A Zogby International
survey has confirmed what I’ve long suspected — when it
comes to economics, liberals are clueless. The survey of 4,835
respondents was designed by Daniel Klein, an economics professor
at George Mason University, and Zeljka Buturorvic, a research
associate at Zogby International.
The survey asked respondents to self-identify as
progressive/very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very
conservative, libertarian, and not sure. On the basis of eight
economic questions, wrong answers correlated consistently and
significantly with ideology. Progressive/very liberal respondents
got four times more wrong answers than libertarians.
The survey results demonstrate the strong connection
between economic ignorance and interventionist enthusiasm. Those
who are most determined to interfere with the economy know the
least about it. Conversely, knowledge leads to humility. The more
you know about the economy the more reluctant you’ll be to try to
fix it. You realize “fixing” is not as easy or as simple as it
appears. Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.
When I taught economics, a quote I would sometimes put on
the course syllabus was this: “In relation to social questions,
the concept of an interdependent system has two important
implications: that things are the way they are for some powerful
reason or reasons, which have to be understood if effective
social solutions are to be devised; and that any social solutions
so devised and applied will have repercussions elsewhere, which
will have to be faced and which ought to be taken into
account.”
The quote is from a lecture, “The Economics Approach to
Social Questions,” by the late brilliant and prolific University
of Chicago economist Harry G. Johnson. Liberals don’t seem to
care that “things are the way they are for some very powerful
reason or reasons.” Johnson’s observation is a concise
explanation of why unintended consequences are so common and why
results are so often the opposite of intentions. Johnson did not
say we should never attempt to change things, he was just saying
we ought to know a little something about what we’re doing before
we do.
What’s always amazed me is that liberals don’t seem to be
even the least bit curious about how the economy works. They love
taking and using the wealth created by a market economy, but
don’t care a whit about the necessary ingredients for creating
that wealth — incentives, the price system, or the critical role
of private property rights, for example. They all but come out
and say, “I don’t know the first thing about economics, and I’m
proud of it!” They despise the market economy and, therefore,
don’t want be corrupted by knowing anything about it.
Liberals’ ignorance of economics is deliberate. They are
intent on a certain agenda and being reminded of such things as
“unintended consequences” or “what happens next?” would spoil
their fun. For liberals there is a negative payoff for knowing
about the complexities of the economy. They have no real
incentive for learning about economics. “My mind’s made up. Don’t
bother me with the facts.” In a recent column Thomas Sowell
observed, “Those who are convinced that the government should ‘do
something’ when the economy has a problem almost never bother to
find out what actually happens when the government
intervenes.”
Another important reason for the left’s disregard for
economic understanding is their almost exclusive focus on
intentions rather than results. Minimum wage laws, for example,
are intended to increase the incomes of low income workers. The
actual result, of course, is just the opposite. Such laws reduce
employment opportunities and, therefore, increase unemployment.
Minimum wage laws result in zero income for anyone whose job
opportunities disappear. Liberalism is not an evidence-based
vision of reality. Wishful thinking is as close as they ever get
to real thinking.
I couldn’t count the times I have been astonished by the
abysmal economic ignorance I’ve seen displayed by politicians. It
would be interesting to know how many congressmen have ever taken
a single course in economics. If Barack Obama ever took an
economics course, he does a good job of hiding it.
The main problem with liberals’ economic ignorance is the
issue of “externalities.” Liberals aren’t just indulging their
misguided policies in some harmless video game, they’re imposing
them on the rest of us. Virtually all of us, for example, will be
suffer from their abominable Obamacare.
What we’re seeing all too often is “the arrogance of
ignorance.” Both arrogance and ignorance do enormous damage in
the world, but together they are a toxic brew.
When it suits their purposes liberals do emphasize
repercussions in complex systems. They tell us, for example, that
increases in carbon dioxide are heating the planet with
disastrous long-range consequences. They believe that the Earth’s
atmosphere is in a delicate equilibrium and that driving an SUV
could destroy that equilibrium. You can mess with the economy all
you want, but don’t mess with the atmosphere or the
ecosystem!
