Quantitative methods can't be applied to human action, which is purposeful and not a mere reflex. For this reason, mathematical formulas can only describe events, never explain them.
Some people use the concept of negative externalities to argue for government to force people toward "what is best for them." An example of this is the call for a consumption tax.
Choosing between labor and leisure is not like choosing between apples and oranges. Many people like both kinds of fruit. But labor involves disutility,so a better choice is this: between apples and rotten oranges.
Economics today poses as a predictive discipline which fails to correctly predict anything; a prescriptive discipline which prescribes the wrong policies; and an empirical discipline which collects data but misses the point.
Susan Neiman contends Southerners need to acknowledge guilt for slavery, segregation, and lynching, and "work off" the past. But collective responsibility is a chimera, and a dangerous one at that.
Free market economics is often ignorantly dismissed for being "ideological" rather than scientific. It probably sounds smart to the economically illiterate, but it is decidedly not.
Government statistics on worker productivity combine many errors of aggregation such as "average prices" and the total purchasing power of money. So it's unlikely that productivity numbers tell us much that's useful.
