What's the Point of Listening to (Macro) Economists?

Steve Chapman writing in Reason Magazine has a good point:

So why should we listen to what macroeconomists say? Some economists think that often we shouldn't. Russell Roberts, a scholar at George Mason University and the Hoover Institution, told me, "I think some of macro is useful—what causes inflation, for example. I just don't believe we're very good at testing theories at the macro level in a convincing way." Many times, he says, all macroeconomists can do is concoct stories that explain events after the fact.

Microeconomists, by contrast, make predictions about the effect of policies on individual markets, and those predictions are easier to confirm or refute. They virtually all agree, for example, that price controls lead to shortages, and governments occasionally take the trouble to prove them right.

But macroeconomists can almost always claim to be right, no matter what happens. If they recommend Policy X and the economy weakens, they can say it prevented a complete disaster. If they say Policy X will hurt and things improve, they can say without it, we'd be even better off. Being a macroeconomist means never having to say you're sorry.

Economics is an art, not a science. Any given economist can look at a set of numbers and all have different subjective opinions. Forecasting the course of the economy is like picking who is going to win a football game. Nobody knows.

Solutions to the Women Shortage in China

The Economist reports that gangs are kidnapping Vietnamese women and smuggling them into China to be brides:

The kidnapping has been going on for some time, and locals talk of a number of cases so far this year. The abductions follow a pattern: a Hmong girl is wooed by an out-of-towner—whether from Vietnam or China is not clear—who speaks her language. She is lured to a rendezvous to be drugged and smuggled into China, probably near Lao Cai, about an hour’s drive from Sapa. Tall, pretty girls are said to be particular targets.

One 18-year-old recently managed to get back home to tell her tale after a four-day ordeal. Held captive in China, she escaped through a window and contacted the Chinese police, who returned her to Vietnam. Most do not escape. One of those kidnapped last month was a married woman with a son; friends fear her family may never see her again.

The most ambitious and possibly the most disastrous social engineering policy in the history of humanity was China's "One Child" policy. Because of the preference for male children there is now a shortage of women. There is a reason that nature divides us 50-50 between men and women. Tinkering with that balance is going to cause more and more problems.