Do not stop thinking
As an observer of political events and a low brow researcher (student assistant at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin) I have become increasingly frustrated at two complimentary mental moves. One could call it the problem of thinking high and low, akin to Kahneman’s fast and slow.
The problem of magnitude or of thinking small and big might point the way too.
When in research, people often stitch together current trends and talking points and make a paper out of it with some critical remarks. I have a sense that these papers are often superfluous as the recipient does not know what the author is really about. The ground work is missing. If we want to tackle some economic problem like technological unemployment, we cannot stop short before we have found a solid foundation upon which to base our theory. We must talk about investment, consumption, productivity, output, Baumol’s, class struggle, profit rate, global trade etc. They all have to be tied into our theory because they all determine the phenomenon we want to explore. If we miss any of it or if there is any gap in our theory that we are unaware of, we will not be able to convince anyone, probably not even ourselves. This does not mean that we necessarily need micro foundations for macro phenomena but we at least need macro foundations for macro phenomena, otherwise you leave the room wide open for ideological or interest based or confusion based insertions of alternative determinants that upend your whole point. You have to think until the end until everything plays its part and fits its place. No stopping short is permitted. No shortcuts!
The same goes with the other end of the scale spectrum. If I want to grow the German economy as Friedrich Merz purportedly does, you cannot think of it as a an isolated problem. Sure, you can grow German competitiveness by deceasing wages, taxes and social security. But decreasing wages would decrease demand and Germany already has a huge trade surplus. This would force other EU nations to also decrease wages which would lower demand even more. All the while the US is trying to lower its trade deficit as well and China also wants to maintain its trade surplus as it seems. This would mean a downward spiral of wage depression and sluggish growth if not recession. So if you think you have found a solution to one problem (growth), do not stop short of evaluating all its consequences, not only short term and not only on specific actors but on the whole system. Which unintended consequences, which feedback loops, rebound effects and so on can you see? This is what responsibility is. Do not become lazy, think through the end, as above, so below.