Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)
Excerpt:
Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.
Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics.
The first question was “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.” The unenlighted answer for that one is “disagree”, since restrictions on development reduce the supply of available housing. Demand stays the same and so there is a shortage, and prices rise. D’uh!
Here are the others:
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).
And the results:
How did the six ideological groups do overall? 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 true, the majority of Democrat voters are people who don’t work at all, or they “work” for government, or they “work” in education, or they hold picket signs while on strike, or they are in prison, or they are chasing ambulances, or they are Hollywood celebrities. No economics knowledge is required for any of that. Republicans work in private industry, and many of us own small businesses. So we actually have to work to earn money, because we have competitors to watch out for and consumers to please.
Remember this post: Who knows more about economics? Obama or people who run businesses?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
You are the master of subtle hyperbole.
(I think that’s a compliment, but I’m not entirely sure everyone would agree.)
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I think it’s fun to be mean sometimes.
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Lol nice post, but of course I’m sure you know that academic economists overwhelmingly voted for Obama at the last election. For example, see here http://media.economist.com/media/pdf/Totals1.pdf
82% of academic economists thought that Bush’s economic record was bad or very bad, and only 1% thought it was very good. A HUGE 71% of UNAFFILIATED economists said that Obama had a better grasp of economics than McCain and that Obama would choose a smarter team than his opponent.
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Academic economists are paid by government grants. It’s like asking a government worker whether they want smaller or bigger government. They want bigger government.
I think a better comparison would be to compare GDP growth, unemployment and annual deficits between Bush and Obama.
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I’m sorry if that comment offended you, but I have also seen you use quite strong language when talking about Obama, and leftists generally. I apologize, though.
Actually, you are wrong about when you said that academic economists want bigger government. Not everyone works on self-interest you know, the fact is that these economists that were surveyed generally favoured free trade, lower taxes and less government. Here is a key paragraph in the actual article:
“There is an apparent contradiction between most economists’ support for free trade, low taxes and less intervention in the market and the low marks many give to Mr McCain, who is generally more supportive of those things than Mr Obama. It probably reflects a perception that the Republican Party under George Bush has subverted many of those ideals for ideology and political gain. Indeed, the majority of respondents rate Mr Bush’s economic record as very bad, and Republican respondents are only slightly less critical.”
So basically if the Republican candidates for presidency were actually remotely competent economists or had at least a decent team of economists around them then they’d do great with economists, because on the principles they actually agree.
So it’s clear that the economists do not want bigger government, funny how you straight away assumed that though.
Also this is a pretty crucial part of the article too, “Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject.”
That last sentence is pretty telling in my opinion.
I know that you’ll think, “Oh he’s criticising McCain and Bush so he must be pro-Obama!!!!” However, that would be jumping to conclusions. I am NOT pro-Obama. What I do think is that Bush was an incompetent president when it came to foreign affairs and the economy. I also think that by putting out a candidate who had practically no knowledge of economics (by his OWN admission) in the time of the worst recession in decades was absolutely destined to lead to Obama being supported by most economists.
Of course that doesn’t mean that they’ve favoured the bills he’s passed, which have been much more radically left than he made them out to be in his campaign. I’m sure they are all extremely critical of things such as the bail out bill, health care bill etc.
I’m not arguing in favour of Obama, I’m just criticising Bush, McCain and the rest of the republica party for that matter for constantly fielding candidates who know nothing about the economy.
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And also regarding this point again; “Academic economists are paid by government grants. It’s like asking a government worker whether they want smaller or bigger government. They want bigger government.”
For this to be true, ie acting in their self-interest, you’d first have to show exactly where in the campaign Obama said that he was going to increase the salaries of academic economists or specifically their depts. You haven’t done this and so I must take it that your comment was simply a tactic to sweep the fact under the carpet.
Of course your response now begs the same in turn for whenever Republicans get together a list of business leaders/rich people etc, how they only backed them because they were going to cut their taxes and make them richer.
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