I don’t think we need to give economic ideas “subjective names” quite so quickly. Instead, let’s focus on the core of the ideas we are discussing and work from there. A lot of the trickle down, neo-liberal, etc business you mention here is truly irrelevant to both your point and what I am discussing – so when I do post, I hope you don’t mind if I try to move past that and focus on “description” 🙂

Working from monetary aggregates is not first principles – it involves hidden judgments about the structure of the underlying causes. All economics uses accounting relation, but we can only interpret them by having behavioural relationships that link things! There are behavioural assumptions here that we have to make apparent. The behavioural relationships we will ultimately be discussing are of course about underlying “demand” – so we will need to make sure these are transparent.

I’ll pop up my thoughts in a month or so (still getting ready for NZAE, have an economic history post to do here, and have our core product at work and university work to get on top of in the interim!), I am sure I’ll see you before then so we can have a chat before I do a blog reply 😉

And just a pick point on issue 4. Using an R2 from a regression in levels, and claiming causation, on the back of that graph is incredibly misleading – it is not appropriate, and that is the sort of thing that economists of all backgrounds need to be incredibly careful about. Even when trying to simplify to the public.

Your causal relationship comes from your assumptions around behavioural relationships and should stand on those grounds – the graph adds “false certainty” in those regards, which is something all economists should be trying to avoid 🙂