patrick.net

A wise man once said: "Liberalism is a mental disorder." That sums it up pretty well, IMO.

Haha. Even though economists ultimately are terrible at predicting economic events, I have enough respect for them to think that this "study" will get the respect that it deserves. If anything, as a liberal, I find the results reassuring.

I agree with Troy. Terrible questions.

One could sum it up with this - from the wsj article (quoted from Klien, the author of the study):

>>>>>>>>>

According to him, there may be exceptions ( there are many ). So the correct answer is false,....period.

Sorry, but what an idiot. And of course I can guarantee with 100% certainty that he is a libertarian or a conservative. Obviously, that's what gives him the ability to define what the enlightened answer is in the first place.

Hey, at least it's consistent.

I think I inadvertently commented out my quote fro the WSJ article. What's up with that patrick.

Heremarcus says

marcus says

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

it's all performance art at this point.

Troy says

it’s all performance art at this point.

mental masturbation.

I more proper headline would have have been:

"Liberals hold politically incorrect opinions, according to fascist-libertarian crackpot study commissioned by the WSJ bureau of lame propaganda"

The dim-witted and dishonest behavior of the Wall Street Journal should surprise no-one at this point in time.

CBOEtrader says

These questions do use propogandized words, which would naturally result in liberals answering incorrectly. This does not make the liberal response correct–which is exactly my point.
I think that this study is a testament to the power of propoganda. As soon as the liberals read the hot topic words, their brains instantly had the 100%-for-or-against the idea response typical of partisan logic. This study should make the liberal propoganda spewers proud.
I am sure you could get similar results asking questions loaded with propagandized words for conservatives.

Absolutely. Many people only hear what they want to, and can manipulate anything to support their point of view. That's what politics are all about.

There are a few posters here who hate anyone who agrees with liberals on any level, and constantly personally attack others. The hatred is consistent with the rhetoric of the right-wing pundits on faux news and the media machine.

I was reading an article about how incumbents were "on notice" and the country would be voting them all out of office - but now it appears that the only a few lost their primaries. There's still the general election - but the media had to hype something. My point is that the news cycle is 24 hours, the media pushes its own agenda, and there's always a sucker willing to swallow whatever they're spoon fed. It's an irrational emotional response, which is exactly what the media wants.

CBOEtrader says

In conclusion: our partisan propaganda on both sides is powerful enough that an individual’s brain shuts off to logic when dealing with propogandized hot topics. We are a species that is every bit as suggestible as Pavlov’s dogs.

sadly, sir, you are correct.

CBOEtrader says

Troy feels that these three questions are debatable. I disagree. It is an economic constant that an increase in costs combined with a decrease in supply (licensing), results in higher prices. It is also an economic constant that a price ceiling (rent control) will lead to shortages. Similarly, it is impossible to say that our country, or our world, doesn’t have a higher standard of living than it did 30 years ago.

"Economic constant" = "model" = "not necessarily correct"

No economics rises to the level of a theory. There are settled questions in economics, but take the "rent control" case:

Rent control in SF and LA is for multifamily housing built before 1978. It encourages stickiness in tenancy, BUT NOT HOUSING SHORTAGES. People still occupy rent-controlled apartments. If anything, it encourages replacement of older stock with MORE housing on net.

Same thing with the doctor question. The supply and demand is one component of pricing but drawing a curve to describe medical services and putting a finger on where we'd be in a total hypothetical is the height of economic arrogance and belief in the free market fairy and total separation from how the real world works.

The medical profession wants things the way they are now, and entry of unlicensed supply will not necessarily change that.

As for the standard of living,I was around in 1980 and I don't see an increase in the overall standard of living here. We've got more crap in our lives but the fundamentals are worse, not better.

Here's a graph from 1980-2003. It shows a mild uptrend, but recent events have no doubt destroyed that.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TDSP

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UNEMPLOY

CBOEtrader says

These questions do use propogandized words, which would naturally result in liberals answering incorrectly. This does not make the liberal response correct–which is exactly my point.

No, 5,6,7 are canon of the liberal left because they are the core of our argument.

There has been a LONG history of exploitation of workers in the third world by American companies, where working conditions were horrid and the price delta gained by offshoring production went all to the owners. Wages in Shenzhen are 70c/hr, or were until a sufficient number of workers committed suicide on the factory floor to double wages there.

The real joke is offshoring our jobs doesn't result in unemployment, which most answerers would assume referred to unemployment HERE. Pull the other one if you think a pure service economy can replace actual hard domestic wealth-creation.

Minimum wage laws not increasing unemployment is probably the weakest part of the liberal canon, but again ideology is trumping reality when it comes to the desired answer of this OpEd writer. Sure, a $50/hr minimum wage would slaughter employment as many jobs would be replaced by self-labor. We are far from that tipping point so the minimum wage mostly serves to redirect earning power from managment and owner to the laborer, who have, theoretically, more money to spend in their own communities, supporting their community employment and not fatcat consumption of wasteful superluxuries.

Troy says

5,6,7 are standard canon of the liberal left.

Which just goes to show how slanted the study was. If it was fair, they would ask some questions that are the standard canon of the conservative right, for which the evidence is that they are incorrect. (e.g. I think the standard conservative unenlightened understanding of the Laffer curve came up on this forum a few days ago? And people saying GSE and or CRA were the chief culprits in the housing bubble has come up dozens of times.)

@Nomo, how often? lol

I took a poll alot like the one talked of here a few weeks ago. As with all phone polls, the questions sucked. But, this one was different because the polster would log my comments when I said things about the question being stupid, or if I said that "strogly agree" just sounded stupid. Anyways, just wanted to share.

I read somewhere that a very low percentage of people will participate in polls. I don't personally know anyone who is willing to participate in polls.

I don't really trust the data. How can 1100 people speak for me? IMHO it's 1100 people who answered their phones and didn't have anything else to do, or had an agenda. Consider that the polls have agendas... Results are skewed IMHO.

that is true, I'm sure. But, soooo many folks on both sides start their retorts with "polls show". lol.
I do try to answer now and then because I feel bad for the folks that have came to a place in life to have to make those calls for a living -- and that is the truth. So, I play along and have some fun and make their night a little more fun. Plus, I get to express my rightwing crap!! lol

Bap33 says

that is true, I’m sure. But, soooo many folks on both sides start their retorts with “polls show”. lol.

Good point. A woman I know got a job as an investment advisor with Morgan Stanley years ago, and her job required her to pull the rolls of the people whose homes were at a certain value and live in a desirable zip code - then to cold call them. They have to sign on so many new clients every month. Before the job, she hung up on stuff like this. After the job, she answered every single one of them.

She was a horrible investment advisor because she had no morals by the way. Kept her job, but has screwed many an old person in the process.

elliemae says

I read somewhere that a very low percentage of people will participate in polls. I don’t personally know anyone who is willing to participate in polls.

This is a great point. Do they actually call people and hope someone responds? That method in itself will eliminate the busy, young, and assholes of the world. Is that how all polls are done? Rasmussen, etc?

To be fair...

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/are-you-smarter-than-george-mason.html

"Are You Smarter Than a George Mason University Economics Professor?
by Nate Silver @ 4:23 PM
Share This ContentI first came across this study by George Mason University's Daniel Klein and Zogby International's Zeljka Buturovic, which appeared as a journal article in Econ Journal Watch, which Klein edits, in a link at Tyler Cowen's site several weeks ago. Cowen links to about a dozen interesting pieces every day, and I thought Klein's study was so obviously flawed that it wasn't really worth commenting on. But now it has re-appeared in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, with the somewhat non-sequitur title, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?".

Here's what Klein and Buturovic did. They took a survey using one of Zogby's internet panels, which is by far the worst polling instrument that they could have selected. The panel was not weighted and was not in balance. For example, McCain led Obama 49-43 among respondents to the survey, even though roughly the opposite outcome was observed in the actual election -- and only about 4 percent of the respondents were Hispanic and only 39 percent were female. Then they asked 16 "questions of basic economics", as the Journal's sub-head describes them, and arbitrarily included eight of them in their analysis but threw the other eight out.

If you were expecting fifth grade questions about supply and demand, you'd be wrong. Let me just say: I come at this as a University of Chicago economics graduate who indeed disagrees with the liberal orthodoxy on many economic matters. But questions such as "[Does] poverty cause crime?", which was one of the questions that Klein and Buturovic excluded without explanation, are more like Zen meditations than matters of basic economics.

Others were poorly phrased, for instance: "A company that has the largest market share is a monopoly?". This is confusing; having the largest market share is a necessary, though hardly sufficient, condition for being a monopoly, and no alternative definitions were presented. Is this question really an objective basis for determining whether someone is more or less "enlightened" (that's actually the term that Klein uses!) about economics?

Some come closer to having a technically correct answer, but are more within the realm of trivia. For instance, "In the USA, more often than not, rich people were born rich?". Notwithstanding that the definition of "rich" is ambiguous, you could probably develop an empirical answer for this question based around studies of social mobility. But unless you'd spent a great deal of time reading the academic literature on mobility -- something that few laypeople will do -- there's really no way that you'd know it.

Finally, there are some questions about which there is considerable disagreement even within circles of academic economists -- as Klein should know, since he's commissioned several surveys of them. Economists are about evenly split, for instance, when it comes to the minimum wage. There is much closer to being a consensus on free trade, but there are an ample number of heterodox views. And in other cases -- like the Rand Paulian view that "More often than not, employers who discriminate in employee hiring will be punished by the market?" -- there is very little in the way of recent academic research at all.

So basically, what you're left with a number of questions in which people respond out of their ideological reference points because the questions are ambiguous, substanceless, or confusing. Klein is blaming the victims, as it were.

There would have been much better ways to construct a study like this one. For instance, questions could have been developed from standardized tests of high school students, like the AP Economics exam, or from surveys of academic economists. Such studies might well support Klein's thesis. But between the poorly-considered questions and the poor choice of survey partner, this amounts to junk science. "

Extremely well said:

CBOEtrader says

So basically, what you’re left with a number of questions in which people respond out of their ideological reference points because the questions are ambiguous, substanceless, or confusing. Klein is blaming the victims, as it were.

Although calling it junk science is too complementary.

This would have been a fitting question for the conservative respondent:

Do you agree or disagree that lowering taxes ultimately raises tax revenues to the government ?

( with no mention of other variables or even how high taxes were before lowering, it has just the right amount of ambiguity to guarantee the incorrect answer from conservatives. The correct answer is false, because it can only be logically correct if it is always true.)

Just for kicks & giggles I googled "how polls are taken." The answer was fairly simplistic and didn't delve into how the actually come up with the questions, or the agendas.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/18/polling/

On average, Gallup completes just over 1,000 interviews to represent a nation of more than 270 million. But if it's a truly random sample, it's like stirring soup -- so that one spoonful will tell you what the whole pot is like.
This sample will be a list of telephone numbers generated by computer -- random digits, so even unlisted phones will be included. The calls go out from eight Gallup centers around the country.
A computer dials the random numbers and interviewers often reach business, fax machine or computer lines.
Not every answer is counted equally. People with two home phone lines, for example, are twice as likely to be called, so their answers are weighted less heavily so two-phone households won't be over-represented.
And of course everyone who does not have a telephone is missed. That's about 6 percent of the population, more often poor, Southern and African-American than the population as a whole.

I wonder if poll-taking has changed since many people no longer have home phones. I suspect that those people who do have home phones live in rural areas without cell service, or possibly can't afford the cell charges of the fancy new phones. Just wondering...

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." [Pericles, 495 - 429 B.C.]

Hahaha - substitute the words Americans for Athenians, and America for Athens and you'll have a mirror image of whats happening in America today. BTW - its the liberals who want to take from society and be free from personal responsibility.

Today's book recommendation: 'Losing Ground: American Social Policy' by Charles Murray

elliemae says

I suspect that those people who do have home phones live in rural areas without cell service, or possibly can’t afford the cell charges of the fancy new phones. Just wondering…

I have heard it stated that polls are often missing out on young peoples' input because they neither have landlines nor patience. If they are generating numbers by random though, the cell phone users would be included in the group. The random phone number generator is interesting though. I don't think that phone numbers are random. Thus, if less people have phone numbers that start with area code 2XX instead of 7XX, the 7xx people would be underrepresented in the polls, and the 2xx poeople over represented.

marcus says

Do you agree or disagree that lowering taxes ultimately raises tax revenues to the government ?

I think this is a good point. The higher tax rates=lower tax revenue on the margin argument is looking at a second cause/effect relationship between gross income and tax rates. Therefore, the other variables are dependant on the variable in question--meaning a question that assumes "all else remaining equal" would not represent reality. I assume that a liberal would enlist similar logic to argue that higher minimum wages could lower unemployment on the margin.

Honest Abe says

substitute the words Americans for Athenians, and America for Athens and you’ll have a mirror image of whats happening in America today.

How about this one, “When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic.” –Ben Franklin

Here's one more great quote, the original author of which remains in question:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

99.99% of economics and finance majors are economically illiterate. The more economics classes you take, the more junk science you learn and the more disconnected from the real world you become.

CBOEtrader says

the original author of which remains in question:

Ie bullshit even if the author was a respected student of history. This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

In 1999 this country was heading a decent direction, fiscal-wise. I am not a tax-and-spend liberal, I think we need to cut a lot and privatize more if at all possible, but I also believe in very strong and mandatory social spending.

For I know that every dollar of income not taxed will eventually just end up in land values and other inflation-sensitive segments of the rentier economy.

I need to go to Norway.

Troy says

This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

No. You are confused. The most oft atributed author of this quote is Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler, who supposedly wrote this in the late 1700's regarding Athens.

"Perhaps what he had in mind was what Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler has written, that a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority, he said, always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy always collpases over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship. Unfortunately, we can't argue with the professor because when he wrote that we were still colonials of Great Britain and he was explaining what had destroyed the Athenian Republic more than 2000 years before."
-Ronald Reagan, 1965

General Smedley Butler was a whistle blower of a supposed wall street fascist dictatorship coup...which is kinda what wall street and big business is accomplishing today due in no small part to both the neo-cons and neo-liberals alike. The wall street bought politicians use the egalitarian social wealth distribution plans to buy votes from the proletariat.

Troy says

I need to go to Norway.

??

Your post seems to be missing a unified theme.

CBOEtrader says

Troy says

This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

No. You are confused. The most oft atributed author of this quote is Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler, who supposedly wrote this in the late 1700’s regarding Athens.

http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

-Ronald Reagan, 1965

Um, yeah. This was his core period of being a mouthpiece of the conservative right. Operation Coffee Cup and all that.

Your quote included the bullshit part, alas:

The list beginning "From bondage to spiritual faith" is commonly known as the "Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence". Its first known appearance is in a 1943 speech "Industrial Management in a Republic"[11] by H. W. Prentis, president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and appears to be original to Prentis.

General Smedley Butler was a whistle blower of a supposed wall street fascist dictatorship coup…which is kinda what wall street and big business is accomplishing today due in no small part to both the neo-cons and neo-liberals alike. The wall street bought politicians use the egalitarian social wealth distribution plans to buy votes from the proletariat.

Wall Street is powerful because they represent powerful interests. Bush's tax cuts on great wealth did as much damage as anything.

Troy says

I need to go to Norway.

??
Your post seems to be missing a unified theme.

The existence and success of Norway's economy and society invalidates every tenet held by the conservative right.

A people get the government they deserve, good and hard.

That quote, as it happens, is not some ginned-up bullshit.

You guys both have interesting perspectives. Maybe idealistic of me, but I lean toward Troy's view that higher (but efficient) social spending can mute the excessive (bublishis) tendencies of capitalism, while not killing it.

Yeah, I know liberals dream of some naive utopia. I don't think so. In my life time the top marginal tax rates have had a very huge swing. Check this out..

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

I'm not advocating a 90% tax rate on the rich ( was Eisenhower actually a communist ?), but there is an optimal middle ground.

And Troy's right, some European countries are FAR closer to an optimal mix than we are.

Sorry bubblicious......

marcus says

Maybe idealistic of me, but I lean toward Troy’s view that higher (but efficient) social spending can mute the excessive (bublishis) tendencies of capitalism, while not killing it.

I don't disagree, but this is very difficult to do. I would suggest that only small, locally run, homogenous, natural resource littered, non-military countries like Norway have a chance to pull this off effectively. Norway is a special case, and can't be replicated easily. Wellfare or foodstamps are basically a non-issue compared to miltary spending, bailouts, and entitlements.

Troy says

Um, yeah. This was his core period of being a mouthpiece of the conservative right. Operation Coffee Cup and all that.

I honestly don't care if Big Bird was the original author. I posted the quote because I agree with the logic, not because I agree with the actions of others that use this quote in their demagoguery.

Troy says

The existence and success of Norway’s economy and society invalidates every tenet held by the conservative right.

Sigh.

The conservative right has failed because they didn't practice what they preached. They increased the size of the government (especially the military), ran up huge deficits, and even increased social programs to get elected. They represent everything that is wrong with our current democratic system as summed up in the quote in question. The neo-liberals are pretty much the same thing, with a slightly different marketing plan. The neo-cons used free-market liberal leaders like Milton Friedman to claim the intellectual upper-hand. They then proceeded to desecrate everything Milton Friedman stands for.

The tenets of free-market capitalism have yet to be applied.

The best prescription for addressing society's aliments is not to further empower an already enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government, but to return to our founding principals. A free people, making free choices, in a free market, in other words...capitalism.

Tell me what is better than a free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation? Our government should be operating within the limits of its authority promoting even more opportunity, prosperity, and freedom rather than manipulating and over-regulating everyone and everything.

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principals are the founding principals.

Honest Abe says

The best prescription for addressing society’s aliments is not to further empower an already enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government, but to return to our founding principals. A free people, making free choices, in a free market, in other words…capitalism.
Tell me what is better than a free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation? Our government should be operating within the limits of its authority promoting even more opportunity, prosperity, and freedom rather than manipulating and over-regulating everyone and everything.
Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principals are the founding principals.

Interesting idea of "returning" to founding principles. Free people, free market, capitalism. Of course the reality is that virtually every major industry in the history of the republic and before the republic existed has been in bed with the enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government almost always to the detriment of the common people paying taxes. Read up on the origins of the canals, railroads, big oil, big steel, aviation, computers, etc., etc.. You are very much viewing things through rose colored glasses. Your idealized world of capitalism has never existed.

Right on, and that's part of the problem. True capitalism in America has never existed. There have always been special favors to certain business groups. Tariffs and subsidies further distorted the market. Every business or financial problem required a government solution. Each "solution" further distorted the market, always to the detriment to the taxpayer, right up until today. I know, lets come up with a bail out for the buggy whip manufactures - that ought to help !! Let the failing companies fail, and let the successful ones succeed, get government out of the way.

Government is not the solution, government "solutions" further exacerbate every problem. The unintended consequence shows up later. Government "solutions" simply delay confronting the problem thereby making it worse, as evidence by the fiscal and monetary problems faced by city's, towns, states and even the country as a whole.

What has existed, yet is being ignored, is the principals of the founding fathers - you know -the law of the land, the constitution.

Sounds theoretical.

Lobbyists have way too much input into legislation where the corporate interests of free enterprise collide with the welfare of the public. Now, corporations are going to be able to have much more influence in elections. This drives up the price of running for office, and ultimately is a waste of resources. It's going to take the idea of a political "puppet" to a whole new level.

How does real free enterprise help to prevent this from happening ?

Also, isn't it impossible to have the interests of free enterprises always aligned with the public good ? Defense companies are an easy example. Was is simply good for them. Couldn't this one day create a problem ? Eisenhower thought it would.

War is simply good for them ( dang ).

Since when are opinions "economic literacy"?

Not a single item on that list can be proven one way or another as fact, except for #4, which is just a stupid question.

Hilarious–economic study declares that self identified “liberals” are economically illiterate

This is certainly true. I would add liberals are business illiterate as well. As I heard Obama demand that a escrow account be set up for BPs oil spil claims. But as anyone can tell you who has a business background such reserves for losses are already set up and taken to earnings. Everything else from this adminstration is publicity.

Troy says

5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree).

Disagree. You will find many are very eager to take our jobs while the US workers goes unemployed. Frankly its dreadful to see our population go unemployed.

Troy says

6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree).

We dont have free trade since Asian countries have import barriers.

thomas.wong1986 says

But as anyone can tell you who has a business background such reserves for losses are already set up and taken to earnings. Everything else from this administration is publicity.

I understood the escrow account to be an initial commitment to distribute $20 billion toward the clean up and injured parties. This is not the same as the internal way that corporations account for possible future losses.

They have now taken ( or committed to take ) their first 20 billion of their losses over this.

The best way to redistribute wealth is thought commerce. Liberals have a pathological distortion of the world which causes them to be economically illiterate. Liberal politicians have an obsessive need to get in there and attempt to manipulate and control everyone and everything. The more they do, the worse things become - which they blame on "evil business owners" and capitalism.

The very people who have no business sense what-so-ever, politicians, are the boneheads who attempt to "regulate" businesses. No wonder companies move off-shore, and many who remain are rendered non-competitive.

Government should be protecting our rights, not micro-managing every aspect of our business and personal lives, and destroying our rights along the way.

Those are broad ideological statements. And they don't ring true to many very economically literate people.

I could say "the wealthy come up with elaborate reasons why taxes need to be lower, and they argue for this, when in fact it is really just about their greed. They are in fact voting themselves largess from the public treasury. And then these wealthy conservatives use the religious right and claim of family values and "liberal" bashing to get the uneducated sheep to go along with them."

But if I were to make such a statement, that doesn't make it true. It would just be one small convoluted exaggerated piece of the truth.

It's about where one puts their focus, and it's about balance. No liberal claims that there always has to be more regulation of everything. And no intelligent conservative is going to say taxes always need to be lower. ( that is, as taxes go to zero govt revenues do not go to infinity).