Flunking Out

I have often puzzled over the gulf that exists between liberals and conservatives on how they look at the issues of the day. This is never more evident than when I visit my liberal friends and in-laws who frequently treat me with the bemused tolerance one would expect for a dimwitted and slightly addled child. To maintain peace and harmony I chew on my tongue and try not to let any political comments pass my lips.

One of my theories on how liberals and conservatives can arrive at such divergent conclusions from the same set of facts supposes that we are not, in fact, using the same facts. This theory surmises that liberals read the NYT, the Daily Kos and The Huffington Post and listen to NPR, MSNBC and CBS News. Conservatives, on the other hand, read the WSJ, Bloomberg, Townhall.com and listen to Fox News. In other words, we libs and cons may NOT be operating from the same set of facts or, at least, the emphasis or interpretation of those facts.

An older theory of mine postulated that people adopted a stance early in life… either left or right and simply stuck with it. This firmly held conviction thereafter colored whatever information they received. This tied in with another theory of mine that I call “tribalism”. I postulated that people in their early years decide to which “tribe” they belong: Hippy, punk rocker, preppie, biker, geek, etc. From there onward they adopt the dress, speech, mannerisms, life style and attitudes of that tribe. Therefore, if you decide that you are an educated, hip, urbane person concerned with the environment and socially conscious, you join the liberal tribe and accept anything “liberal” and reject as downright stupid, if not corrupt, anything labeled as “conservative”. (Note to my liberal friends: Don’t get hostile here. I am just trying to figure this shit out.)

I was never all that convinced that either of those two theories sufficiently answered my questions.

Now comes a new theory to further confuse me. Daniel Klein recently published a piece in the WSJ entitled “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader”. Mr. Klein is a professor of economics at George Mason and together with Zeljka Burturovic, a Zogby researcher, conducted a December 2008 survey of 4,835 American adults. The survey asked them eight questions about basic economics. They also asked them about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative and libertarian. The researchers here were looking for incorrect answers, and only, as Professor Klein said, “A response was counted as incorrect only if it was flatly unenlightened.” The possible responses to the questions were: 1. strongly agree 2. somewhat agree 3. somewhat disagree 4. strongly disagree and 5. not sure. “Not sures” were not counted as incorrect. I will list the questions below and the correct answers at the end of this piece so you can, like, figure out if you are, like, a liberal or like, a conservative. No, like, cheating by going to, like, the end of the article.

Pick one of the above highlighted answers to the following questions:

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.

2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.

3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.

6. Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited.

7. Free trade leads to unemployment.

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

So, how did the self-identified ideological groups fare in this simple economics test? Remember, we are scoring incorrect answers here.

Very conservative: 1.30 wrong

Conservative: 1.67 wrong

Libertarian: 1.38 wrong

Moderate: 3.67 wrong

Liberal: 4.69 wrong

Progressive/very liberal: 5.26 wrong

When asked about party affiliation, those responding as Democrats averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Those responding as Republicans got 1.61 incorrect.

You can read Klein’s original article (link) to get the specific scores on the individual questions and his explanations of the correct answers.

A lot of brain cells can be destroyed trying to figure out why the most liberal among us did so poorly on a simple economics test compared to the most conservative citizens. I won’t attempt that here. Suffice it to say that the “progressive/very liberal” wing of the Democrat Party has been in charge of things for some time now and this simple test helps explain the unenlightened economic policies now coming out of Washington.

Wrong answers to questions: 1. Somewhat disagree, strongly disagree. 2. Disagree. 3. Disagree. 4. Disagree. 5. Agree. 6. Agree. 7. Agree. 8. Disagree.

Score Card

In February of 2009 I posted a piece entitled “Prognostications” in which I made a number of predictions about what Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress would do now that they had complete control. As I was driving back from our annual fly fishing expedition to central BC the other day I thought about that list and concluded it was time to see how I faired in my predictions. Hereafter, the list and the score thus far into the “Hopie-Changie” era.

· The Stimulus Package: Originally at some $870 billion, winding up with some add-ons at around $1 trillion, has failed miserably to prod the US out of recession. The “neo-Keynesians” that populate the Obama economic brain trust assured us that if this thing were not rammed through Congress immediately that unemployment would go above 8%. Well, it’s been hovering around 10% for many months and only that low because the millions of workers who are no longer even bothering to look for work are no longer counted in that calculation. 325,000 people dropped out of the “lookers” category last month. Congress recently passed an extension of unemployment compensation to 99 weeks, assuring that the unenthusiastic and disinterested will remain on the sidelines. The recession continues. The deficit? Greece here we come. According to the Heritage Foundation the US is poised to have the deficit exceed the GDP in the near future. Score: YES.

· Card Check Legislation: They made some feeble attempts at this but backed off to concentrate on the health care bill. Obama did reward the unions big time by giving them big chunks of GM and Chrysler stock when the two auto giants went tits up. Score one NO.

· Give More Money to the Auto Companies: The US government now own most of GM and the bondholders at Chrysler (these are the secured creditors in a bankruptcy) got stiffed. GM paid back part of the money, but that money came from previously borrowed government funds. So, you can’t really say they paid off the loan. They still owe some $40 billion. Score: YES

· Pass the Fairness Doctrine: They did not really have the courage to tackle this one and totally piss off the millions of listeners of conservative talk radio. Instead they dispatched Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar for the FCC to see if he can “back door” the thing through regulations. Score: NO.

· Restrict drilling for oil and gas: At the time of posting “Prognostications” Salazar had already cancelled leases and set aside huge swathes of the west where no drilling was allowed. Now, with the oil disaster in the Gulf every-thing is shut down. The irony is that if the regs had not forced the oil companies to drill in such deep water (a mile down) and instead were allowed to drill on land or in shallow water, this thing would have been fixed already. Score: YES

· Not allow the construction of nuclear power plants: Obama says they want to build them but they shut down the Yucca Mountain repository where they were to store the waste signaling their real intentions. Score: YES

· Enact cap and trade: It has already passed the House and is currently introduced in the Senate. Debate has been stalled with the intrusion of other matters like voting themselves a raise and fine-tuning their special medical program. Some GOP Senators will vote aye. Score: YES

· Toss money at solar and wind power: Money for these industries was included in the stimulus bill and much more to come with the cap and trade legislation. Score: YES

· Abandon missile defense and reduce US nuclear arms: Obama cut funding for missile defense programs, refused to provide funding to upgrade the US’s aging nuclear arsenal, cancelled the missile defense shield for Europe and made a lopsided deal with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. Score: Big YES

· Enact restrictions on gun ownership: Hillary is trying to work something through a UN agreement. Score: NO

· Appoint “living constitution” fans to Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed and Elana Kagan has been nominated and awaiting confirmation in the Senate. She’s sure to be approved. Score: YES

· Squelch school choice: The Congress withdrew funding for the charter school program in Washington, DC, thus ending a successful program and signaling the Adminis-tration’s aversion to charter schools. Of course, the Dems are much beholding to the teacher’s unions and they hate charter schools. Obama has created a program called “Race to the top” providing certain states with substantial funding. Some states are refusing to participate as the money comes with the Feds getting too involved in local schools. BTW, the June 5^th edition of the WSJ has a great piece about Madeleine Sacker, an independent filmmaker, who has created a documentary called “The Lottery”. It’s about the thousands of Harlem kids and their parents who show up for a lottery to try and secure the few slots open at Harlem Success Academy. Surprise! The teacher’s union paid Acorn $500,000 to pretend to be parental protesters. Score: YES

· Abandon tort reform: Of course. Don’t be silly. Score: YES

· Attempt to make illegals citizens: They are trying to push “comprehensive” immigration reform, but not yet. Score: NO

· Put the government in charge of health care: You know all about that one. Score YES

Somehow I neglected to put tax increases in the Feb ’09 post. It did, however, appear in previous posts. Here’s a list of the tax increases the Democrats have enacted so far.

· $500 billion included in the Health Care bill.

· Double taxation on corporations doing business overseas.

· When the Bush tax cuts expire taxes on upper incomes will increase from 35% to 39.6%. Dividends will be taxed at 39.6% instead of 15%. The capital gains tax will increase from 15% to 20%. The inheritance tax will increase from 0% this year to 55%.

Congress is currently working on a bill to raise taxes by $43 billion on corporations and another bill to tax S-Corps (small businesses taxed as individuals). While the details of this one are as yet unclear, it appears to apply to independent operators like architects, accountants and the service industries. It sounds like it will hit them at about 15%. So much for the talk about helping small business and not taxing the little guy.

Another thing I did not anticipate is Obama’s muddled and wrong-headed foreign policy. He has offended and insulted the US’s allies, especially Israel, Poland and the UK while trying to suck up to the Muslim world. This has only confused our allies and emboldened our enemies. The combination of an isolated Israel and an aggressive Iran and Syria only make the likelihood of war in the Middle East more certain than not. He’s pushing Israel into a corner. Watch the price of oil when that one tees up.

As a new prediction (at least to blog readers) I feel the sum of Obama’s economic policies insure a double dip and protracted recession. You cannot crowd out capital with an annual deficit of $1.5 trillion dollars, raise taxes on individuals and corporations, driving jobs and businesses offshore, raise the price of energy with cap and trade taxes and expect a growing economy. They’ve got a lot of Harvard folks in the Administration, but they will need to get glass eyes installed in their navels if they expect to see where they are going.