what separates the austrians from other schools

That's an odd way of describing it... @OP

 

 

Me and my homies are polemic gold metallists, eliminate the deficits, hard-core ron paul supporters and we drive like the transporter. We are value investors, penetration testers, survivalists, thrivalists, and neotribalists. We got professional economists, counter-economicists, electron microscopoligists and gas chromatographologists, theres nothing we cant do because we are austrian market anarchopolists.

The Texas Trigger:

Wheylous...How would you improve it/ make it less funny?

I was thinking the same thing when I read OP, but I'm not sure how I would improve it.  I would probably just go a completely different route and explain the methodology and then how that extrapolates into the main tenets.

Some good resources for this are found here.

In particular, I would look at:

Austrian Economics Is ‘Unscientific’

Austrian Economists Called ‘Unscientific’

"To Be an Austrian: A Primer"

Understanding "Austrian" Economics

A Primer on Austrian Economics

And Chicago School vs. Austrian School might help as well.

 

EDIT: I see the other posters have this one.

These not are not the principled differences between the Austrian school and other economic schools of thought.

The Austrians focus on the subjectivity of all economic phenomena (including those that are considered to be objective by other schools), the use of knowledge in society, the role of the entrepreneur in the organization and accumulation of capital, the element of time in economic calculation/coordination, the acknowledgement of radical uncertainty and the understanding that preferences are ordinal rankings and therefore are not subject to 'calculations' (as is commonly understood by mathematicians and mainstream economists).

The focus on method is often largely over-stated by a select sect of Austrians and is unnecessary.

The focus on method is often largely over-stated by a select sect of Austrians and is unnecessary.

Only if taken to the extreme of asserting that there is one right way to do science (or economics); the harping on methodology is perfectly understandable given the century-long assault on the use of synthetic a priori knowledge in science. But yes, it does get pompous whenever an Austrian says something to the effect that there is one right way to do economic science (implied: and that's what we're doing). I can't think of any cites off the top of my head but I have stumbled across this kind of thing once or twice.

Clayton -

 

 

I guess the application would be for when you meet someone who has never heard of the school, knows nothing about it, and this is your starting paragraph (sentence), your main thesis, your beginning, your introduction, what would those sentences say.

The bottom line: AE claims that a free market increases everyones standard of living, and that any govt interference in the free market reduces the standard of living. AE has proofs of this both in general, and for all the particular cases, such as Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security, Minimum Wage Laws, FDR's treatment of the Great Depression, etc. In particular, govt control of the money supply, especially its constant printing of paper or digitlal money, aka quantitative easing, is disastrous for an economy, and the cause of all the recessions and depressions a country suffers.

In addition, AE claims that spending is not what makes an economy grow, but increased productivity does. Thus all efforts to increase spending to "stimulate the economy" are at best pointless, and in fact harmful.

On the more technical side, AE rejects the notion that complicated equations, the pride of mainstream economists, can really predict anything. It claims, and has the track record to prove it, that the way to study economics is by logical thinking, deducing its theorems from first principles.