I once had a liberal college economics professor who claimed the deficit wasn't a problem. He claimed inflation would cause the deficit to become a smaller percentage of the economy. He believed that made deficit spending no long term problem. He was clearly wrong. If liberal economics professors don't understand how the economy works, how would average liberals score in understanding basic economics? Not very well, according to a Zogby Survey discussed in this WSJ opinion piece. The survey found self-identified liberals were pretty much clueless about basic economics. What ideological demographic scored the best? It was conservatives and libertarians.
Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.....
In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.
No comments:
Post a Comment