Shocker… Far Left Progressives Have Low Levels of Economic Knowledge
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, May 8, 2010, 10:09 PM
Put down the coffee…
A recent study concluded that far left socialists have low levels of economic knowledge.
Of course, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi would be a perfect examples of this theory.
Thanks to Matthew Yglesias for the story:
According to Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein, people who self-identify as “progressive” have low levels of economic knowledge whereas those who self-identify as “libertarian” or “very conservative” rank very highly. For reasons suggested by Tyler Cowen, I think that conclusion is nonsense. But I do think they have the goods on the fact that people who self-identify with the left have some trouble grasping the interplay of prices and supply restrictions.
If you ever doubted this just look at the economy since Obama took office.
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Published February 8, 2012 at 8:42 pm - 106 Comments
Jo commented:
Hussein is a community organizer. They demonize and give speeches of lies. That is all they do. there should be tons of proof out there.
Opaobie commented:
“A fool and his money are soon parted.”
JKB commented:
This can’t be right. Those progressives by and large have those Harvard, Yale and other e-light educations.
Why they are brilliant, just ask them.
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Auntie Em commented:
Oh, but they are educated on the ways of the world. You know….the things that will pass away.
I wouldn’t let Obama balance my checkbook. He’d steal whatever little bit I had in there.
M Malone commented:
Well, there’s math involved…
Aaron commented:
Most people don’t have a true understanding of how economics work. I’m an economics and finance student and the field is so incredibly complex that I doubt any politician knows what they’re talking about.
logprof commented:
“For reasons suggested by Tyler Cowen, I think that conclusion is nonsense. But I do think they have the goods on the fact that people who self-identify with the left have some trouble grasping the interplay of prices and supply restrictions.”
–I think he means the interplay between taxes and unicorns.
JR commented:
BO isn’t very bright – just look at the grades he earned in his college economics classes.
Ben K commented:
That federal budget chart ought to scare the daylight out of anybody. You don’t need to be a Harvard grad to count all those ‘zeros’.
Fuzzy commented:
Did we really need this study to tell us this with Europe’s economy collapsing around their ears? What’s hard to understand about this simple concept: spending money you do not have is bad, no matter how good your motive sounds to your own ears.
LimoLibsStink commented:
0bama:
I may not have held an honest job in my life and I maybe a flaming liberal but I take exception to that report.
In the good old days I could just sue any bank under the CRA and shake them down for millions. In the good old days Jesse Jackson would scream racist to some honky company and they would pay him to go away. By Allah, I wish those good old days would return.
Some may call that extortion and others may call it race-baiting but I call it “Organizing.” I may not know much about economics but I sure know how to scam the Tax Payer. I guess just we just milked the Cash Cow dry. Oh, well. I’ll find another one.
My limousine is spewing fumes I and have a meeting with Barney Frank and Greece. We will see who gets the shaft – the American Tax payer – of course. We just have to figure out how to hide it. Good day.
squeaky commented:
from free republic – “rise up”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zntBAkzGaM
Militant Conservative commented:
Basic Economics by Tomas Sowell.
Econ is easy as pie once you learn ONE thing. centralized planning NEVER works. Government is a parasite and we are the host. The host is dying due to the parasite. powder is dry.
Opus #6 commented:
Progressives never grew up. They want mommy and daddy (nanny state) taking care of everything. They are jealous of mommy and daddy’s ability to be grown ups and want them under punishing taxes. It’s only fair (not).
kato commented:
Who needed the study? Anyone who has ever talked to a progressive can’t help but see how ignorant he is — about economics, about history, about everything, really, except, the political propaganda that he’s bought into.
And teleprompters don’t make him sound any smarter.
mark commented:
Let me see if I can help you Liberals a bit. Let’s first outline what a sick economy looks like.
-nearly 26 Million people jobless. All the people in New York, Chicago, LA, Houston, Philly, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indy, and San Fran add up to about 26 Million.
-In Obama’s economy, functional unemployment is over 17%.
-What this means is that these people are having a hard time buying food and paying for their housing.
-Forcing them to purchase health care will only make them more destitute because first they have to eat.
-Make the rich pay you say? Great idea. But they are nearly gone. Wiped out. Then what? In Greece, the rich are no more. See what’s happening there? Look it up.
Peggy commented:
As a professional economist, I have been going ape-sh*t over every economic idea, opinion and proposal of this fool in the WH. I have been having daily freak-outs over this WH’s approach to the economy…and don’t even get me started on freedom and liberty…and Israel…and terrorism… Oy vey!
wanumba commented:
Hmmm. Thinking that the useful idiots don’t have a good grasp of economics, which is why they buy into the suspicious likes of “5 year plans,” “spending out of debt,” and “everyone needs to sacrifice and do with less” without critiquing them, but the radicals know enough and use that knowledge to deliberately undermine the economy. The problem is, the radicals keep saying the “old order has to be destroyed,” “have to break the system to fix it,” “exploit chaos.”
They want destruction, it’s the only way they can get their “New Man” artificial construct established – is on the smoking ruins of a devastated society.
The American free market is the most sophisticated form of human cooperation ever known. Extremely high specialization provides extremely high levels of quality and achievement in all trades and professions, all products and services, which has raised the standard of living for everyone, not just in America, but world-wide. It is American crop surpluses which feed hungry people, American medical breakthroughs that provide billions of doses of vaccines and delivers them to remote populations, benefiting people far beyond our national borders.
The Communist/Socialists are pushing the idea that this isn’t desirable, that we all need to toss out our expectations, what we KNOW is possible, and accept a lower level of cooperation, of achievement. Excellence is not rewarded, but punished in favor of mediocre. They intone that life is “complicated” and “spinning out of control,” that we all need to become self-sufficient – everyone a homesteader! Back to the “simple life.”
Really? Simple? Wanna run that by an African village woman who wouldn’t mind at all some of that “complication” in her life as she walks three miles for dirty water, dodging crocodiles waiting in the river, scrounges a four mile radius for firewood so she can hunch and cough over a smoky cooking fire to boil the millet she planted, harvested and had to pound for two hours first to be able to make it edible, all the while keeping one eye and ear out for raiding militias so she and her kids aren’t kidnapped and made slaves, concubines and child soldiers, and the other ear out for the cries of her child suffering from measles, to set aside her work to tend to the poor thing and hope he’ll gte better on his own somehow, because there were no vaccinations any more? There are no jobs nearby so her husband spends 11 months a year in the towns and cities working whatever jobs he can find to send home some cash so she can buy cooking pots, a new hoe, clothes.
The tribal ways have been presented for years as “unspoiled by civilization,” but if one searches back in time one will find that the primitive tribes still eking out their existence in isolated harship are the remnant of once great cities and complex societies that collapsed through conquest or disease plagues – sending the surviving people to scatter and flee in terror – leaving behind an easier life for the dangers and hardships of subsistence living, simply to survive a calamity. Not any “improvement” or return to a “simple” life – but a hardscabble emergency measure when cooperative human civilization collapsed.
The Socialists and Communists are the Anti-Progress, Anti-Society, Anti-Cooperation – actually deliberately pitting people against each other – which is why they hide behind the lie of the name, “Progressives.”
ahem commented:
Anyone who doesn’t realize that taxes and federal funds are the same thing is an idiot, and there are a lot of idiots out there.
D commented:
I would not wipe my a## with the crap that is written here. Most of the comments are just more of the same from the party of nothing and I do mean absolutely morally and fiscally bankrupt. Most of the current climate is do to what happened the previous 8 years by the “truly” fiscally irresponsible “party of No and Nothing.” The largest expansion of government and the production of the most “minimum wage” jobs in the history of the United States happened on your ignorant watch. Republican understanding of everything starts with a tax cut and trickle down my leg bull, and smaller government, but the largest expansion was 2001-2008. Facts are just that, lies are too. The Party of NO lies and are about as dumb as a big box of rocks.
David commented:
Conservatives imagine that they possess special economic knowledge but when it is all boiled down to its essence this knowledge simply takes the form of a dogma:
1. No taxes
2. No regulations
3. Economic growth continues forever and ever
4. Nothing bad can ever happen
For a perfect illustration of where that sort of economic philosophy leads see the disastrous George W. Bush presidency and Alan Greenspan’s fantastic bubble machine built upon fraud and lies.