Ronnie had it right calling it Torture. That is a much more accurate description the way I see it.
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.
Data can’t speak for itself; it’s up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully.
Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.
If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’
In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.
I hate when people ask me to: “Massage the data”.
It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?
We must first note that economic factors are taken into account in a world in which ignorance, prejudice, and mental confusion, encouraged rather than dispelled by the political organization, exert a strong influence on policy making.
The time has surely gone in which economists could analyze in great detail two individuals exchanging nuts for berries on the edge of the forest and then feel that their analysis of the process of exchange was complete, illuminating though this analysis may be in certain respects.