This study is ridiculous the one and only accurate conclusion that could have appeared at the end of this study would have been something like:
Based on our observations people who identify themselves as “conservative” and/or “libertarian” in their political views agree with the authors of this study more than people who identify themselves as “moderate,” “liberal” or “progressive” on economic issues. Thus if the authors didn’t already know what group they aligned with economically it could now safely be conclude that they are either conservative or libertarian.
In order for the authors to conclude anything else many fallacies in their logic must be addressed.
First the authors need to prove or at least define “economic enlightenment”.
To “prove” economic enlightenment the authors would have to be able to show scientifically that there is a correct answer to each of the questions, that the conclusions are testable and accurately repeatable. This is something that mathematicians, physicist and chemists have all succeeded in doing for the “truths” of their disciplines but no economists from any of the different schools of thought (from Adam Smith to Carl Marx and Keynes to Hayek) has yet to be able to do this for “economic truths.” Thus if you can not prove what is economic enlightenment how can you show one group of people to be more enlighten than any other.
The authors could get around proving “economic enlightenment” by defining “economic enlightenment” as a particular theory and thus those responses that agree with that theory are more “enlightened”. At the same time, it is just as easy for someone from the other side to do the same thing and define “economic enlightenment” as a completely different theory and thus those responses that agree with that different theory are more “enlightened”. However, the mere act of defining “economic enlightenment” as in-line with an unproven ideology (a.k.a. dogma) does not make it true and the act of getting more people do agree or disagree with that dogma doesn’t make it any more or less true.
What the authors are doing is using words to create a misconception about the legitimacy of their article and their particular ideology. This is also known as propaganda and unfortunately it occurs in economic journals published in the US just as readily as it occurs in articles attempting to support other economic ideologies in other countries. All you have to do to find a particular country’s propaganda promoting its particular economic system is find an economic journal published in that country. In sometimes the government publishes it and in other times other special interest groups that are benefiting from that particular system publish it but either way it’s still propaganda. Just because the ideology that this particular article promotes is the dominate system that US economic system was built around does not make that ideology anymore “enlightened” than any of the other economic systems that have been around and functioning for just as long if not longer.
Personally I think it is absurd that we keep arguing over economic ideas that were written by normal men with all their faults over 200 years ago. You’d think that after 10 generations we’d be able to learn from the failures and successes of all of these ideologies and make some better economic systems than the ones some old dead guys wrote down centuries ago with only antidotal stories and imagined scenarios as the basis for their writings. But that’s beside the point.
Anyway, back to the article. Along with defining “enlightenment” the authors also need to define other phrases they use in their survey such as “standard of living.” If you only take into account the amount of stuff the “average US citizen” has as your measurement and claim that more stuff equals a higher standard of living then yes the Average US citizen has a higher standard of living. But this is misleading in the following ways. First the word “Average” is very misleading because it doesn’t differentiate between the 3 different types of average and in any case using only an average (any of the 3 types) does not address the range or distribution therefore the fairness of the system is not addressed and thus the fact that the nation has been facing a greater and greater disparity in the separation of wealth, material goods, and power over the last 30 years is also not addressed or accounted for.
However, even if these issues were addressed, the idea that a “standard of living” can be measured as directly proportional to the amount of money and stuff a person has is another fallacy. In fact there is very little correlation between stuff and happiness over a certain point. To properly evaluate “standard of living” other factors such as overall happiness, over all health, lack of stress, life expectancy and other non-tangible things such as the feeling of being respected and a part of a community should also be included. Case in point over the last 30 years many of these things have been on a decline. The average (all three different types) US citizen reports, less job satisfaction, more stress, and less happiness then US citizens reported in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In particular happiness has declined across the board in all socioeconomic groups in all regions of the country. The authors do not address any of these issues in how they describe a “standard of living” nor do they define what they are including in a “standard of living” to the survey participants, which means the survey participants cannot accurately evaluate what the authors’ claim as a “standard of living”. Nor would it be reasonable for a college student who was not alive 30 years ago to accurately judge all these non-tangible factors in their calculations of “standard of living”
The question of standard of living also does not define how “overall” you want to get. By almost any measure the standard of living in southeast Asia and parts of Africa is certainly not higher than it was 30 years ago because there are more mouths to feed and less food to do it with. By the way if you want an example of something that does not degrease in demand even as the price goes up food would be one of them.
To describe this article as academic is stupid and if this article is a peer reviewed piece of work then that doesn’t say much for economist or for the study of economics. No wonder we are in this so-called recession.
