[getmoheb]

To quote the late great Robert W Cox:

> Theory is always for someone and for something. All theories have a pespective. Perspectives derive from a position in time and space, specifically social and political time and space ... There is, accordingly, no such thing as theory in itself, divorced from a standpoint in time and space. When any theory so represents itself, it is the more important to examine it as ideology, and to lay bare its concealed perspective

In this case it could not be clearer that the theory of 'trickle down'/supply side/neoliberal economics - that is, liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation - were for the wealthy, and they were for the purpose of capturing a greater share of wealth (upward wealth redistribution). That's why they acquired prominence and political support, and that's why they've been so hard to dislodge in spite of the overall harm they've done.

Personally I think it'd probably be ok to try something else

[jfengel]

That's true of the hard sciences as well, not just the soft ones. The types of observations you think to make, the types of experiments you can perform, are "laden" with your theory of what there is in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

Scientific revolutions often start with puzzling "errors" in the measurements, and end up re-defining terms so that the new "correct" theory makes the error go away. But you're still theory-laden: the new theory is itself subject to eventual revolution.

Even really fundamental concepts like mass, length, entropy, and temperature undergo redefinition. When they do, the way we measure them changes. The old way, which was considered scientifically solid and sound, seems quaint and backwards in retrospect.

That's even more obvious in soft sciences, where the terms are even less rigorously defined than notions like "mass". I think it's important to recognize it in the hard sciences as well, because it's easy to get complacent thinking that we have all the terms perfectly defined. Scientists are human regardless of their field and are always burdened with assumptions that they don't realize.