# Study says: the more you lean left, the less you know about economics **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2010, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643 "2010-05-07T16:23:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/181 "2010-05-12T21:56:01Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > It has been shown repeatedly that small changes to min wage don’t cause a rise in unemployment. It has also been shown that large changes will cause unemployment. > > So how am I wrong? You’re trying to argue that the answer “yes” should be acceptable, and this stance is incompatible with an unknown breakpoint at which unemployment will increase. ---
**Author:** ![heatmiserfl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/df705f/32.png) [@heatmiserfl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heatmiserfl)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/182 "2010-05-13T01:16:37Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Actually, that’s all I’m trying to argue. I’ve said repeatedly these are stupid and simplistic questions. Unfortunately the debate has been side tracked 8 different directions as people desperately try to discredit this study based on a question they don’t like. > > And the study acknowledges that problem. A LOT of people refused to participate after reading the questions. Some because they felt they themselves weren’t smart enough, others because they were smart enough to realize the questions were loaded. > > It is a terrible paper, best described as trolling. As far as I can tell it’s intended purpose was to shock the faculty at his college into making econ 101 a requirement for a BA degree. > > But as a psychology study, it’s fascinating to see how rephrased questions can elicit such dramatic responses. I’ve personally found that Fox News is built around questions/statements of this sort. Except in their case the statements are meant to get “middle aged white men angry” and drum up ratings. Each statement is entirely bullshit, but can be argued as “some times true enough to not be a lie.” It’s a tremendously powerful tool. But in no way what so ever does it show that liberals know less about economics. OK, I get what you’re saying. Thanks for the response. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/183 "2010-05-13T02:15:39Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Exactly, and this study showed the college students weren’t able to do that, just like people in this thread. They weren’t able to see “min wage rises unemployment” and go “so what?” Instead, they launch into a tirade about how it was a Republican that did such-and-such study, and about how in some special case unemployment can go down. Knee jerk reactions. > > And none of that is unique to liberals. And yet you said: > [@](#): > > As I said before, the biggest problem with these 8 statements is that liberals NEED them to be false. So, first you say that statement is true, and then, when i point out that it is actually false, you say “Exactly.” You make no sense whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/184 "2010-05-13T02:58:11Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > And yet you said:So, first you say that statement is true, and then, when i point out that it is actually false, you say “Exactly.” You make no sense whatsoever. It gets complicated because some of the statements are _supposed_ to be true and some are \*supposed \*to be false. Consider the recent one: “Raising minimum wage raises unemployment.” Minimum wage laws are a decidedly liberal position, and raising them is generally part of a liberal economic policy. But, the most typical conservative rebuttal will be, “if you raise minimum wage, it will cause unemployment.” The issue here is how to respond in an informed and honest manner. The statement is simplistic, stupid, and it might even be considered trolling. Problem is that it’s _kind of true_. There are scenarios where raising the minimum wage can cause unemployment. It’s a process that has to be applied appropriately, slowly, and gradually. Essentially, it’s a bait question, designed to elicit a knee-jerk response along the lines of, “that’s deranged, of course it won’t.” Except, that answer doesn’t fly, because it _could_ raise unemployment, the statement has enough truth to it that it’s not an actual lie. So when I said that liberals “need that statement to be false” I mean that it’s hard to push an economic policy if the outcome is going to be “higher unemployment.” But it’s also irresponsible to believe that raising minimum wage would never raise unemployment. In order to sell “raising minimum wage” there needs to be both an acknowledgment that unemployment might go up, but also a dismissal. Liberals thus need a response along the lines of “so what?” Which is why I find these statements so typical of Fox News and modern day conservativism. Everything they say is _almost true_, just enough that the uninformed will nod in agreement. But if someone calls them on it, they have an easy rebuttal. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/185 "2010-05-13T05:08:47Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I regret noticing this thread so late. I would have liked to be involved in the discussion from the beginning. Nonetheless, i’ll offer just a couple of observations about economic literacy in general, using this quote as a starting point:I think this sentence is correct in its evaluation of some leftists. There are plenty of left/liberal folks who do, in fact, tend to base their economic opinions on a notion of what is “right.” > > But the sentence also demonstrates a particular type of ignorance on the part of its author, and points to what i think is one of the key problems in the (mis)understanding of economics in American society. > > The author of this sentence seems to assume that what is “right” and what is “good economic practice” are fundamentally disconnected. There’s an assumption that “good economic practice” exists in a world by itself, unencumbered by such nebulous concerns as morality and notions of right and wrong. > > The problem is that economics is a social science, and the only place where economics exists is in the human, social communities that we inhabit. Economics is not just carried out on a blackboard; it affects people, and as such it is a discipline that must take into account both positive and normative factors. By positive, i mean the description and explanation of what is, generally based on concrete data, sometimes referred to as “value-free” economics. By normative, i mean a specific consideration of values and morals, a concern not just with how things are, but with how we, as a society, would like them to be. > > If we rework the quote above to reflect my terminology, it might say something like this:I think that there’s some considerable truth to this. But, as i suggested above, the very notion that there is a single, accepted notion of what constitutes “good economic practice” is, in itself, a reflection of a different type of ignorance, one that privileges positive economics to the (almost?) complete exclusion of normative factors. If leftists are guilty of focusing too much on the normative, i think conservatives and free market advocates are guilty of focusing too much on the positive. > > Let me be very clear about my own beliefs. Despite being something of a leftist, i am firmly convinced that basic microeconomic principles are fundamentally sound, and describe the way that economics works in a very logical and accurate way. Ideas such as scarcity, the relationship between supply and demand, price equilibrium, opportunity cost, and a whole host of others can tell us a lot about how prices shift, about how people make choices, and about how efficiently economic resources are allocated. > > I completely accept, for example, that, based on these microeconomic principles, rent control has a bunch of foreseeable and almost inevitable effects on the housing supply, including reducing the amount of housing, raising the costs for renters in non-controlled units, and ensuring that landlords of rent-controlled housing will do as little as possible to improve or even maintain their properties. > > Furthermore, i accept that every attempt by government to interfere with the market distorts it in some fashion. Even without government intervention, the market itself would not operate anywhere near as perfectly as some free market advocates would have us believe, but i do accept that government intervention has particular effects on the choices that people make, on the way that wealth can be created, and on the amount and distribution of the wealth created. > > But none of this means that intervention in the market is, by itself, a Bad Thing. It is only a Bad Thing is we assume that an unfettered market is, in and of itself, the main goal of human existence. But it’s not. We’re social creatures, and while some ideal free market _might_ be the most efficient way to organize economic activity, i don’t believe that humans need to have efficiency as their over-riding goal for the species. > > To take my example above, while a complete free market _might_ organize housing rental prices most efficiently, i don’t think that there’s anything wrong with society choosing to interfere in the market in such a way that housing is made more affordable for poor people, even if this means that some other people end up paying more. The positive side of economics can tell us about what happens when we do this, and it allows us to make informed choices, but in evaluating the positive, we also need to take into account the normative. > > This also is not to say that rent control is the only solution. If we want to help poor people afford housing, there are other mechanisms for doing it, and we could argue all day about which might work best. My point is simply that every economic decision we take, as individuals and as a society, has fundamental normative and positive components, and i think that economic debate in this country would be more productive if all participants would explicitly accept this, rather than arguing past each other based on hidebound preferences for the normative or for the positive. I like this post a lot. But what the left needs to understand is that libertarians and conservatives don’t just approach the free market as a means to an end in terms of economic efficiency, but the natural outcome of what they see as the right _moral_ framework for society. Even if it could be shown that some government intervention would result in more efficient markets, conservatives and libertarians will reflexively oppose it anyway, on moral grounds. They simply don’t believe it is the government’s right to impose its will on free people in this way. So in the end, we come back to the same old dichotomy. Locke vs Rousseau. Man as a free being who organizes through choice, or man as a social creature born with obligations to society. If you believe that society is larger than the individual and should exert some control on individual choices, you will naturally land on the side of government intervention. You may have your mind changed by an especially compelling argument on that issue, but you start the debate with a built-in bias. Each camp puts the burden of proof on the other. That’s not a bad thing. It just means your morals influence the choices you make, in both your personal and your political life. It’s part of a healthy social debate. It’s too bad so many of the participants are so angry at each other, but that’s what happens when the stakes get high. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/186 "2010-05-13T05:24:33Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I like this post a lot. But what the left needs to understand is that libertarians and conservatives don’t just approach the free market as a means to an end in terms of economic efficiency, but the natural outcome of what they see as the right _moral_ framework for society. Even if it could be shown that some government intervention would result in more efficient markets, conservatives and libertarians will reflexively oppose it anyway, on moral grounds. They simply don’t believe it is the government’s right to impose its will on free people in this way. I agree with this regarding libertarians. Despite disagreeing with many specific libertarian beliefs, i respect their consistency and, in many cases, their fairly solid arguments for a particular notion of what freedom entails. I also have a lot of respect for many writers in the libertarian and classical liberal tradition, from Locke and Smith through to someone like Hayek. Conservatives? Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree. Many conservatives are perfectly happy to have the government impose its will on free people when it suits their particular moral agenda. To repeat a well-worn phrase, plenty of conservatives, especially in the United States, want government just small enough to fit in your bedroom. I would also find your argument more convincing if there weren’t so many free market advocates who reach for the “efficiency” argument first whenever any proposal for government intervention is mooted. I can’t remember when i last heard, in public discourse, a well thought out argument about freedom and the absence of coercion from a free market advocate. All we seem to get, much of the time, is tea party-style assholes who were apparently happy enough with massive deficits and overweening government control under a Republican president, but don’t like it now that someone else controls the purse strings. Strict philosophical advocacy for free markets and government non-intervention is like advocacy for free speech; it has little meaning if you only support it when the particular position accords with your own preferences. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/187 "2010-05-13T06:08:13Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > But the sentence also demonstrates a particular type of ignorance on the part of its author, and points to what i think is one of the key problems in the (mis)understanding of economics in American society. > > The author of this sentence seems to assume that what is “right” and what is “good economic practice” are fundamentally disconnected. There’s an assumption that “good economic practice” exists in a world by itself, unencumbered by such nebulous concerns as morality and notions of right and wrong. Look up the term “unintended consequences”. It basically means that even though you think a particular action is intuitively “right” and “moral”, the actual outcome may actually be the opposite of what you intended. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/188 "2010-05-13T06:15:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Look up the term “unintended consequences”. It basically means that even though you think a particular action is intuitively “right” and “moral”, the actual outcome may actually be the opposite of what you intended. Well aware of what “unintended consequences” means. Doesn’t negate a single bit of what i said. It’s perfectly possible to advocate for liberal economic policies, to be aware of what the drawbacks of such proposals are, and to still believe that the policies are, overall, good policies. No “unintended consequences” about it. Your blithe confidence about what constitutes “good economic practice” is nothing more than a mask for your own particular ideological position. The fact that you apparently don’t even recognize that fact is symptomatic of the problems i was describing in my post. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/189 "2010-05-13T06:53:20Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I like this post a lot. But what the left needs to understand is that libertarians and conservatives don’t just approach the free market as a means to an end in terms of economic efficiency, but the natural outcome of what they see as the right _moral_ framework for society. Even if it could be shown that some government intervention would result in more efficient markets, conservatives and libertarians will reflexively oppose it anyway, on moral grounds. They simply don’t believe it is the government’s right to impose its will on free people in this way. This is very true for some libertarians. I respect the hell out of Hayek (or at least, early _Road to Serfdom_ Hayek, before he became old and cranky.) But it’s completely false for some others. A lot of libertarians–I’m not going to hazard a guess how many, because I simply don’t know–make arguments from efficiency grounds _for as long as they think the argument holds_. That’s the whole reason that gold-worshipping morons show up on these very boards citing Austrian books that are 60 years old as if reading outdated works has magically turned them into experts. Almost the entire point of Austrian economics, as it’s used today, is to provide horseshit efficiency arguments for people who ultimately don’t care about efficiency. They immediately move the goalposts to moral concerns as soon as the efficiency argument no longer seems to work. I’d have a lot more respect for libertarians in general if more of them argued only one way or the other and then stuck with it. But that’s just not the case for many of them (most of them in my experience, but I’m not going to claim that my experience is any kind of fair sampling). And to be fair in the other direction, not all libertarians argue from morality. The single best libertarian blogger in my quite biased opinion is [Scott Sumner](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/), who always and without fail argues from efficiency. And he does an extremely good job of it. He has forced me to rethink a few very important positions. He is, in fact, the only person I’ve ever come across who has made a compelling argument against fiscal stimulus spending. (Of course, this is because he argues for more _monetary_ stimulus, but it’s still an extremely well-thought out and well-argued position.) The ultimate point of this, for me, is that morality can’t be argued honestly unless it’s argued openly. People who dress up their arguments in false efficiency clothing, then change mid-course when it suits them, are far too numerous for me to think fondly of libertarianism in general. I’m extremely thankful whenever I find someone like Sumner who makes his arguments consistently, and forces me to reconsider all the implications of my own positions, but people like him are simply too uncommon in my experience for me to take the rest of the group seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/190 "2010-05-13T07:19:04Z")
I think the basic problem for libertarians is that the vast majority of people don’t share their moral intuitions. They don’t believe that say, taxing rich people more or regulating corporations, is inherently immoral even if it leads to good outcomes. So they are forced to use efficiency arguments in order to make their case. The problem with that is that efficiency arguments based on sound economics don’t necessarily align with libertarian principles. There is a fair bit of evidence that markets often fail to work well and that government intervention can sometimes make things better. Libertarians are reduced to cherrypicking the bits of economics which support their position and ignoring the rest which often makes them look intellectually dishonest or just downright incompetent. ---
**Author:** ![IdahoMauleMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/71c47a/32.png) [@IdahoMauleMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IdahoMauleMan)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/191 "2010-05-13T12:43:56Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > This is very true for some libertarians. I respect the hell out of Hayek (or at least, early _Road to Serfdom_ Hayek, before he became old and cranky.) But it’s completely false for some others. > > A lot of libertarians–I’m not going to hazard a guess how many, because I simply don’t know–make arguments from efficiency grounds _for as long as they think the argument holds_. That’s the whole reason that gold-worshipping morons show up on these very boards citing Austrian books that are 60 years old as if reading outdated works has magically turned them into experts. Almost the entire point of Austrian economics, as it’s used today, is to provide horseshit efficiency arguments for people who ultimately don’t care about efficiency. They immediately move the goalposts to moral concerns as soon as the efficiency argument no longer seems to work. I’d have a lot more respect for libertarians in general if more of them argued only one way or the other and then stuck with it. But that’s just not the case for many of them (most of them in my experience, but I’m not going to claim that my experience is any kind of fair sampling). > > And to be fair in the other direction, not all libertarians argue from morality. The single best libertarian blogger in my quite biased opinion is [Scott Sumner](http://www.themoneyillusion.com/), who always and without fail argues from efficiency. And he does an extremely good job of it. He has forced me to rethink a few very important positions. He is, in fact, the only person I’ve ever come across who has made a compelling argument against fiscal stimulus spending. (Of course, this is because he argues for more _monetary_ stimulus, but it’s still an extremely well-thought out and well-argued position.) > > The ultimate point of this, for me, is that morality can’t be argued honestly unless it’s argued openly. People who dress up their arguments in false efficiency clothing, then change mid-course when it suits them, are far too numerous for me to think fondly of libertarianism in general. I’m extremely thankful whenever I find someone like Sumner who makes his arguments consistently, and forces me to reconsider all the implications of my own positions, but people like him are simply too uncommon in my experience for me to take the rest of the group seriously. Just to chime in, as a self professed wishy-washy libertarian, I’ll add a couple of observations: 1. In my opinion, most hard-core libertarians do not properly recognize externalities. Not only things like environmental damage (which is usually the classic case) but also subtler things like a unproductive populace with declining primary math, reading and writing skills. I believe those things are in the national interest both in terms of economic productivity (and by association) the ability to defend ourselves. You don’t even need to stray from the principles of self-interest in order to be supportive of government efforts in those arenas. 2. Most hard-core libertarians pay short shrift to the equation of Impact = P[event] \* Severity[event]. If the Severity of a negative event is huge, like being overrun by barbarians, or an asteroid wiping out the earth, you cannot rely on lots of incremental market transactions to course-correct your way to the proper answer. 3. Most hard-core libertarians also do not have a full appreciation of, or pay short shrift to, transaction costs associated with something like the interstate highway system, or building the Hoover Dam. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/192 "2010-05-13T13:44:32Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Well aware of what “unintended consequences” means. Doesn’t negate a single bit of what i said. It’s perfectly possible to advocate for liberal economic policies, to be aware of what the drawbacks of such proposals are, and to still believe that the policies are, overall, good policies. No “unintended consequences” about it. Do you believe they should implement policies that are “good policies” even if they don’t produce the expected results? If it could be proven that raising the minimum wage actually creates more unemployment, would that still be a “good policy”? > [@mhendo](#): > > Your blithe confidence about what constitutes “good economic practice” is nothing more than a mask for your own particular ideological position. The fact that you apparently don’t even recognize that fact is symptomatic of the problems i was describing in my post. That’s certainly the pot calling the kettle black. My “ideological position” is that economic policies should attempt to produce the greatest benefit for the greatest amount of people. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/193 "2010-05-13T13:53:52Z")
> [@IdahoMauleMan](#): > > If the Severity of a negative event is huge, like being overrun by barbarians, or an asteroid wiping out the earth, you cannot rely on lots of incremental market transactions to course-correct your way to the proper answer. This is the greatest sentence in the history of the English language. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/194 "2010-05-13T14:01:52Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Look up the term “unintended consequences”. It basically means that even though you think a particular action is intuitively “right” and “moral”, the actual outcome may actually be the opposite of what you intended. You know what, I think this is it. Read back through the [8 statements](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12427714&postcount=4), and this time apply the law of unintended consequences. Each of the statements represent liberal economic philosophy. But each statement also includes a potential negative consequence to that philosophy. Which is why I said, “Liberals NEED the statements to be false.” (in the case of disagreement) And note that it simply states a possible negative consequence, without qualifying HOW possible. _If done wrong,_ restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable. _Expensive and complicated_ mandatory licensing of professional services \*could potentially \*increase the prices of those services. Rent control _could_ lead to housing shortages. etc I’ve had to go back and add certain qualifiers to make the statements more complete. But notice the qualifiers represent actions: HOW you apply development restrictions, HOW you license professions, HOW you control rent increases. All of this seems to lead to the default conservative reaction of, “government is incompetent and could never possible in act such a policy while avoiding the major pitfalls.” It seems to highlight the split between liberals (government can solve problems) and conservatives (governments cause problems). ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/195 "2010-05-13T15:50:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Do you believe they should implement policies that are “good policies” even if they don’t produce the expected results? Not what i said at all. Not even close. > [@msmith537](#): > > If it could be proven that raising the minimum wage actually creates more unemployment, would that still be a “good policy”? Maybe. Maybe not. The point i’ve been trying to make is precisely that we need to look at the conclusions that positive economics can provide us, and then weigh them against the normative pros and cons. If, for example, eliminating the minimum wage would increase employment, but would actually place more people in a situation where they weren’t earning enough to live, then we might decide that the cost of eliminating the minimum wage is too high, despite the decrease in unemployment. We might decide that having 10 percent unemployment with a minimum wage of $7 an hour is preferable to having 4 percent unemployment where about 10 percent of the workforce earns $4 an hour and can’t afford to pay their rent anyway. I’m not saying that this would be the right or the wrong decision; i’m merely noting that simply increasing employment has consequences of its own, not all of which are necessarily positive. > [@msmith537](#): > > My “ideological position” is that economic policies should attempt to produce the greatest benefit for the greatest amount of people. Even if this is true, opinions might vary on precisely what this means. Your example above assumes that more employment is, in itself, the “benefit” that we seek, and that simply having more people employed is an end in itself. But other people’s normative preferences might differ. They might argue that people have a right to a certain minimum level of compensation for the work they do, and that the benefit of some extra jobs would be outweighed, if we eliminated the minimum wage, by the increase in the number of employed people whose already-low wages would drop even further. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/196 "2010-06-10T17:43:59Z")
The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait had [this](http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75399/study-proves-libertarian-economists-ignorant) to say: > [@](#): > > If you look at the questions, though, they turn out not to gauge so much economic knowledge as agreement with the neoclassical economic model. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/197 "2010-06-10T23:00:15Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Under what circumstances would you agree to take a job that pays you less than your MP? If it pays more than my current job or any other job I can find. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/198 "2010-06-11T12:29:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I like this post a lot. But what the left needs to understand is that libertarians and conservatives don’t just approach the free market as a means to an end in terms of economic efficiency, but the natural outcome of what they see as the right _moral_ framework for society. Even if it could be shown that some government intervention would result in more efficient markets, conservatives and libertarians will reflexively oppose it anyway, on moral grounds. They simply don’t believe it is the government’s right to impose its will on free people in this way. Maybe this is true for libertarians, but I don’t think it is for conservatives - at least, not for this conservative. I support free markets because they produce the greatest good for the greatest number, as well as because they maximize freedom. Therefore, as a conservative I support a (minimally) regulated market rather than absolute _laissez-faire_. But I support the free market based on the accumulated experience of the last three hundred years or so. One of the best lines I ever heard was Thomas Sowell of the University of Chicago. Someone interviewing him mentioned his “bias in favor of free markets”. Sowell replied, in tones of icy politeness (quoted from memory) - > [@](#): > > I do not have biases in favor of the free market. I have **information about** the free market. > [@](#): > > If you believe that society is larger than the individual and should exert some control on individual choices, you will naturally land on the side of government intervention. You may have your mind changed by an especially compelling argument on that issue, but you start the debate with a built-in bias. Each camp puts the burden of proof on the other. Nothing wrong with this - I agree. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/199 "2010-06-11T15:51:38Z")
The “free market” has the same weakness that Marx’s “workers paradise” has: it has never existed, does not currently exist, and, in all probability, never will. Where does Mr Sowell obtain “information” on something that does not exist? How does one measure the length of unicorns horn? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/200 "2010-06-11T16:56:45Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > The “free market” has the same weakness that Marx’s “workers paradise” has: it has never existed, does not currently exist, and, in all probability, never will. Where does Mr Sowell obtain “information” on something that does not exist? How does one measure the length of unicorns horn? We approximate. Like we do for everything else we can’t directly measure. It is very much an open question whether or not our particular style of markets and private ownership is close enough to the unicorn’s horn to get at least some of the benefits. We also kind of don’t know whether we do any better the closer we get to mythical competitive markets. It may well be that we are worse off as we approach perfection, but once perfection kicks in, we are golden. There is a lot we really just don’t know. I think you would really enjoy a book by Albert O Hirschmann called [Exit, Voice, and Loyalty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty). It’s short, non-technical, and marvelously written. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643.md?page=11)