Study says: the more you lean left, the less you know about economics

Great Debates
161

Let’s take this back one step further: Santa Clause is real. Agree or disagree?

6 year old, agree.
12 year old, disagree.
Parent, agree.

Wait, what? Why would a grown adult agree with such an obviously false statement? Maturity and context.

The 6 year old is completely uneducated, was told Santa Clause is real, and wants to believes it. And hey, why not, it means presents. But the 12 year old considers himself educated, he realized his parents buy the presents, and that he doesn’t need to believe in it to get the gifts.

Then maturity and context sets in. As a parent, you see an element of joy in a child experiencing Christmas. You also know that you are Santa Clause and that you exist. You no longer feel the need to run around ruining the fun for younger children the way a 12 year old would.

I took first year physics, I know objects fall at a certain rate. I also have an engineering degree, so if I wanted to, I could sit in a physics class and be a shit disturber. I could point out that real life doesn’t involve vacuums or ideal gases, or frictionless surfaces. I could write a very length term paper on why that statement is false. But if I was presented one day at Wal-mart with a survey that said, “Agree or disagree: Objects of different mass fall at the same rate.” I would know to answer correctly. I don’t need it to be pre-faced by a bunch of qualifiers. Maturity and context.

Now, if I was in a room full of engineers trying to predict where an object would land, and a guy said, “mass doesn’t matter” I would join in with everyone as we laughed the guy out of the room. Context.

Look back through the 8 statements and apply a level of maturity to them. A student with a liberal arts education might be well informed about the atrocities committed by American companies in third world countries. But maturity and context tells one not to react so quickly to an obviously stupid statement. As I said, “The definition of exploitation is NOT a third world worker working for an American company.”

ETA I would argue the need for more economics education is highlighted by the need for maturity. The ability to argue your point based on sound economic principles. In other words, to know why someone thinks objects fall at the same rate, and then have the ability to show them why they might not.

162

This is, in itself, a completely false statement.

One can be a liberal, and can support mechanisms like minimum wage laws, rent control, and licensing of professionals, while still accepting that these mechanisms have consequences for the market. The question is, or should be, whether the consequences are acceptable in light of the benefits that these mechanisms bring. Obviously the answer to this question will depend upon one’s political values, and liberals will often answer that the costs are acceptable, but it is simply and completely untrue to hold that liberal values REQUIRE that the statements in question be false.

163

Go to your nearest shopping centre/mall or whatever, and ask twenty random adults if Santa exists.

I would be amazed if more than one said yes (who wasn’t taking the piss)

164

Yes, a liberal with a firm understanding of basic economic principles can speak with more authority on some issues than one without it, and one versed in these principles AND the many deeper, real-world nuances with more authority still – and that person will have found that many of the basic principles run against their bias, while many of the nuances confirm their bias.

Meanwhile, a conservative with a firm understanding of basic economic principles can ALSO speak with more authority on some issues than one without it, and one versed in these principles AND the many deeper, real-world nuances with more authority still – BUT that person will have found that many of the basic principles confirm their bias, while many of the nuances run against it.

No big deal, and no surprise. One hopes that both the conservative and the liberal, upon learning something which runs agaist their bias, will be able to engage in debates with a more open mind than before.

This is, in a way, really just another way to state what mhendo just said.

165

Context and maturity: Ask them when their kids are there. And ask them if they’ve ever told their kids Santa exists. See my point?

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.

166

So your suggestion is really that absent this knee jerk reaction, liberals schooled in economics, such as myself, should have answered the question incorrectly, and said that minimum wage rises increase unemployment?

They don’t. The times when they do are the outliers, like the spurious example of what happens if you double the minimum wage. In the majority of instances, increasing the minimum wage in reasonable increments has no negative effect on employment, and may well lead to increased employment.

Unfortunately, if you judge things by Econ 101, you would get that wrong.

167

It isn’t that liberals require these things to be true so much as ideologically motivated college students without much maturity and experience require these things to be true. These results are about as exciting as the recent study that demonstrated that obese kids get picked on more at school. I’m shocked.

168

My suggestion is that absent a knee jerk reaction, a person should be able to read, “raising min wage raises unemployment” and know how to respond.

This very simple and stupid statement is true, as you said. A large change in min wage will cause a ripple leading to unemployment. If you do it small enough, over a long enough time, employers are able to adjust and compensate. Like I said, if min wage is $5 now, raising it slowly to $6 in stages has very little effect on unemployment. But if you go from $5 to $10 you get a mess leading to unemployment.

But notice that the statement doesn’t have all the extra qualifiers that move it from econ 101 into the real world. It doesn’t say, “slowly raising min wage…” or “a rise in unemployment that will eventually come down.”

It’s just like Newton’s laws of motion, there are times when it works, and times when it doesn’t.

It is a stupid and simplistic statement, which you know the answer to. So then context is important. There is a right time to dismiss the questions with “obviously, but so what?” And there is a right time to discuss the nuances of economic policy.

So we get back to maturity: the ability to know how and when to answer correctly.

169

Honestly, bollocks.

The statement “drinking water kills you” is patently false, despite the fact that you can die from drinking too much water. Similarly, the statement “increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment” is false, despite the fact that large increases in the minimum wage will increase unemployment.

The bottom line is the majoirty of proposed increases in the minimum wage will not increase unemployment, and may decrease it. Therefore the answer to the question, unless you are stuck in some rational expectations, free market based right wing fantasy zone, is “no.”

There is nothing mature about answering a question wrongly.

170

True or false: If applied wrong, a minimum wage law will cause unemployment.

True or false: There exists a change in minimum wage that will cause unemployment (we could probably chart this with small changes lowering unemployment, large changes raising it).

Essentially, what we’re talking about here is the ability to answer a question honestly, without having to dig into the war chest of ideology.

Raising min wage will raise unemployment, UNLESS the changes are small and spread out over time.

There is also a corresponding conservative version:

Raising min wage will LOWER unemployment [if applied correctly]. My guess is that most conservatives would strongly disagree with this statement.

Essentially, both liberals and conservatives should be enlightened enough to know when raising a minimum wage will cause unemployment, so as NOT to cause unemployment.

Why? Because raising min wage laws CAN cause unemployment.

A person that believes raising min wage laws will lower unemployment is just as likely to apply that principle wrong if they are unable to understand how it could raise unemployment.

First understand the principle, then apply it properly.

171

Okay, let me try one more time:

If you were invited on the President’s economic policy team, and he said, “Villa, we want to raise the min wage but what we need to do is make sure we don’t cause unemployment. We want you to put together all the possible scenarios you can in which raising the min wage would cause unemployment.”

Could you do it?

172

True or False: Drinking water, if done incorrectly, will kill a person. Does that mean that if asked the question, does drinking water kill people, it is a knee-jerk reaction to answer “no”?

Most increases in minimum wage, and most proposals to implement minimum wages, have not caused increases in unemployment. Why you persist in insisting the right answer is the counterfactual one, because you can think of a situation where tripling the minimum wage causes unemployment amongst drive-through workers, absolutely amazes me.

The fact that Econ 101 teaches people that minimum wage hikes cause increases in unemployment doesn’t mean that either (a) minimum wage hikes actually do cause increases in unemployment; or (b) higher level economics teaches people that minimum wage hikes cause increases in unemployment.

173

emacknight, why do you feel the need to alter the question in order to make your preferred answer seem more correct? Is it a knee-jerk thing?

174

If you had the “correct” answer to this quiz, your answer to the President would be “Mr President, we cannot raise the minimum wage at all, because if we did we would necessarily raise unemployment.”

175

Nope, wrong.

176

Nope, you’re wrong.

177

I’m sorry but this is getting ridiculous. It’s maturity now? You’re trying so hard with the same types of analogies, over and over again to convince us that the article tells us anything interesting beyond the fact that college educated people know more things and have a hard time answering simplistic, badly-phrased questions. An econ101 student can only answer them ‘correctly’ because they have superficial knowledge.

You science examples were especially silly. You completely missed the point about Ebola virus, for example. It was a poorly-phrased question. If you were a professor writing a question like that even in biology 101 class, you’d have pre-med students throwing a fit. And it wouldn’t be because of your ridiculous response about hemorrhagic disease. It would be exactly as carm said, “does that mean? 100% fatality or does it just mean that people can die from Ebola?”

You’re physics examples are also way off the mark. Some of the questions on that 8 question survey are no where near as precise as your example of “The rate an object falls is dependent on the mass of the object. Agree or disagree.” Some of the questions are more like, “Objects fall at the same rate.” With a question like that, even people educated in physics wouldn’t know how to answer that because they need the qualifiers of vacuum, frictional coefficient, etc. Not because they’re immature, knee-jerking or liberals or something. They wouldn’t be able to answer it because it’s a shitty question. Why you can’t see that is beyond me.

I asked my Dad (degree on Poli Sci. with Economics minor) and husband (MBA) and there were 4 questions they refused to answer. Minimum wage, standard of living, free trade and exploitation.

178

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.

179

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?

180

It’s because when a true/false statement is given, it must always be true to count as true - a single counterexample counters it.

You might be able to get some slack on this if in most practical or common cases, the statement would be correct - as in, “drinking water is non-fatal”. However that’s not the case here.