# 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:** 6
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/101 "2010-05-11T03:06:43Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I take your point, **emacknight** , but consider the following thought experiment. Sample another set of similar college students and ask them the same questions without the political ambiguity. > > -Exogenous reduction of supply of a good will increase its price. > -Barriers to entry into the marketplace increases the price of a good offered. > -People in third world countries are paid less than their marginal products. > > Hell, sample the same college students and check their answers for consistency. I am pretty sure that more students would answer the abstract questions without the political overtones correctly. The answers for many of these questions when you add in the nuance is _maybe_ or _sometimes_. All we are really testing here is students’ thresholds for making confidence judgments that are either yes or no. No one is being asked to specify a model setup here or anything. Right, if you remove the political ambiguity, and thus ask specific and direct economics questions, you will probably get a similar failure rate. Since after all, these students were not required to take econ courses as part of their degree. But when you ask these questions of Joe the Plumber on his way out of Wal-mart, he won’t be able to answer them either. What you’ve done is show that both students and laymen without economics training fail to answer economics questions. The same way if I asked the difference between mitosis and miosis I’d get failure from both groups. It’s also why I used the “objects of different mass fall at the same rate” statement. It generate the same sort of thought process as these 8 questions. An idiot has observed two objects fall and noted they fell at different rates so the statement is false. And an educated person would say something along the lines of, “that’s only true in a vacuum, real life doesn’t have a vacuum, so the statement is false.” What is interesting about this study is that the author phrased the questions in such a way that educated individuals were guessing wrong, but completely uneducated individuals were guessing right. Hence the title of the study. It’s also why **Sam Stone’s** example was good: Increasing taxes decreases revenue. Educated conservatives would tend to erroneously agree with this statement, while uneducated individuals would tend guess correctly since more taxes means more money. The authors targeted a group they knew trended liberal, and baited them with questions they knew liberals would answer _wrong_. Definitely trolling, but a rather crafty execution. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/102 "2010-05-11T03:12:37Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Right, if you remove the political ambiguity, and thus ask specific and direct economics questions, you will probably get a similar failure rate. Since after all, these students were not required to take econ courses as part of their degree. No, that’s not what I said. I believe the students would do quite a bit better if the questions weren’t so loaded. This doesn’t necessarily make them more “enlightened” because they very likely will answer the loaded and the abstract questions differently. I think it would tell us at what point people are uncritical of their own beliefs. Professional economists are occasionally no better at this than Joe the Plumber. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/103 "2010-05-11T03:19:47Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12439008#post12439008), go nuts. Whatever dude. You, for whatever reason, have decided to ignore what I’ve actually stated in this thread and substitute something else. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/104 "2010-05-11T03:23:58Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Gotta wonder, how much of what is considered orthodox academic economics is skewed to reflect the interests and philosophy of the monied classes? Well, how many lefties endow economics chairs in universities? You’re the dean, there’s an opening to head the economics dept. You review your list of generous alumni, and pass over the guy favored by the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Inst. and pick the guy favored by the AFL-CIO? > > There used to be Marxist economics, you know. Built on absurd principles, it couldn’t help but be an absurd study, but there it was. People took degrees in Marxist economics, published learned papers on the subject, engaged in petty squabbles over orthodoxy, got paid to supervise teaching assistants. The whole magilla. > > And, of course, it was nonsense, because no academic study can have any objectivity if overwhelmed by a political orthodoxy, its like Lysenko all over again. > > But who’s to say that there isn’t a roughly parallel situation here in the US? How much of such academic endowments and grants have to do with furthering science and how much to pay academic mouthpieces to lend intellectual dignity to a bankrupt system? > > The guys who just drove the economy over a cliff, the alpha lemmings - did they take courses in economics? Was there anything in those courses that led them to think breathtaking ratios of leverage were a really, really good idea? You make a good point, the authors even comment on this. But I don’t think the recent recession shows a flaw in the economic principles, but rather how they are applied. The same way a bridge can collapse. It’s not because engineering professors put a slant on their lectures. It’s because there is a degree of interpretation of how the principles should be applied. “Minimum wage laws raise unemployment” If that was an engineering question, analysis of it would involve breaking it down into its component principles: 1. what is the current actual minimum wage 2. what is the proposed change 3. how would that change labour costs 4. how much profit is available to respond to an increase in labour costs, if there is sufficient profit the company could possibly absorb the increased cost. If they are already a zero profit, increased labour costs mean decreasing the number of workers. 5. what is the current unemployment, how much more is acceptable, 6. what is the cost associated with increased unemployment If someone was to totally botch one of those 6 questions, the whole thing collapses, like a bridge with one bad gusset plate. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/105 "2010-05-11T04:05:43Z")
Not meaning to suggest that no such study as economics exists, but wondering how much of what we have here as accepted orthodox economics is suspect, due to political influence. Or, more correctly, the influence of a preferred political philosophy and the need to validate that philosophy. For instance, the questions you outline above are entirely sensible questions. A practitioner of Marxist economics would likely ask very similar questions, just transposed into the key he sings in. Its nearly impossible to imagine that such influences from the business community and the wealthy don’t have some influence, the question is how much, how significant? No idea what metric one might apply. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/106 "2010-05-11T04:26:05Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > No, that’s not what I said. I believe the students would do quite a bit better if the questions weren’t so loaded. This doesn’t necessarily make them more “enlightened” because they very likely will answer the loaded and the abstract questions differently. I think it would tell us at what point people are uncritical of their own beliefs. > > Professional economists are occasionally no better at this than Joe the Plumber. I think we’re saying similar things, although what you seem to be characterizing as “politically loaded,” I would characterize as “value judgments.” But, my point is that a statement such as “People in third world countries are paid less than their marginal products” is a statement of economics that lends itself to economic analysis whereas a statement about “exploitation” is dependent on how you choose to define exploitation. While many people would choose to define a worker who is being paid less than his marginal products as being exploited, a number of people, for ideological reasons do not chose to define the term that way, and I believe the authors of this study fall into that group. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/107 "2010-05-11T05:12:26Z")
> [@BrightNShiny](#): > > I think we’re saying similar things, although what you seem to be characterizing as “politically loaded,” I would characterize as “value judgments.” But, my point is that a statement such as “People in third world countries are paid less than their marginal products” is a statement of economics that lends itself to economic analysis whereas a statement about “exploitation” is dependent on how you choose to define exploitation. While many people would choose to define a worker who is being paid less than his marginal products as being exploited, a number of people, for ideological reasons do not chose to define the term that way, and I believe the authors of this study fall into that group. What you are saying doesn’t make sense. “Marginal product” is the additional output produced by adding one additional unit of labor. As you add workers overall production per worker increases to a point and then begins to decrease as they start to get in each others way and create bottlenecks. You wouldn’t use marginal product to determine the fairness of wages. You use marginal product to determine the number of workers that maximimizes production. I don’t see what the price of the products produced has anything to do with whether a worker is being “exploited”. Exploitation is about working conditions and economic freedom. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/108 "2010-05-11T05:22:16Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What you are saying doesn’t make sense. “Marginal product” is the additional output produced by adding one additional unit of labor. As you add workers overall production per worker increases to a point and then begins to decrease as they start to get in each others way and create bottlenecks. You wouldn’t use marginal product to determine the fairness of wages. You use marginal product to determine the number of workers that maximimizes production. I’m not using it to determine the fairness of wages (since fairness is again a value judgment). I’m saying that you can analyze the statement as a statement of economics (which you then proceeded to do). I have made exactly 2 statements about “fairness” in this thread: (1) that the concept of fairness (or exploitation of whatever) is a value judgment and that (2) the fact of being paid a wage, any wage, doesn’t indicate by itself whether the wage is “fair” or “exploitative.” > [@](#): > > I don’t see what the price of the products produced has anything to do with whether a worker is being “exploited”. Exploitation is about working conditions and economic freedom. This is my point. What exactly is “exploitative” is defined by which metrics you chose to look at, which is a value judgment. You have defined “exploitation” to be about working conditions and economic freedom. I think those are acceptable metrics to look at, but I don’t think they’re necessarily the only metrics to look at. ETA: I read the use of “marginal products” to mean that the employee is not being paid enough to compensate for the additional value of his output (which, remember, that’s not my phrasing). ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/109 "2010-05-11T05:44:41Z")
Gotta work. I’m out for a few days. If anyone doesn’t agree with me that some of these statements are value judgments rather than clear statements of economic principle, we’ll have to agree to disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/110 "2010-05-11T08:02:12Z")
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**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/111 "2010-05-11T12:29:12Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What you are saying doesn’t make sense. “Marginal product” is the additional output produced by adding one additional unit of labor. As you add workers overall production per worker increases to a point and then begins to decrease as they start to get in each others way and create bottlenecks. You wouldn’t use marginal product to determine the fairness of wages. You use marginal product to determine the number of workers that maximimizes production. > > I don’t see what the price of the products produced has anything to do with whether a worker is being “exploited”. Exploitation is about working conditions and economic freedom. One of the most basic findings of the neoclassical wage labor model is that workers _are_ paid their marginal products. This is what allows labor markets to clear in models of perfect competition. I hate to cite [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_economics), but: > [@](#): > > Many economists have thought that, in the absence of laws or organisations such as unions or large multinational corporations, labour markets can be close to perfectly competitive in the economic sense.[citation needed] The competitive assumption leads to clear conclusions — workers earn their marginal product of labour. I’m not a labor economist, but am not entirely unfamiliar with labor models. Some of the assumptions are obviously abstract and not wholly reasonable. But the idea that workers are paid their marginal products is anything but crazy. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/112 "2010-05-11T13:04:59Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > “Minimum wage laws raise unemployment” > > If that was an engineering question, analysis of it would involve breaking it down into its component principles: > > 1. what is the current actual minimum wage > 2. what is the proposed change > 3. how would that change labour costs > 4. how much profit is available to respond to an increase in labour costs, if there is sufficient profit the company could possibly absorb the increased cost. If they are already a zero profit, increased labour costs mean decreasing the number of workers. > 5. what is the current unemployment, how much more is acceptable, > 6. what is the cost associated with increased unemployment > > If someone was to totally botch one of those 6 questions, the whole thing collapses, like a bridge with one bad gusset plate. I like your approach. The problem I’ve always had with the “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” meme is that it assumes that the employer had too many workers in the first place. If he’s an efficient employer, he already has the minimum number of employees. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/113 "2010-05-11T13:11:01Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > Well, **Bricker** , what do you have to say to _that_? > > Irrefutable, I say! Such a cogent argument, I’ve alerted the mods to it so they can bask in the impeccable logic. Sometimes you just have to admit when you’ve been bested. Beaten by nyc asian escorts. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/114 "2010-05-11T13:58:49Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I’m not a labor economist, but am not entirely unfamiliar with labor models. Some of the assumptions are obviously abstract and not wholly reasonable. But the idea that workers are paid their marginal products is anything but crazy. It’s perfectly reasonable. I just don’t understand what it has to do with exploiting workers. > [@BobLibDem](#): > > I like your approach. The problem I’ve always had with the “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” meme is that it assumes that the employer had too many workers in the first place. If he’s an efficient employer, he already has the minimum number of employees. Minimum number of employees to do what? Production isn’t fixed. Potential revenue isn’t fixed. When you increase minimum wage, you increase employers costs. If the marginal costs of hiring another worker is greater than the revenue that worker will produce, it’s not worthwhile to hire them. The employer will turn away potential work, decreasing overall production, because it isn’t cost effective to take that work on. ---
**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 11, 2010, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/115 "2010-05-11T14:00:32Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I like your approach. The problem I’ve always had with the “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” meme is that it assumes that the employer had too many workers in the first place. If he’s an efficient employer, he already has the minimum number of employees. The problem I have with this logic is that it assumes that the right number of workers is a constant, and does not change with labor costs. This is clearly not true. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/116 "2010-05-11T14:32:51Z")
Let’s try a simple example. You’re running a McDonald’s, say. Your employees make minimum wage. That wage goes up by law. What happens? Are you going to cut production? Not really an option in a fast food joint. Are you going to cut back on employees? If the answer to that is yes, then the logical question is why do you have excess employees in the first place? If you could get by without them, you already would be. So the only alternatives left to you are raising prices or decreasing profits, neither of which is going to raise unemployment. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/117 "2010-05-11T15:40:34Z")
In fairness, yes it can - if the resulting increase in fast-food prices drives marginal consumers out of the market, then volume will decrease and the demand for employees will decrease as well. But not if the consumption curve is so inelastic that there’s no change over that price range, which might be the case. ---
**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 11, 2010, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/118 "2010-05-11T16:42:31Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > So to sum up: The group most economically enlightened are Asians, that voted McCain (or Barr), obviously don’t consider themselves latino, live in the suburbs, are atheist, married, fans of NASCAR, not an investor, shops at Wal-mart, and earns less than $50k a year. Kneel before me! Well, except for the McCain bit, but I can’t vote. > [@elucidator](#): > > I think someone forgot to install their humor chip this morning. It was entirely clear to me that friend **Bricker** was indulging in a bit of fun. Yep… and that goes for his OP too. > [@msmith537](#): > > Furthermore, it seems like a lot of left leaning types base their economics opinions on what they believe is “right” and not necessarily what is good economic practice. This is certainly true. In fact, speaking for myself, I see minimal differences in economic and fiscal performance regardless of which party is in control of Congress, so I base my political support largely on candidates’ social policy positions. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/119 "2010-05-11T17:38:07Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > It’s perfectly reasonable. I just don’t understand what it has to do with exploiting workers. Under what circumstances would you agree to take a job that pays you less than your MP? ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643/120 "2010-05-11T17:39:20Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > it seems to me that what the study has really proved is simply that leftists are more prone to choose left-wing ideology over basic econ principles than right-wingers are prone to choose left-wing ideology over basic econ principles. Good point. But it’s worth noting the same logic when people try to claim that Fox News viewers are more ignorant than viewers of other networks. In that case too, the result is derived by focusing specifically on right-wing nonsense, versus asking about left-wing nonsense. I see your premise above has gotten support in this thread, and yet the Fox stuff gets trotted out all the time here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/study-says-the-more-you-lean-left-the-less-you-know-about-economics/538643.md?page=7)