We interrupt your weekend with this emergency bulletin from the Ain't it Awful News Service:Econ Illiteracy Runs All Over
Posted on 04/30/2016 8:03:16 AM PDT by expat_panama
Education: Everybody talks about how the presidential primaries have uncovered intense voter anger at the political establishment. It’s actually revealed something more troubling: The widespread ignorance of basic economic truths that spans across the political spectrum.
Has there ever been a bigger disconnect between economic reality and public perception?
Polls taken during the primary season have found Democrats embracing socialism, Republicans rejecting trade, and majorities in both parties saying Wall Street is hurting the economy. That’s despite the general consensus among mainstream economists that none of these things is true.
Take Democrats’ views on socialism... ...40% of Democrats say socialism is the best...
A separate New York Times/CBS poll... ...found that a third of the public has a positive view of socialism, while just over half has a negative view.
All this despite the unbroken string of failures with socialist states, the latest of which are all happening right in the nation’s backyard, where socialist policies have produced massive deprivation and chronic shortages. Just this week, Venezuela ordered a two-day workweek to save on electricity.
Denmark, which socialist Bernie Sanders says is a model socialist state, rejects the label, insisting that it’s a market economy.
Meanwhile, exit polls show that Republicans are more hostile to... ...the benefits of trade are one of the most widely accepted economic principles.
Then there’s the view of Wall Street...
The problem is that leaders in neither party have done an effective job of educating the public on the truth, since there’s more political mileage to be gained by bashing trade, bashing “big banks,” bashing Wall Street, and bashing “greed” than there is explaining the benefits of a free market.
The free market principles that created the nation’s unprecedented prosperity won’t last long if no one is willing to defend them.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
We interrupt your weekend with this emergency bulletin from the Ain't it Awful News Service:Econ Illiteracy Runs All Over
Most of whom embrace Keynesian economics.
IMHO, there should be a requirement that would involve voters having to take a “Current Events” type of test that would quiz them about their knowledge of basic political fundamentals (either in the U.S. or here in Canada). You fail, you do not get to vote. I wonder if that would keep a number of idiots from the polling booth who are able to recognize one of the Kardashians but fail to identify what a either a constitutional republic (US system of government) or constitutional monarchy (Canadian one) is.
This is deeply misleading.
I don't reject water. But I reject water with arsenic in it.
I don't reject food, but I reject food with shards of glass in it.
I don't reject contracts, but I reject contracts where I give 200 and I get 50.
Simply not true. We reject trade agreements that reward other countries at the expense of our own. Only the few are reaping the rewards of those trade agreements at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.
I haven’t yet read this article. I will.
My comment on the title:
Here in FR we have been commenting on the high levels of economic illiteracy in America since I joined in 2001, and I’m sure before that.
Phil Donahue revealed an amazingly deep level of economic illiteracy back in the 70s, in his famous interview of Milton Friedman.
And as we ALL know, and have known for many decades, teaching and inculcating and enforcing economic illiteracy is the unstated but official policy of the NEA.
The fact that main street had to bail out Wall Street only for them to turn around and double down on toxic instruments that will be an even bigger problem down the road. So Wall Street is again padding the pockets of a few at the expense of the majority. If that is helping, then I would sure hate see what hurting would look like.
It is underhanded and duplicitous for the IBD editors to equate general Democrat voter illiteracy and ignorance with this amorphous “Republican distrust” of Wall Street and the disparities Americans have seen in the last 8 years with their investments and what’s been happening with insiders and cronies on the stock market.
They can’t even cough up the balls to say which “Republicans” they are talking about. Could it be those zealots that support Trump - believing the contra-IBD tenets of capitalism? You know, the one that equates them with the Democrat leeches? Absurd.
This is just a subtle attempt by those elites in the market, those jackals that suck off their activities, and the elites to persuade drive by America all of this is ‘our’ fault because we’re stupid.
I don’t hate free trade, don’t love socialist takeovers of anything, don’t hate Wall Street corporations or income inequality, but I know when the damned deck is stacked against the novice who wants fair play.
They abandoned that 40 years ago as far as I can tell.
Let me guess...
If you believe closing American factories, laying off all the employees, and moving those factories and jobs overseas is bad then you are an economic illiterate.
Got it.
We can’t even get voter id laws enacted, to ensure those eligible to vote are the only ones to vote, without being labeled racist, so testing would absolutely not fly. But I would agree with the premise, just would never would become a reality.
Average People don't know NOTHING about Money.
Is it any wonder why our Government is in the shape it's in?
The problem is collusion between big business and government. Where businesses donate to politicians in order for them to get favorable outcomes.
Hmmmmmmm
Sound familiar?
Croney Capitalists.
Stop allowing government to pick the winners and losers from their wealthy friends. Let business lose on it own merits.
Tarrifs will only make us ( the taxpayer) pay more. If you really believe other countries are going to pay, you are an economic illiterate.
Get unelected people who write these regulations and laws out of government. Fire them. Repeal the regulations.
Supposedly the last time 65% of eligible US voters voted in national elections was back in 1908, less for state and local. It hasn’t broken that since, a lot of them being below 55%. At least by any thing that I have seen.
Supposedly the 10% of dumbest voters, the ones that manage to vote, but vote one way and then another but can’t usually coherently explain why, are the ones that decide these elections. That’s what swing voters are, right? The people who the campaign money is meant to manipulate into voting or not voting at all based on political ads? Or vote based on how well attended a political really seems to be, or how well the media said a candidate did in a debate. The swayable.
It’s a wonder we aren’t worse off, considering. The problem is that we would probably be even worse off if more people voted, as I suspect the swing voters would only increase as a %.
Freegards
Empirical historical economic data confirm the deductive proof by rationalism that the free market is the ideal economic system. But it is incompatible with the desire by statists to control it, so it must be stopped, even if it creates a hellhole.
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