From Genome to Econome

The IMF has over 600 billion dollars in funds to be used to stabilize the economic systems of the world and provide for growth and equality of opportunityquotThe evidence of the economic damage from inequality suggests that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they arequot IMFIMF ought to take a billion of it to spearhead economic scienceStep one would be the application of data science to create a simulation of the world39s economy with data going back as far as we have it As granular as possible as many variables as possible including all the madeup derivative metrics like Gini scores and Inequality indices etcLike the Genome Project but for economicsDifferent theories Adam Smith John Maynard Keynes Friedrich Hayek39s Neoliberalism about which perhaps one in a million people affected by it in the past four decades know something can be tested against the simulation to see what might happen if a specific country tried it today amp8230 mathematically so as to fit all the historical data If someone felt that today the shape of some curve would be different that could be tested too against the simulationThe way a simulation works is first you build a simulated population and put in all the relevant data based on what you are trying to study Then based on historical data or even upon supposition you assign probabilities of specific behaviors to each individual population member in Econome a population member could be a country or could be broken into segments within each country the latter preferredIn media simulations such as the one I helped build at Interpublic long ago the behaviors were probabilities of exposure to an ad in a crossplatform campaign digital was not one of the platforms in that simulation as it didn39t exist yet In Econome the behaviors would relate to economic behaviors such as GDP etc and social metrics such as the IMF Inequality index etc Other outcomes could include companies39 movements of facilities and of capital There would be no limits on the variables which could be derived or addedFor example in an email string with my mentor and friend Norm Hecht he got me to look at data which led me to hypothesize that based on the data I had seen covering roughly since 1945 we ought to peg corporate tax at 4 of US GDP probably an idea as crazy as any other unproven economic theory They are all still unproven even Adam Smith If we had an Econome simulation model as a step to reaching the true Econome if there is one we could use it to test the latter hypothesisJoe Biden if he had one of these Econome simulators could test out all variations of the themes in which he and many Americans ardently believe and see what the predicted results show For example what if he more highly taxed millionaireincomeperannum folks and closed all tax loopholes which allow corporations to pay no taxes but did not raise corporate taxes or other personal taxes What would that doPerhaps one curve missing from Econome today is the one depicting how tax rates affect incentivizing the best performance from individuals Another set of missing data relate to the movements of American companies and their capital offshore and how to reverse the causes of thatThe Econome might lead to controlled experimentation so as to fill in missing data although this is the one field in which that scientific method might not be practical At minimum sans experiments in trying to build such a model one would a get all the data in one place so that many people could work on it and b identify the areas in which we need more data which might lead initially to the compilation of records which exist but which have not been organizedLet39s stop angering one another with differing economic political opinions based on flimsy information Let39s start from the cleansing idea that we really don39t know anything And the realization that there is something we can do about it Compile all the data and make it analyzable by everyone in Lifeboat Earth That may never lead to a true science of economics but I find it aesthetically preferable to all this rancorClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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From Genome to Econome

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Bill Harvey

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From Genome to Econome

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