We're largely unconvinced by macroeconomics

The conventional and standard wisdom in the general political establishment:

One of the big lessons of the Global Financial Crisis, still fresh enough not to have been wholly forgotten, is that the policy response to a bad downturn needs to be big, fast and sustained. We didn’t get that after the global financial crisis, which in part explains the subsequent decade of economic stagnation.

Therefore go big this time. Which, in reality, means the politicians gain unrestricted access to the societal chequebook. On the other hand, the conventional and standard wisdom among American economists:

“A lot of what he's saying is what everyone is saying over coffee and whispering,” said one prominent economist who proved the point by only saying so anonymously. “He’s an outlier in the public debate because the people that have megaphones aren't saying this on the Democratic side, but he's well within a consensus view in the economics profession.”

That’s Jason Furman commenting on Larry Summers and his assertion that they’ve gone too big.

Our point here being not just to emphasise the gaps between the science and politics - that’s ever with us. Rather, it’s to lead into pointing out how shoddy the science is.

We have decent enough economic statistics for some handful of countries - not even all the OECD ones - going back perhaps 70 years to just after WWII. There have been a handful of recessions in each of those. That’s not a decent evidence base.

Further, we’ve had, this past couple of decades, two entirely different types of recession. One in which the financial system pretty much fell over. Many monetary economists said this was different. Possibly more akin to the American experience in the early 1930s than anything else. Certainly not the same as, say, the 1970s. Now we’ve one where the economy was deliberately shut down and is now being reopened. This is very different and different things tend not to be cured by the same treatment.

We are a great deal more convinced by microeconomics - people respond to incentives, there are always opportunity costs, utility is between maximised and satisfacted and so on. We’re deeply unconvinced that macroeconomics, as a useful policy tool, really works very well. Simply because the evidence base underpinning it is so thin. One good piece of evidence for this being the multiplicity of opinions on what we should do that stems from those reading those macroeconomic runes.

Something that doesn’t come up with an answer - rather than merely supports extant prejudices - isn’t really something we should call science, is it?