FLASH: THOSE WHO ARE POLITICALLY CONSERVATIVE/LIBERTARIAN ALSO HAVE CONSERVATIVE/LIBERTARIAN ECONOMIC VIEWS (AND ARE GENIUSES ZOMG)
That’s not the headline for this inane WSJ article about an inane poll, but it should be. The headline is instead, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics.”
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…
The other questions were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).
Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.
It’s wholly unremarkable that respondents’ political beliefs, which are often determined, or at least mutually reinforced, by their economic beliefs, are correlated with these answers.
The only question/answer I can’t quibble with is 4, which is a matter of semantics. The rest are contentious questions, some even within the mainstream. Question 5, in particular, would receive an automatic “strongly agree” from anyone working even loosely within the Marxian framework (which, by implication, is unenlightened). Some readers of this blog will be disappointed that there wasn’t a question reading, “Deficits are bad (unenlightened answer: disagree)”. Apparently that question is too settled to make the cut in this poll.
In any event, I don’t really have much else to say about this, just that it made my eyes bleed. I’m just going to hit “publish” so I don’t have to think about this anymore. Mind. Numbing.
“Deficits are bad” is settled, just as “God responds to my prayers” is settled. Both are based on faith, not on fact.
How about “Money growth is necessary for economic growth.” That one has factual substantiation.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Yep. Do you find this omission telling, or am I reading too much into it?
Theory: the deficit hawkery in the media has worked sufficiently such that the pollsters didn’t believe such a question would generate any variation among political groups. Thus, their goal of proving that “Librls R stoopid” would not be aided by this question, and if it came at the expense of say, the minimum wage question, it would hurt their argument.
Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit…
[...] Nick Krafft shows how inane the study is. And Nate Silver, who took a pass the first time around (“I thought Klein’s study was so obviously flawed that it wasn’t really worth commenting on”), discusses the study’s flawed methodology. 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. [...]
I think you guys are dismissing Klein’s findings way too easily. They used basic econ 101 questions about supply and demand – not marginal theories held by a minority of economists. Conservatives are often lambasted for being “anti-science” yet here we have an example of liberals holding beliefs contrary to the scientific consensus in economics. (This also really puts a wrench in the whole “conservatives hold beliefs because they hate poor people” narrative.)
I’d really like to see someone try to explain the results rather than just dismiss them.
The results are pretty easily explained by the fact that most people address these questions in the political space. And, they are part of a larger economic discourse, as this post points out.
http://anticap.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/economic-enlightenment/