When economic debate drowns in grievance culture

The corner bar of economics: data, culture war and the search for a serious forum

When a space labelled "Economics" fills up with conspiracy theories, insults and nostalgia for when "the USA had a president who could read", something smells rotten in the digital agora. The paradox is that the real economic topics — housing, wages, hospitality, energy, debt, taxes, demographics, productivity — are right there, just beneath the surface of almost any thread. The problem is that they get discussed as if they were culture war, not economics.

Economics without method: bar talk with links

Decent economic analysis needs three ingredients: a starting data point, a causal mechanism and a concrete question. For example: if housing rises faster than wages, who is capturing the rent? If ready-made meals replace home cooking, how much is down to labour costs, how much to rents, and how much to consumer posturing? Without that, the discussion turns into bar talk with links: entertaining at times, but sterile in the long run.

And when a participant blurts out that "it's all the fault of imaginary communists" or that "the Petrograd revolutionaries were Jewish New Yorkers", formal economics evaporates. The forum fills up with what one user calls "a segarro service" — a blunt way of saying that the informational noise drowns out any signal.

The migration of talent: where is serious discussion happening?

While some lament that the "smart ones" have been driven out or have left — perhaps to the other world, as a grim comment about the pandemic suggests — others point out that there are substantive topics worth discussing: the depolarisation of global trade, payment systems alternative to SWIFT, shifts in trade flows. But they admit that under the current moderation, even those issues degenerate into insults and racism.

The question left hanging is: where has good economic analysis taken refuge? In English-language forums, in specialised publications, or has it evaporated along with the quality of education? The data isn't there, but the discontent is.