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The Economy, Kant, Husband and Wife.

  • Writer: Aidan J
    Aidan J
  • Aug 7, 2018
  • 5 min read

Updated: Sep 2, 2018


Just as everyone has their own idea on how to run their ideal government, they also have an idea of what the perfect economy is. Every one of those ideas is different. From communism, to European socialism, capitalism, to anarcho-capitalism, all sorts of ideals reign. It makes sense: it’s a matter of opinion. However, people also seem to disagree on how the United States’s economy is doing right now.


There’s great fear about wage growth in the country. It is not up to snuff compared to unemployment rates, which it, normally, is correlated to. So why is this different?


This situation is a matter of fact, not opinion. We want to prove whether there is a problem, and then we can conjecture about possible remedies. That’s why it’s even more troubling when there is no consensus among economic analysts.


The apologist’s side, the one that claims the economy is great and has no problems, blames retirement of baby boomers. Over the years, this generation has grown to control the upper echelons of different companies, and those positions offer the highest pay grade. Once they retire, they no longer earn that amount, and so median/average wages fall. Some believe many newcomers to the labor force are taking less-skilled, worse-paying jobs. With a high influx of those workers, it positively skews the data towards the lower income range, and so affects the projected increase in wages. (The Economist, source is down below)


The point stands that some analysts believe that the economy is in a good state when evaluating median wage growth.


The critics believe the economy is performing poorly due to the median wage growth. The economy is not healthy because the wages have only risen for the highest levels of employment, while the wages have remained low for lesser-skilled jobs. This furthers a wealth disparity in the country, and when combined with tax cuts for the wealthy as well, creates a poverty epidemic. These economists want to change this, and so they suggest an increase in minimum wage and other policy to force the correlation between low unemployment and wage growth.


With the same data, two groups of experts have made opposing statements about the quality of our economy. The economy can only be in a good state, ok state, or Nevada. Without consensus, we cannot make any changes, and if changes are in order, another recession is possible.


Little known fact: Nevada was actually the birthplace of Grendel, the descendant of Cain and all things evil. from Beowulf.

Here’s where philosophy comes in; each side is thinking differently: abstractly or concretely.


The apologists are thinking abstractly. Abstraction is the art of removing context from a situation to generalize it to different scenarios. Think of the statement, “all killing is morally wrong.” In this instance, the apologists are trying to continue to prove the theory, that wages have risen in the predicted order with corresponding unemployment drops, and so the economy must be good. They place value in the pre-existing criteria for a good economy, and so their goal is to satisfy the criteria by whatever way possible.


The criticism, in the other pant leg, is concrete. The concrete situation is the collection of all relevant symptoms of the object in question. Think of the statement, “murder is wrong, but killing in self-defense is not wrong.” The criticism is not concerned with manipulating the data to prove that the economic climate is good because it matches a general criterion. Valuing the differences between the current health and the optimal condition, they take care to correct the symptom of lower wage growth by implementing medicine, like a higher minimum wage.


This is one of the few examples of actual self-defense.

These are important techniques when considering any subject. As people, we like to apply solutions from one problem to a similar problem; it only makes sense. The more you abstract a problem from its situation, however, the less it resembles the original experience. As an example, let’s use a fever. I get fevers every time that I have strep throat, which can be treated with penicillin. If a year passes and I get another fever, I go to the doctor to get a prescription for penicillin to deal with my strep throat. But, this time, my throat is hurting mildly, but I also feel dizzy and I’m having these chills through my body. If we abstract the information too much, then we incorrectly diagnose the flu as strep throat, and therefore the medicine won’t help.


So, there’s a danger in removing the solution too far from its circumstances. It is also dangerous never to generalize solutions to problems. My head is feeling hot. Instead of going to the doctor for a diagnosis like last time, I think I’m going to try to eat some cookie dough ice cream to cool off.

Applying this dichotomy of the abstract and the concrete well can strengthen any analysis, whether it’s diagnosis from a plumber to a doctor, a forecast from a meteorologist to a fortune teller, or an “actually” from Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Applied logic does not concern itself with learning, though.


Instead of learning ideas abstractly, we learn a priori. Concretely, a posteriori.


Kant was a philosopher. If you know about the Enlightenment, he’s the one that coined the term Enlightenment. He’s the man who distinguished between two types of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori.


A priori knowledge is learned purely through the mind. Whether it be a tautology, e.g. squares are rectangles with equal-length sides, or an identity, e.g. 4 * 5 = 20, a priori knowledge does not require experience to validate its truth. Kant used stuff taking up space as an example. If you matter, then you spacious.


A posteriori knowledge comes from experience. The statement, “I have three cats,” can only be held to be true if the person has seen three cats in my house, and knows I am not borrowing cats from a secret cat salesman so that I may play a devilish trick on him. These statements are also not always situational. Sure, I may not have three cats, but stuff does not have to interact gravitationally. We only know that my cat does because Isaac Newton got hit in the head by a heavy apple, and (should have) said, “wow, this thing that takes up space is really attracted to me.” This fact came from experience.


Considered on its own, this is only important to philosophers interested in how we can know anything. It’s quite heady, and I suspect most people do not find this interesting. However, this distinction between a priori and a posteriori follows the theory versus experience division. While we can bend definitions to make any truth a priori, such as “all cats have brown spots,” those bent criteria do not hold any meaning. Yes, we can say that wages rise at the same rate as unemployment if you consider the change in the number of individuals wanting to work. Or, we can classify the theory as a posteriori, where it’s a metric to evaluate the strength of the economy, therefore planning to fix problems inhibiting wage growth.


This is a much better way to organize criticism than a positive and negative list. The two sides are not broken and broken; they are changing the perspective of the theory to show that the economy is doing well and proposing new policy to make sure the economy is doing well. Through this lens, we can realize that these sides are not really in conflict, but rather in conversation with each other to realize a common goal. No longer is there good and bad, but instead, a husband and wife deciding on interior design. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to move the rocking chair to the living room. The current floor plan is pretty good, but we just like to stand in the most uncomfortable part of the room, and other such sweet nothings.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/08/24/does-ageing-explain-americas-disappointing-wage-growth



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