Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
I do understand the fallacy. Correlation != causation. I've said it in great frustration many times. But now I feel like I've fallen into a bizarre alternate reality where that message got repeated too often, and everyone has now concluded: "... and therefore, causality does not exist."
Different individuals value the same things in a different way, and valuations change with the same individuals with changing conditions. . . .The impracticability of measurement is not due to the lack of technical methods for the establishment of measure. It is due to the absence of constant relations.
We are talking about economics with human action and not physics. But I will concede that despite the complexities and
unknowables we can know something and from that something derive
tendencies.
I agree with everything you just said there. I absolutely agree that the relationships are not constant. But working within your concession, and with a year of good data that coarsely supports the theory, I think it's fair to postulate
ergo propter hoc, and that I'm not running afoul of a fallacy in doing so.