To Recent Blog Posts Don Boudreau of Café Hayek points out (for the millionth time) that America is not deindustrializing. Jason Ramos responded to my comment “So then who? Collor Should we believe it? You and Dr. Boudreau, or his “lying eyes”?
This is a common “gotcha” style question that implies that the expert is out of touch with reality or making things up. But a good scientist knows that their eyes aren’t lying, and that they’re just One They are tools of understanding. Our eyes provide us with valuable information. But I can’t see is also very important.
Here’s a simple example to prove my point: You look out your office window and it’s a beautiful, sunny day. There’s a thunderstorm brewing in the distance, but it’s probably moving south. It would be a nice day for a walk, don’t you think?
But my weather app, which gets data from the National Weather Service in New Orleans, says otherwise. It feels like 104 degrees, even though it’s only 9 a.m. The air is very humid, which could make it hard to breathe, especially for people like me who have asthma. It also says there’s a chance of thunderstorms later. So who should I believe? My lying eyes, or the weather nerds of New Orleans?
As it turns out, the nerds were right. As soon as I stepped outside to take out the trash, I was hit by the heat and humidity. The trash compactor was about 100 yards away, but I got in my car and drove there. And since it’s getting darker as I write this, it looks like they were right about the storm.
Did my eyes lie to me? No, they told me the truth. The Sun Was The storm I saw did Heading south. But another storm is coming from the north (my house has no north-facing windows). My eyes saw the truth, but it was only a small part. The NWS saw more and provided me with additional information. I can’t see For me it is Saw.
The same is true in American manufacturing. It’s easy to see the decline of many once-thriving towns in the Rust Belt. When I lived in Syracuse, New York, it was heartbreaking to see a once-shining city in disrepair and abject poverty. No one denies that similar conditions are occurring in cities across the country. But cities in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Alabama, Mississippi and the Carolinas are also being transformed by new construction. In fact, U.S. Manufacturing Construction Spending The data is at its highest level since records began (2002). The recent spike is due to subsidies and incentives from the Anti-Inflation Act, but note that spending has been trending upward overall since 2011. Even old Rust Belt cities are seeing new life. Art halls, breweries, museums, and all kinds of developments are moving into old factories.
Science teaches us to look for the invisible. Science teaches us to use all our senses. In conjunction with We need our senses and reason to draw conclusions and inferences. Sight is an important sense, but it is veiled. The purpose of education is to hone the other senses so that we can penetrate the veil. It is a poor scientist who relies solely on what the eye can see. As in Collor’s case, it leads to erroneous conclusions about the state of the U.S. economy and U.S. manufacturing.
John Murphy is an assistant professor of economics at Nicholls State University.
