Well there’s a schism between modern economists and classical economists, and simply put, it’s the belief by modern folks that economics is a prescriptive rather than a descriptive discipline, and that for any question, problem or circumstance, the former believes you can accurately model it mathematically. The Austrians believe economics is a study of human action — which is why the piece I linked to does not have a bunch of mathematical proofs for your edification.
The example from that piece being that something like CPI averages together the price of many goods to come to some conclusion about the exact rate of price inflation. But of course in the real world you can’t average sugar with butter. They’re discrete goods with such dynamic and different cost inputs that it wouldn’t make much sense to do so.
Again, this is an actual debate among different schools. You might find the models and math proofs of modern economists comforting (though they always seem to fall well short of reality on any nearly any time line) but that’s a matter of opinion.
You’re also in good company with central banks — they’re all run by folks from the modern school. They all think (or claim to think) that they can model the economy effectively. The gaps in their data sets or their blind spots that pop up with increasing regularity, well that’s just because they haven’t quite tweaked the model just right, yet. Mind you, they’ve been working on the model near constantly for close to 100 years…
Austrians are content to describe economic action, not try to force it into a mathematical model.
Does it feel like this conversation has been fun for you? You’re asking me questions, and I answer concretely and you accuse me of being dishonest. You say I made stuff up — for instance the Austrian school of economics. When I showed you it’s a real thing you got even more hostile.
But more to the point, I did show you that there is a rigorous school of economics that has a well-defended definition of inflation. You can do with it what you will. Weird to suggest I’m being dishonest when all I’ve done is ferry you around to the different gaps in your understanding at your request.
