AP Macro?

[Redistribute the Rep]

Has anybody taken this class? The book is just awfully biased. I'm disappointed because I've taken many other aps and they just aren't like this... The history ones seem to have a lot of nuance and for the most part are objective but macroeconomics is just incredibly simplistic and doesn't even seem to try to hide its bias. If you haven't taken this class, let me summarize chapter 2 for you:

Communism doesn't work because North Korea.
Capitalism = freedom to choose
Socialism = command economy, gov controls everything
All former command economies have either moved to free market or are in the process of doing so because it works.
There's no incentives in command economies
There's no innovation in command economies
Only laissez faire is pure capitalism

Literally, the book just takes common cliches and misconceptions and doesn't even put it in an eloquent way, it just vomits out things like "business owners advance technology for the good of society as a whole" everywhere. The thing is, the guy who teaches it seems really cool, he also teaches sociology and has a huge poster of Karl Marx. I suspect he may be a leftist because he says sarcastic things like keeping "the masses" from having political power in a joking way. Which is not at all the way our text phrases things, it talks about how capitalism is great for everyone because the consumers have all the power with their 'dollar votes' (I shit you not it uses that term). Also, for our lesson that corresponds with that chapter he just left out all the bullshit, which meant it was only like a 10 minute lesson that only focused on a couple really specific things because almost all of that chapter was bullshit, so I suspect he may have deliberately left it out. Anyway, I'm afraid to question the book publicly because I don't want to be seen as some crazy conspiracy theorist who things the whole education system is against us, because textbooks seem to be pretty trusted here. I myself respected the College Board before this atrocity. Literally I think my IQ drops as I read this book. Anyway, my questions for you:

Have you taken this class and what do you think? Will I actually learn anything useful at some point?

If you don't live in America and aren't familiar with the AP, how do the schools in your area teach economics? Is it the same capitalism = freedom socialism = gov control like here? Or is that exclusive to america?

[Tim Cornelis]

nvm

Schools and colleges, that I've been to, don't teach about socialism at all (in introductory courses). It teaches the neoclassical synthesis, nothing more. Wikipedia says " Study begins with fundamental economic concepts such as scarcity, opportunity costs, production possibilities, specialization, comparative advantage, demand, supply, and price determination." High school economics and bachelor applied science classes teach that, but not 'socialism vs. capitalism'.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Yea it taught that stuff in the first chapter and I didn't think it was that bad but the next chapter was all bs

[Tim Cornelis]

Ideologies were more dealt with in history classes, civics classes, and in college political science classes. And incidentally my college political science book was terrible though. The amount of contradictions in one paragraph, just staggering.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Care to elaborate on your poly sci book? I'm interested to hear how other countries compare to america in this regard

[Tim Cornelis]

Well this was from a Flamish political science book we used.

(Politiek. Een inleiding in de politieke wetenschappen door Kris Deschouwer en Marc Hooghe)

The whole paragraph:
"Socialism
Socialism developed from Marxism, but differs from it fundamentally. According to Marx the capitalist society was doomed to fail, and this economic order would, sooner or later, collapse. Only after this revolution can a socialist state be created wherein the means of production are no longer in the hands of private entrepreneurs, but property of the working population itself, of the proletarians. Characterising is, with Marx, that this development is portrayed as an economic regularity: capitalism will collapse due to its own contradictions, and the only possibly outcome is the establishment of a classless society. In a certain sense it's not even necessary to strive for this: the final conclusion is predetermined, the only thing political activism can change is slowing down or accelerating this evolution."

I'm sure I don't need to dissect it, but I'm gonna anyway:

"Socialism developed from Marxism, but differs from it fundamentally."
Then why did Engels and Marx refer to their political movement as socialist? And why do Marxists call themselves socialist then? But okay.

"According to Marx the capitalist society was doomed to fail, and this economic order would, sooner or later, collapse."
Well, this is highly debatable. It portrays historical materialism a tat too mechanical and determinist.

"Only after this revolution"
What revolution? They just said it would collapse, not abolished.

"can a socialist state"
Socialist state? Of course Marx never said anything of the kind. But moreover, in the first sentence the authors said socialism differs fundamentally from Marxism, now they're saying Marxism wants to establish a socialist state.

"be created wherein the means of production are no longer in the hands of private entrepreneurs, but property of the working population itself, of the proletarians."
Then they wouldn't be proletarians now would they? Proletarians are dispossessed. Of course, proletarians self-abolish and emancipate and wouldn't exist.

"Characterising is, with Marx, that this development is portrayed as an economic regularity: capitalism will collapse due to its own contradictions, and the only possibly outcome is the establishment of a classless society. In a certain sense it's not even necessary to strive for this: the final conclusion is predetermined, the only thing political activism can change is slowing down or accelerating this evolution."
Right..... Something about history being a history of class struggle.
Also, evolution?

[Redistribute the Rep]

Dude that's NOTHING compared to what we have to endure in America. If you think that's bad you have no idea. Even though it's wrong I would find it pretty refreshing to read that paragraph after the atrocity that is my macroeconomics textbook

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The second and third year macro modules I took at uni weren't quite so ideologically charged in the main. They just mainly didn't have any consideration of alternative economic theories to the neo-classical model of supply & demand, competition & technology to enhance efficiency etc. They don't really make any mention of equity, which is weird because in all the heterodox economics classes I took, the two main considerations for economic policy were always efficiency and equity alongside each other.

In one third year module, though, we had a professor who took the lectures, wrote and marked the paper. The main reading for the class was her economics paper from the late 1990s which posited (and 'solved', mathematically[!]) a theory that showed that for a given set of conditions, left-wing governments always have lower growth, higher taxes, higher government spending and higher inflation than right-wing governments. Talk about a conundrum when answering that exam paper. Annoyingly i'm not good enough at maths to have taken her paper apart so I had to re-gurgitate her bullshit in the final exam to get a decent mark. 3 hours of absolute waste of life, that exam.

[L.A.P.]

Double post

[L.A.P.]

. Annoyingly i'm not good enough at maths to have taken her paper apart



Do you need to be though? Idk, I'm no mathematician myself, but those formulas seem to fall apart when you're working off nonsensical categories like "left-wing vs. right-wing governments".

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Do you need to be though? Idk, I'm no mathematician myself, but those formulas seem to fall apart when you're working off nonsensical categories like "left-wing vs. right-wing governments".

I mean, I could have taken it apart logically and with even only a rudimentary use of left-wing (by which she mean Democratic Party, UK Labour Party etc.) and right-wing I could have made a fairly strong argument that she was clearly sniffing something salty when she came up with her theory, but she'd just give me zero.

To get any credit i'd probably have had to prove her maths wrong, which it wasn't. It was just a mathematical cover for stinking bullshit.

[Redistribute the Rep]

I mean, I could have taken it apart logically and with even only a rudimentary use of left-wing (by which she mean Democratic Party, UK Labour Party etc.) and right-wing I could have made a fairly strong argument that she was clearly sniffing something salty when she came up with her theory, but she'd just give me zero.

To get any credit i'd probably have had to prove her maths wrong, which it wasn't. It was just a mathematical cover for stinking bullshit.

Hmm I wonder if this is why economics tends to be more right wing, because they can just use mathematical covers as you put if? As opposed to say sociology where the right wing bullshit is severely lacking in empirical evidence

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Hmm I wonder if this is why economics tends to be more right wing, because they can just use mathematical covers as you put if? As opposed to say sociology where the right wing bullshit is severely lacking in empirical evidence

I don't think it's so much 'right-wing' versus 'left-wing' so much as a move towards a neo-classical formulation of the economy which is very narrow and almost post-ideological.

Capital has always been fluid in terms of ideology; it has supported Social Democracy (as a tool of legitimisation post-WW2), neo-liberalism (from the 1970s) and fascism (in the 1930s). Similarly, I think the jist of neoclassical economics is not support for this or that social/political policy, but a blind belief in the workings of supply and demand, and in being able to use mathematics to find an equilibrium price therefore for any product, in any market, in any circumstance. It's really perverse, and illogical, and narrow, but there you go.

[L.A.P.]

I mean, I could have taken it apart logically and with even only a rudimentary use of left-wing (by which she mean Democratic Party, UK Labour Party etc.) and right-wing I could have made a fairly strong argument that she was clearly sniffing something salty when she came up with her theory, but she'd just give me zero.





To get any credit i'd probably have had to prove her maths wrong, which it wasn't. It was just a mathematical cover for stinking bullshit.



I guess you could've recognized the accuracy of the math assuming the validity of the postulates, while deconstructing the postulates themselves. I think people skilled in math tend to overlook that a formula is only based on presupposed, unsubstantiated statements, and those statements can often be false. Economic relations do not exist in absolutes, like relations between abstract quantities do.