Normative statements are opinionated statements that are challengable. Yet there are many assumptions to the most basic aspects of economics and so placing some statements on a pedestal as positive facts is highly subjective.
             Clearly society is not simple and simple cause and effect generalisations are quite limited in applicability in policy making. In the second chapter of my macroeconomics text, after just being warned of the dangers of illogical thinking, one is introduced to the Production Possibilities Curve (PPC). It is basically a visual method of explaining that with two possible products, more of one means less of the other if you are using the same resources. It is a rather limited argument for it has all sorts of preconditions and is so abstract that only two products are possible; it is only useful as a simple example of limited resources. However, in an example entitled "Applying the Theory: The Diminishing Production Possibilities of Castro's Cuba" an entirely normative article is presented. Criticising the "inefficiencies associated with [Cuba's] command economy" the article shies away from relevant facts or positive statements and replaces them with trivial facts about the poverty in Cuba that may or may not be connected to the central planning. Presumably because of the vaguely related poverty Cuba is inefficient, quite a normative suggestion! Then to bring in some sort of empirical solidity to this anti-Communist diatribe they say Cuba has a reduced production possibilities curve. Finally, because Cuba has a decreased PPC it will collapse and is therefore bad because it is unstable. Only "widespread reforms towards a market economy or the overthrow of the Castro regime" are suggested as solutions. This strange and circular argument comes so early into the text that one has been given no economic tools to evaluate the validity of this article. It simply says, in the economics textbook, that Cuba and communism are in...