dog pile on you, UE but .. Cringe
This stream was out of touch and malicious
GDP is of relevance today, because it is an indicator of the wealth of capitalists - so capitalists care about it and consider it the most important metric
its pretty much irellevant for the working class... but i guess its a bit of an indicator of how much you are being exploited?
And the true reason why GDP growth is so important is because the modern economy is built on debt, so countries need to keep growing faster than the rate of compound debt growth.
"GDP as a proxy of living standards" is just a convenient excuse used to justify the pursuit of continued growth, ignoring that in reality there are several other factors involved in improved living standards.
GDP is important for international relationships. Also if you are poor in a high GDP country it literally means you are being exploited by your countrymen
As a professional economist, I think that all of Bad Empanada's points were valid and argued well enough. You seem to be missing the point whenever you express disagreement. By the way, highlighting an increase in disposable income in the US where there was a concurrent rise in constrained private sector expenses for things (education, healthcare, housing, filing taxes, etc.) that in other western countries are financed at least in part by taxes is highly misleading, and an argument typically presented by advocates of free market capitalism.
I think you're making the same mistake as BadEmpanada though, and assuming ill intent. This was covered during a live stream, watched live, and there seemed to be bits that Unlearning Economics misunderstood honestly. I think this can be chalked up to the live format and not having the time to go in depth here. Errors are understandable, in that light.
The criticism is fair, but I also think BadEmpanada overplayed his hand. He's accusing others of lying when they could simply be making understandable errors in the face of their biases. Not to mention we have no context for the tweet that was being critiqued, that limits UE's ability to respond somewhat.
@@DrTssha UE decided to upload this video and his response is ridiculous he deserves all this
@@DrTssha That’s just cope. The live format doesn’t magically make someone suspend their supposed expertise if its a topic they are supposed to be an authority on.
If i was a professional economist and couldn’t successfully critique an amateur like BE, i wouldnt be showing my face so proudly on the internet anymore lol. Embarrassing
@@DrTsshahonest mistake such as pulling GDP numbers of ancient economies out of their asses 😂
I love unlearning economics but this is sad
you are way too nice to economists, some (me) might say naive and misguided.
Yep. What BE was essentially alluding to is the unfortunate reality that economists are often used to justify neoliberal policies to legitimise the interests of the capitalists, similar to how priests in the medieval times were used to legitimise the divine rule of kings.
Economics is a soft rather than hard science, meaning it has no truly immutable laws like physics, yet people often seem to act like it does.
Agreed
@@GTAVictor9128 What's funny is that Unlearning Economics has made the same point (more or less) in numerous videos, only with expertise in the field. I dare say, maybe unlearning this kind of attitude is the goal of the entire channel...like unlearning an uncritical reverence for economics.
Nah, it couldn't be as simple as being in the name of the channel...could it?
@@DrTssha You yourself made a false equivalence between climate science and economics to me in another comment under this video. Quote:
" . . . his entire thesis comes across as anti-expert (when he says anyone can dismantle this argument, whereas if someone were making this argument against climate change, we'd obviously laugh) . . . "
You should take your own advice.
This is a really pathetic critique.
so, wait
6:45
your argument, then, is that china's standards of living (take your pick of them) were superior prior to the Great Leap Forward / Cultural Revolution?
like... what is one famine - and fair to condemn that - against a state in perpetual famine all of the time? and how exactly do you propose that one achieves what China has now without something like The Great Leap Forward? they didn't have a wealthy benefactor like South Korea, nor did they have an abundance of wealth and land to simply steal like we did in the Americas
we love to criticize The Great Leap Forward while remaining silent on the matter of how it might compare against something like Manifest Destiny, or how you'd lift a country the size of China out of subsistence agriculture with no associated costs / externalities
You can increase the standard of living without agrarian collectivization policies (which have literally never actually increased production) that kill millions of people. This is like if I hit myself in the face with a hammer, and then afterwards I properly hit the nail, someone laughs and goes, "wow, hitting yourself in the face with a hammer was really dumb and counterproductive." and then you come along and go, "oh, oh, are you arguing that the nail didn't hit? Sure, maaaaybe hitting himself in the face with the hammer wasn't the best decision, but the nail eventually got hit, so obviously hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is a necessary process of hammering in a nail"
Nobody mentions that under Mao, life expectancy *DOUBLED* , population size *DOUBLED* and in 1976, the conditions were such to fully exploit the demographic dividend that economists today claim India has (LOL).
@@nickwilson7241LMAO thanks for your debunked Black Book of Communism figures.
The reality is that the population under Mao went from 400m to 800m and life expectancy more than doubled.
@@nickwilson7241"that kill millions of people"
[citation needed]
What a dishonest analogy, that could only come from the mind of a liberal. Why don't you try to count the history of famines of Russia BEFORE and AFTER the Soviet Union, for example, before you come up with such pathetic analogies?
@@MikaelLima2210 the agricultural collectivization plan of the great leap forward inarguably killed millions of people. That's not a disputable fact. Nobody has ever made the argument that famines didn't happen in China or Russia prior to collectivization. The argument (which you have clumsily attempted to sidestep) is that the process taken to industrialize was bad and unnecessarily led to millions of deaths as a result of bad policy. Lots of places managed to industrialize and prevent future famines without causing millions of starvation deaths in the process
Hi, UE, do you think there should be more focus on the material state of the (natural) world when it comes to stats and economics like this?
As in, what good is line goes up when 'fresh water, good soil, air quality, insect population, climate stuff etc." line goes down?
Definitely, this is something that the present system we live under seems to place no priority on at all whatsoever, when it should be at the *top* of the priority list!
Why would an economist care about that?
@@Asrahn they don't, but they should.
something something infinite growth on a finite planet something something
yeah that sounds like a good idea, if only there was an economic tradition that focused primarily on the material conditions that a society finds itself in and how that constrains and conditions what's possible for that society, and how those conditions change accross history as the society develops in a sort of mutually interdependent relationship, like some sort of _dialectical materialism_
if only
Isn't that environmental economics
I've gotta be honest, this responding in real time to the video was just not at all what was required. I get you've got limited time and it's good for clicks, but watch it once, get your thoughts reasonably clear then respond.
The hourly wages stagnation chart for the US that he's referring to is SUPER well known, it's been everywhere online for years (yes, he should have shown it). Very strange that you talked around in circles giving the guy you know the benefit of the doubt.
The graph in question is almost certainly the hourly compensation vs productivity and can be found on the AFL-CIO website and states:
"Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution."
The original chart was indeed looking at a section of wage earners excluding a top proportion. There's no justification for the guy Bad Empanada is critiquing for adding back in the highest earners and and all their sources of income to skew the results.
Not even conservatives would gaslight themselves into believing that their standard of living has been constantly increasing in the last few decades. Graduating with honors on economics degree just mean you've been brainwshed completely and successfully.
I think the biggest problem here is that we don't need to say "Twitter, now known as x" - just call it Twitter.
Xitter
The stats themselves may not be a lie but the attribution of the improvement to capitalist policy typically is, in my experience. Life is getting better despite privatization, contrary to the spirit of these graphs and reports.
I think the point of the video was to dissect some of the arguments made by BE, not to definitively prove or disprove anything. Having a discussion about the validity of different arguments is extremely productive and valuable. We shouldn't just degrade the discussion to personnel attacks based on what opinions we hold our self.
What personal attacks? I havent seen anyone make fun of UE’s appearance, just his conduct and statements. Criticizing someones public conduct and statement are not personal attacks and its actually very disturbing to suggest that they are.
@@ultravioletiris6241 personal attacks go beyond appearance, what a stupid person (this is a personal attack)
GDP per capita is considered a useless metric before capitalism even in mainstream economics. Even if we had access to good data from the past, then mainstream economists, according to the Malthusian hypothesis, think that any rise in household wealth (numerator of GDP per capita) would cause a rise in offspring - and subsequently the population (denominator of GDP per capita) - enough to offset the rise in wealth. GDP on the other hand could be a kind of useful metric, but of course the data quality problems make it useless too.
Short answer
Yes
Long Answer
Of course
Lmao
Hold the L. RIP
24:42 Yeah sure disposable income increased but that's hardly a sign of an increase in purchasing power or living standards, if asset inflation outpaced disposible income, (like it has done) then is your buying power more? Probably not, I think it's an irrefutable fact that the slice of the pie the median worker recieves is diminishing and has been diminishing rapidly since the 70-80's, people may have more money, better living standards and a better quality of life but they are recieving less of their production and asset prices have skyrocketed, this is evident by rapidly rising inequality and house prices for example.
Economists shouldn't just look at the physical situation for median workers and people, they should look at the amount of output capital they revieve per labour hour, etc.
Indeed, and this is not even factoring in the massive glaring matter of private debt that is skyrocketing across the board, something economists seem to want to pretend does not even exist as a matter.
@@Asrahn Yep, most economists are so deluded from actual reality, it's insane. They stick to their fundamentally flawed models and analysis and wonder why the general populace is telling them the economy is shit. Their whole education is focussed on maximizing profits for the top 1%, they think that's what makes a good economy.
This is a very good point, but that data wasn't looked at during the stream. Worth following up on though, that's for sure, I hope your comment gets a look-at by UE.
@@DrTssha It wont lol
24:20 How tf would you even measure disposable income?? Is that the money I don't spend? That's hardly disposable if it's savings or put aside. Is it money I spend on leisure or entertainment? That seems like a BS metric to me.
30:00 Also, it's kinda incredible you basically just said, more GDP more gooder. GDP might be at the highest point ever, yes and? That doesn't help me at all. My quality of life isn't better just because GDP went up. That just means more stuff moved around. What he said is not extreme at all. You keep saying he sounds "conspiratiorial". What is that even supposed to mean? Conspiracies happen all the time. Is thinking someone might be lying a conspiracy theory? People lie all the time.
"There is no right decision" Yes, it just depends on you bias. People who prioritize stuff like Income are biased towards "rich" people. I'm biased towards the working class so i find wage the correct choice. If you claim to represend the interest of the "poor" (read working class) and use metrics like income you are just plainly wrong.
Disposable income = net income - taxes
discretionary income = disposable income - necessary expenses
@@gregoryjon4346 Interesting, so disposable income doesn't include expenses? Makes the name a bit misleading. It sounds like it's money that can be spent after everything else has been taken care of. "Necessary expenses" also sounds like something unmeasurable.
@@Mattia_98 it's the amount of money you have left over after you've paid your necessary expenses. This can include (but is not limited to) power, utilities, rent, food, transportation costs, and other basic living expenses. Whatever's left over (that isn't claimed by debt servicing or other claims on your income) is your disposable income. This can go to savings, eating out at a restaurant, buying video games, etc.
Are you trying to tell me that Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan eating poop on the street for 100 dollars each isn't good for the economy? That's insane 😂
The biggest and fastest improvements in living conditions in human history were China under Mao, USSR under Lenin/Stalin, and China under Xi. China and the countries in the USSR were all significantly worse off before their communist revolutions. The life expectancy in China before Mao was less than 35, and Russia before Lenin was 32. Every brainwashed westerner loves to talk about how evil Stalin and Mao were but they never mention how much worse the living conditions were in the countries before. People only compare them to the imperial west which built its wealth off the backs of mass slavery, genocide, land theft and colonialism. The Xi Jinping era brought about further improvements in living conditions with the poverty alleviation program that lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty, but Mao made huge improvements to China as well. Without the communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China would be no different than India at the moment.
I'm searching really hard, but just can't find someone who asked
@@Benar115i am trying really hard to not come inside ur mother again
@@Benar115 Haha they got yah
Edit: lame they removed it
With all respect but...
SOURCE!?!
Like I'm a communist, ngl. And I pretty much knew about very much important impact of October Revolution on living standards in USSR, and Mao's reign + plus great impact of Cultural Revolution in the field of education of common folk in the countryside.
Just curious.
I think the bigger problem was pointedly illustrated by that combined graph on the poverty tracking site. Top-earner income increased MASSIVELY faster than bottom-earner income. Which compounds on itself. GDP obviously grew with technological innovation, growing workforce population and ENERGY BUDGET! Everyone forgets the energy budget of our planet; it's a perfectly correlated line with global GDP growth.
LMAO BE >>>>>> UE
Thoughtless reply
@@DrTssha I do wish your own comments showed some indication of sentience
4:00 No, this is just horrible. Practices of academia shouldn't be confined to academia. If they set something called the "poverty line" - its definition being "the income under which people are considered to be in poverty, and above which not in poverty" - then that should instruct where the poverty line should be set. I don't think the language of academia should be completely disconnected from everyday language. Sometimes sciences come up with new concepts which can be given confusing names like "gravity field" which has nothing to do with fields whatsoever, but the "poverty line" is quite clearly referring to that thing that everyone thinks of when they hear "poverty", and it is explicitly claiming to do so.
2:25 - Yeah, poverty is bad but what BE is saying here it's the international poverty line is an understimation of a real international poverty line.
6:54 - The point of BE here is the decline starts at the greatest height of the Soviet Union and the victory of a marxist-leninist revolution in CHina. After that it is still declining in the graph even before the fall of the Soviet Union and the neoliberal reforms of Deng Xiaoping.
one thing on those income graphs... even the available settings obfuscate some interesting information... like: what is the lower and upper bound on the segment in question?
like - you look at the bottom 50% and on average their income has gone up a bit - is that because things have improved for everyone, or because a gap in between extremes has widened upwards?
because what that line being an average means is that a LOT of people will be below that line by possibly a big margin... and bottom 50% is a large chunk of the population - a distribution within that group might be interesting as well
24:32 This might be, but it's still extremely misleading - borderline lying - to show a graph where number goes up from 45k to 90k, when for majority of people the real numbers are 17k to 25k. And now we're comparing apples and oranges again, because I don't know if the rise of disposable wages isn't steeper too for the top 10%.
Edit:
Yes, the disposable income of the top 10% tripled and grew hard during the Reagan era, so the total graph is still gonna be misleading by any standard.
im not satisfied with your poor handling of this response. you really misinterpreted his points
When you agree with everything a dude says but you gotta disagree on principle. Never let anyone tell you those econ bros ain’t got spines. Brother is standing on business here.
He’s a real economist all right! Real economists got other economists back no matter what
Like your stuff. Like his stuff. You do seem to be splitting hairs here.
8:50
i may be wrong but there is no link between structural adjustment in the original video. i believe he was pointing out the fact that the world bank might have been ideologically motivated by using structural reform as an example. even if they abandoned structural reform, there's still evidence that points to the fact that the world bank is pro-neoliberal. good critique, but i disagree on this part.
Yeah, but that can be explained by the fact that those who go into finance are more likely to have liberal to neo-liberal biases. That falls short of the accusation of lying or intentionally upholding unequal structures of power. It's very possible they just believe this will make the world a better place. If their goal was otherwise, they wouldn't have abandoned structural reform. It's an indication that they're constantly trying to do better, and have a less accurate framework to view the problem with than people on the left, a far cry from the lying that BadEmpanada accuses them of doing.
@@DrTsshathey still do structural adjustments they only just changed it’s name because it’s gotten too noticed.
Make a conversation with BadEmpanada :3.
I'd normally agree, but I've seen these conversations go badly before and it's always BadEmpanada's fault. The guy just won't listen to anyone who disagrees with him, and his engagement style comes across as childish.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and he and Unlearning Economics could have a reasonable discussion. His own reply to this video belies this point, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong. I'd like to think better of the man.
He won't, because he has no actual rebuttals for BE's arguments (which mostlyvmirror his own arguments from early videos). It's mostly vibe policing and tribalism.
@@DrTssha After all the comments ive read from you its funny that you even try to act impartial , or like you are less parasocial than BE fans lmfao
Nah UE doesn’t respect him, which is why he didn’t even bring real effortful arguments. UE thinks his view is automatically superior without having to actually do due diligence in justifying it
19:42 - I mean, yes, it is, but the point was to show how real wages has been in stagnation, so more women in the workforce it's just more people with real wages that will be in stagnation. All of this to debuk the claim of the neoclassical liberal that was saying during Reagan's presidency real wages went up. It's a bit weird having Unlearning Economics not getting to the point here, maybe he was tired? I mean, he's a human after all that was doing a livestream with raw thoughts instead of making one of his videos, but it's reckless, though.
22:56 - Yeah, that's the Unlearning Economics I love. Pretty interesting.
So for example, Javier Milei is supposedly an economist, I don't know, I'm not an economist, but I would bet that what he is doing will mean years of poverty for the masses, specially we will see a generation absolutely hurt by this politics, I mean, right now we are in winter, and since the start of this government the people have been protesting and struggling because there was a Ministery in charge of distributing a part of the food to millions of people, and this economist presided government, chose to just let tons of food rot... you know what? this people love thatcher...
And you are criticizing this as a defense for economists but I wonder how many in twitter have any consideration of how many millions of people are suffering, in palestine, ukraine, kenya, Africa, middle east and the world, while you claim don't attack my poverty statistics in which my profession are based which are clearly biased. But yeah maybe it's not just economists the issue, but you should admit your professions is being slaughtered in twitter and used to spread dissinformation and just bullshit, like javier milei... is javier milei a US puppet or is he just throwing "austerity measures" theories to keep the population "under control" with hunger, fear, crime, and poverty? While Argentina keeps getting the narrative that their are not a credit worth nation but their only saviors are the IMF and the investors that won't invest ever in here, until they destroy every stone left of the constitutional powers and the Argentinian sovereignty to completely take over... and maybe slave the rest of us of just keep us, the eternally exploited youth, in absolute poverty...
The Global poverty line doesn't represent the thousands or millions of kids getting mutilated and losing their whole family, and countries in some cases, absolutely abused by the capitalist system, from the extreme of the kid living on palestine to the kid being grown on the streets of some other nations capital... I wonder which economist cares to register infant poverty and can say their statistics have global accuracy...
I would bet 90% of graduated economists are biased and have no notion at all of what poverty is causing to the majority of the world and they are clearly underrepresented by your most basic economics...
26:56 - So, basically Unlearning Economics agrees with Bad Empanada and there's no beef here, just UE commenting on the video to check out. Nice.
1:40 - It's suspicious because they still update it even though it's already adjusted by inflation. That was BadEmpanada said.
I worked for a while for the UN creating metrics like this. There's always criticisms of metrics, and it is possible to address them. But things get complicated really quickly, and that adds its own risk of researcher bias and reducing transparency. ESPECIALLY for advocacy and public debate, I think it's actually better to use a metric like the poverty line because it's so simple that the flaws basically don't need to be explained.
Economics as currently practiced in the west is pseudoscience. Economics could be as useful as other social sciences, but there’s too many institutional biases for that too happen. You need to work a little harder on Unlearning Econ.
Someone watched the badampenada response
Maybe it's time to just listen to Korean, Chinese, and Japanese economists instead of Western economists whose policies have kept Latin America in debt and poverty.
“I’m not mad. I’m Actually Laughing.”
UE if you dont have anything interesting things to say why did you even uploaded this video? Boring
Adsense. Greed is good bro. That's the thing that have eradicated poverty after all according to economists. UE just doing good for the world 😂
Economists do be lyin'
24:13 Do you, as economists, should ignore a short timeframe impact event such as pandemic furloughs?
I really don't think zooming in on the graph does it any favours. If there is a trend there, and the variation makes it hard to tell, its a very weak one, and when we pull out we can compare it to how things could be if there was a more equitable distribution.
So is it inaccurate to say that the bottom 50% made no gains? Maybe technically if we strictly compare end points for last year, but in terms of deciding on policy it seems what we have been doing is failure for that demographic (and I have to be careful not to call it a total failure because that's unfair since it could be worse!).
Women going into the workforce is good. The fact that we can only make more by working more (when society is more productive) is not. The fact that we can only say we are better off if we include tax credits also isn't great because the budget still matters. So every gain has a cost, and if a neoliberal's costs are not born at all by the rich I don't care if they are nice or trying their best. Taking a microscope to a graph to show the gains is not what I want for people. I don't think they can really appreciate that when we could be doing better.
I still liked the video because its good to hear the nuance.
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see a take on this when UE has had time to do more research and think on things, as well as take into account valid criticisms. This unfortunately is the downside of live content production, there's just no time for in-depth research and it's always gonna be surface reads. Granted, UE dove deeper into this than I expected, but this is definitely a topic that could be explored better with more in-depth research.
@@DrTssha UE isnt going to dive deeper on this topic lol. He got spanked and hes not going to admit this
tricknology! tricknology..... nology.... come on ! drama's bad !
Why are you trusting the institutions that gather this statistics so faithfully is the question... if the reason is that it's the only available data source maybe you should consider that that's a fact, and maybe this institutions are the source for propaganda... I don't know maybe you should check more often how this statistics graphs are manipulated often choosing very arbitrary starting years to represent this data...
i'm so sorry for this, but in the thumbnail UE is giving "economics daddy is mad at you and lookin' down" energy and I'm... beyond here for it 😂😉😊☺🤭🤫
Very British thumbnail
@@OGAshton haha I guess I'm just a sucker for "vaguely mad guy staring down at me" xD
although, UE did get me a long time ago when I discovered him with his voice/accent too, so there's that, so yeh, Britishness helps haha
I'm... oversharing... 🤐😅
Late stage empire cope.
@@PutXi_Whipped Thoughtless commenter.
@@DrTssha I wish that you would make some thoughtful comments yourself , tbh. Instead all i see is pure glazing
"Economists lie with statistics" actually motte and bailey. Worst cases of economics fans using misleading statistics are fully incapable of disproving any particular statistical argument made by economists.
Economics are important to understand our global community including the gay community. I know this because i am gay.
💀
You are not gay but you are a goofy troll
why are these comments so full of people who think this is meant to be some full critique? It's just a live commentary adding some further information/understanding from an actual economist, why are y'all talking abt this like it's some sort of clash/beef?
Because BadEmpanada fans are used to beefs (he does have rather a lot of them), so that's the lens they view this entire discussion through. There's a few who have valid critiques, but again, this is a live format, not a fully researched video! The critiques are valid, but the sass isn't warranted!
Asking if the guy you’re reacting to likes poverty and saying that distrusting the motives of the wto and imf are obviously ridiculous. This isn’t worth anything.
@@DrTssha no need to be self righteous. You arent better than other people because you decline to be sassy. Being sassy isn’t inherently disrespectful, and most people here are responding to tangible things that UE said that dont make sense.
I actually think that dismissing people and generalizing them as “all seeing this whole thing through the lens of a beef” is much worse than simply being sassy. I’d rather be around people who are sassy than around people who deny basic human agency to those they disagree with
Because no matter how you look at the video UE comes off as a moron. I mean, "he has said the poverty is bad I guess" cannot be interpreted in good faith.
Simple minds require an us vs them narrative
All the butthurt BE fanboys in the comments are so funny. UEs not even really disagreeing, but you're all acting like he's is trying to start a beef.
Sad cope
This still sucks 3 weeks later lol
The short answer is yes. I'm not sure what BE is going to say and I'm not sure i care. He's extremely insane.
However, once you understand economics and how things function it becomes quite clear that kost economists that exist to create headlines that back up the status quo are paid to obfuscate using statistics.
The classic one is to say "GDP is up" as some kind of measure on if the average working person is doing well. Yet it will be used to kake this point time and again in major publications.
There are many more examples of this. But GDP is the most obvious and frequently used
Uses "based" and "centrist" togheter and thinks he can cal someone "insane". Hillarious.
You could have just said " short answer BE is right" instead of all this
I'm not all that plugged into the left sphere drama and I see people saying this about BE all the time. Why is he insane? As far as I've seen, he's made some good videos, probably one of the best researched videos in the so called "breadtube"
@@manchesterunited9576 You have to resort to name calling when you can’t make real arguments
@@manchesterunited9576 he thinks socialism is a viable mode of economics, he has massive sociopathic tendancies. Constantly cries fascist at everything while unironically being one of the most authoritarian personalities on the platform. I could go on
I agree with you that he was a little to harsh. In my experience, though, all discussions about wages and income are obfuscated by the use of such graphs. It would have been nice if BE would have given more information on wages vs income . Instead he did the same thing he's condemning, "I'm right and he's wrong".
I think the point of using hourly wages or income after taxes and trasfer for the median vs total is that with total you mask the increase in enequality
It's nothing to do with inequality it's to do with comparing compensation for time worked directly with compensation for worked rather than something entirely different.
The intro makes allot of precautions about not being a hit piece, so here's to hoping Bad Empanada won't try to dox you.
Have you had a look on what's in the basket on which inflation is calculated?
UE is such a dishonest grifter
Wtf?!
26:40 he does that a lot.
Bad Empanada is capable of making good videos, but he has no restraint and that hurts the points he is trying to make, your criticism was very balanced.
BE did have two channels. The #1 channel was for long firm videos and was scripted and full of citations. It was extremely good yet it's difficult to make a living from it. The other channel/s were about internet drama and obviously paid the bills. Best to avoid those and concentrate and support his good body of work
@@jeffbain6817 Tbh if he correctly criticizes a poor takedown made by a self proclaimed economist, thats not drama. I dont think it’s helpful to act like this is mere drama. It’s actually very elucidating of how economics fits into UE’s worldview and what psychological triggers he has around the topic
I used to watch a lot of BadEmpanada bc he's fairly entertaining and in this video his broader point of "laypeople should be skeptical of economics graphs" is spot on. That being said, he has a few things working against him: He's an anti-USA campist as a first principle (don't get me wrong, their government is *very* bad in a *lot* of ways, both historically and presently, but he operates from the assumption that the USA is *always* in the wrong, no matter the situation); he also regularly uses the same dishonest representation of the facts that *he* teaches other people to look out for.
You clearly never watched badempenada’s content he is fearly nuanced like his new vidéo on venezuela where he clearly criticize maduro. He made many video criticizing anti us campism, like « anti american is not an ideology ». I agree with you tho that he’s insane on Twitter and social media.
“Used to watch a lot of BadEmpanada” I guess you supposedly missed the ‘Anti-Americanism’ video.
Im curious if you have an example of the USA being “right”? Where exactly should BE be giving credit to the USA?
@@ultravioletiris6241
1. Fighting Serbia to prevent the genocide of Kosovars.
2. Ending Sadam's genocide of the Kurds.
3. Supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend themselves from the Russian invasion.
@@justinpritchard4508 Yea youre right, those bring the 150+ invasions and 50+ regime changes since wwii into better context
From what I've seen, badempanada tends to respond to critique with anger and contempt. He seems to always assume that anyone who questions him does so in bad faith. I stopped watching his videos because of it, even though I mostly agreed with his arguments. I hope he takes this critique as an opportunity to expand the dialogue. We'll see.
Do you think asking if BE likes poverty is good faith critique?
He just did a response video, pretty funny one at that
Answer the first commenters question. Is it?
lib vs lib in-fighting
"Everyones a Capitalist besides me"
@@aturchomicz821 i too remember when i said that
Lib? Only one of them is a lib
@@ultravioletiris6241 idk much about UE aside from his poor conception of marx, but I do know of BE's selective antiimperialism, electoralism and moralism. I'll admit though, BE is funny as hell and transparent with the fact that his relationship with his audience is inherently manipulative. UE seems boring as hell and not super clever either
@@ivan_ivankovichNeither of rhem is a lib. Not being "leftist" enough in whatever definition you're using in your head,. doesn't automatically translate to liberalism.
inb4 BE and his million sock puppets and endless cascade of malding at any criticisms.
??????????????
@@Mattia_98 ¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!
Maybe it’s actually hack economists who are malding. Maybe thats a good thing
Bad Empanada is a perfect example of someone who can be like 80% correct about the facts of any topic he covers, and then construct an argument which is completely insane by extrapolating beyond the stuff he's actually correct about
the dr umar of white marxism
The perfect summation. This comment should be higher up the page.
Can you give any examples?
@@communist754 Nah. They think its insane that economists could use stats to lie , clearly their threshold for determining if an argument is insane or not is sketch at best.
What argument was completely insane?
You tell him homie!
Most economically literate tankie ever seen.
The entry of women in the workforce absolutely was not a good thing. Unless you think depressed wages, sub-replacement fertility rates and over-worked population are good things, that is.
Bad wages and over-work could (and did) happen without women in the workforce. The good aspects are obviously what concern gender equality, allowing women to not be subjugated to men as much as before, for example.
@@00Platypus00 yes, but: the two income household is a terrible standard. 40 hours in total for a household should have been the goal, not "everyone works, always"
@@00Platypus00except they still are
The problem is that work is coercive under our current system
Our system is also built on hierarchy, patriarchy being one of them
So sure, women are more equal in being in exploited, while being more "free" to escape exploitation
I'd say its overall good
But that incrementalist mindset really ignores the real problems
Another way to have looked at it would've been women should not have been forced to join the workforce so that hopefully men could've been freed from this coercion
And instead women could've been freed from patriarchy by being given guaranteed income
That would've actually done some good and progress
@@thomaswikstrand8397 What the goal should be is something completely different... As far as I am concerned we should minimize how much everyone works while we provide everyone's needs, including to those who are incapable of working. And we surely should question and reconsider how we organize society with arbitrary nuclear families without cooperation for things like child and elderly care. But that is beyond the point - denying that there has been positive aspects of women being allowed to join the workforce is shortsighted, especially in misogynistic societies.
@@Goofy8907 I never implied it is a thing of the past :)
I agree that our system is bad, mate. My point is that there were material improvements in the lives of many women due to that - and sure, there are the bad things about being exploited for work (which women have endured before that with unpaid house work).
A win in equality between genders is not necessarily a win with regards to class and exploitation, you are completely correct. I simply opposed the class reductionist view of things... there are other aspects to be considered.
new york cheaper than adelaide ! homes cheaper in usa taxes low compared to australia
What are you even trying to say here?
$11000 to rego a truck & $1800 to rego a ute in australia now because of socialist labor carbon tax 10%
The carbon tax is gone and have been for a decade now that's not what controls rego' prices.
@@Tasmantor Canberra (maybe some states?) has now introduced carbon-emissions based registration, but those numbers are a long way from accurate. Canberra's system is based on the idea of discounting for low emissions vehicles, not charging more for ICE vehicles. A Ford Ranger costs the same to rego now as it did under the old system.
"socialist labor" probably talking about some other party
@@stuartp2006 He's just looking for straw men otherwise he'll have to admit that capitalism is wrong and that he's been cheated his whole life.
@@Tasmantor it not left liar you obvously brainwashed
high alchoal & smoking tax keeps people in poverty Australia ! claymore a suburb in south west sydney home ownrership 10% it very bad area everyone smokes & drinks alot why the alway in poverty
Not true - I don't smoke and rarely drink and I'm poor
it's the price of ice cream and tolls
@@jake______ you still drink so you still paying 75% excise tax on local beer
@@jake______ 10% gst ' 10% carbon tax on ute & truck ' 50% fuel excise adding to transport costs from port or local beer brewer
@@coopsnz1 there is no carbon tax in Australia, prices aren't up because of a tax that hasn't existed for a decade and Australian alcohol taxes aren't a stand out globally so that's not what makes that expensive. Cigarettes and tobacco products are taxed very highly here with the end goal of reducing use and it has worked very well so too bad, don't smoke.
If the transport is what's making the beer expensive then why are so many imported beer cheaper than locally brewed ones?
Fuel excise is 46c/litre, it's not even a percentage, mate.