The original questions posted in this thread were silly.
It must be nice to believe that you live in a vacuum.
Here you are getting positive and normative analysis confused. “Economic theory” (the specific term you used in posts 29 and 60 that I responded to) deals with positive analysis which economists are generally agreed on. With the exception of macroeconomic stabilization problems, economists’ disagreements over the positive aspects of economic policies are much less than you realize.
I'm not an economist, so for the moment, I'll accept this to be true. Also, If I got my economic terminology mixed up, forgive me.
However, whether or not the positive effects of an economic policy are “good” or “bad” is a normative issue. Like everyone else economists have different normative views.
Ah, so generally when we discuss economic policy outside of the classroom setting, we're discussing "normative views". And this is where the disagreement among economists occurs. Terrific.
For example, a positive effect an increase in the savings rate is that future generations will have a greater capital stock to work with. Whether that is good or bad depends on ones normative views regarding the welfare of the current generation (that has to consume less to increase the savings rate) versus the welfare of future generations.
Alright, I get it. I see the distinctions between economics (the science), normative views (opinion), and philosophy (e.g. ideas about role of government in economic policy, what is good and bad economic policy and why)
Well, where do normative views come from? They're partly derived from an individual's philosophy. Normative views are just as important as economics itself. This is not something abstract, it has real world effects, and normative views influence policy and decision making.
While I appreciate the economics lesson, this is really off track from the original discussion (those silly questions you ignored), and really just irrelevant.
May I suggest that you ignore the remainder of the thread unless you actually have something to add?