For the most part, socialists really only make normative economic statements (i.e., “the government should do X [raise the minimum wage]”) and not positive economic propositions (i.e., “government policy X [minimum wage law] will cause Y [wages to rise]”). This is because they’re led emotionally, not logically, to such conclusions. They haven’t thought things out for themselves, but join the herd to decide what it is they should think. Like a bluesman, they “go by feel.”
These are your street-level socialists though: the voters, the sign-wavers, the "armchair philosophers", etc. They go along with whatever is the trend regardless. They repeat these things they hear whether or not they have thought through the implications of such a measure to any extent.
But in addition to them, there is the political candidates that they look up to; the people they follow for advice; the people who tell them how to think and what they should support. These people make up the likes of Bernie Sanders, or Donald Trump; whoever, really.
But what they're doing is pretending to be economists, or, really, attempting to avoid economics all together and have their statements accepted as facts because they asserted them. They know, deep down, that they're not economists. They're just politicians who must nonetheless claim to know something about how the world works, else, who would trust them?
On the other hand, they do invoke "economists" to support their claims. And masquerading as “scientific” economists, they feel special enough to make such claims that are outside their realm. They use their acclaim and prestige to step outside the scope of economics to give weight to their policy prescriptions, which, if defended logically, could not be held. They make pronouncements without having, or even feeling a need, to support them morally. Due to their stature, however, they're listened to. The politicians need these types; their "economic team."
Since economic logic is value-free, though, it's curious they never present or defend, even if incoherently, a system of ethics once they step outside of economics proper—what should be limited to the value-free implications of the formal fact that humans act toward ends they value using scarce means to reach them. They’re of course relativists anyway, and started at no axiomatic beginnings to arrive at their proposals. But nonetheless, they wish to make people believe that what they're saying is grounded in sound economic principles.
To prop-up their emotional economic claims, unsupported by logic, they [politicians] invoke these supposed “economists” to give sophistication to their ideas. These are your frauds like Paul Krugman (who Bernie Sanders looks to), who, acting as economists, make value statements about what government policies should be adopted, supposedly based in economic science.
They state these things matter of factly, too. You're not supposed to question whether their means—the State— of doing it is inherently aggressive or not; just accept the policy prescription, stupid. What do you know, mere mortal?
Besides, when you do ask them for something resembling an ethical principle, they just blurt further absurdities, even though doing this (acting as the scientific economist) is implicitly accepting objective ethics. They prey on, and preach to, the lay public who has no interest in economic logic; and they successfully dupe them into their schemes, often in the name of “science.”
We’re supposed to listen and turn to the talking heads at central banks and think tanks, who believe compiling data and statistics is what shapes the study of economics, for our knowledge of economic phenomena.
Their ideas are political motivated, not backed by economic do-gooding, which would of course be freedom. They hope to achieve a policy, and present it as founded in economics. Keynes, for instance, I believe, was nothing but a fraud to expand the State, providing the economic excuses and cover for doing it. Leave it to the experts, right? We’re too dumb. Only the central planners know what’s best for us!
You see, they must have some intellectual support to do so. Otherwise the people might call bullshit. "Where are your facts?," they might ask. It is not who is the most honest, but may the most convincing rhetoric-empowered demagogue emerge victorious from the political show.
Politics requires one be disingenuous.
People like Bernie Sanders really only look to appeal to the masses to support their economic claims, e.g., “most voters agree that we should raise the minimum wage.” They don’t care if what they’re preaching makes any sense; they think that consensus (the appeal to authority or the majority) means their claims are scientific.
You don’t get to have an “opinion” on such matters, however. It is not like country music, where you say "it sucks", and others are free to disagree. It doesn’t matter if everyone “thinks” that “we” “should” inflate the money supply to grow the economy; they’d still be wrong. And if ninety-percent of the population thought we should murder Mexicans, it doesn't make it morally right. No matter how hard the people wish for the minimum wage law, as our example, to be true, i.e., it will raise real wages, the fact remains that it does not.
Cronies like Bernie, or Trump, spout some emotional economic nonsense, which almost anyone would agree is a problem, and deliberately don’t provide a solution. Of course, though, their solution is more statism. Their blurbs are usually just a statement of a mere observation most anyone would agree with: "The banks are too big!" Their solution isn't to actually break the banks up, i.e., by turning them over to private market competition; it is to use the strong arm of the state, through regulations, anti-trust laws, etc., to reshape them however they see fit. Or, another might be that "wages are stagnating", say, where the solution isn't to allow the market to raise wages, but to impose minimum wage laws.
Another means of dodging the truth is to present economics as an empirical matter: nothing true can really be said; it’s an approximate science; we must “test”, like in the physical sciences, the policies before we can know how they play out; etc. In other words, there is no real science of positive (not positivist) economics. Economics is whatever we say it is. Accept our legislative acts, you pesky skeptic.
This attempts to turn economic science into an art, where anyone can just use the people—living, breathing, conscious actors with values—to turn into one big social-laboratory experiment where different ideas are tried out, whether the fail or not; which, if they took economics for a genuine science, and not a mere collection of ideas, could tell them that indeed they would.
One emotional proclamation supports an unconnected economic policy. Some empirical data finds correlations that justify the use of the aggressive State against the people in the name of their own prosperity.
Again, they offer no defense of their value statements; their policies. Certainly there is no economic rationale behind them. Why would anyone expect them to, though? They’re not out for truth, i.e., science; they’re politicians. What frauds they are, truly.