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Scott Adams's Political Survey of Economists
Buffaloaf writes "Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, wanted to have unbiased information about which presidential candidate would be better for the economy, so he financed his own survey of 500 economists. He gives a bit more detail about the results in a CNN editorial, along with disclosure of his own biases and guesses as to the biases of the economists who responded."
Now we actually turn to Scott Adams for actual unbiased information about economics? Or, at least an attempt to explain the biases up-front? That just hurts my head!! :-P
Where's the punch line?
But, seriously, good on Scott Adams for actually doing this on his own. I think had anyone else tried to do this, we'd all be screaming loudly that they were inherently biased and had an agenda.
No matter how it goes, Adams will get more material for the strips. ;-)
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Are there any other stat sites like this out there? When my wife was in High School her poly-sci teacher handed out papers describing the different platforms and the candidates. Then took the students down to get registered. Does anyone do this anymore?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
It's not exactly inconclusive either. Obama was granted higher marks on everything except international trade which is not surprising, but still dramatically skews the results due to that issue's importance to the economy overall. One could argue that international trade has the lion's share of effect on the gdp, but I'm not convinced the economists were taking into account exports.
Obama's platform for international trade is to import less and export more. I would say that's effectively going to bolster our economy by boosting our gdp in the long run. But can he actually pull it off? The desired effect could take a few years to reach our gdp.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Funny, I had Keynesian Economics taught, and always saw it aligning with Conservatism and Libertarianism more than Liberalism.
antipaucity
The plain fact is that the economists surveyed think Obama would be better for the economy, by almost two-to-one. It's kind of sad how Adams had to dress the fact up by noting how many were Democrats vs. Republicans, essentially declaring it a tie:
Despite his own strong evidence that the economists were being objective -- their own income levels did not correlate to whether they thought the rich should be taxed -- he doesn't even tell us the plain fact until after he dresses it up.
His CNN writeup was an excuse to repeat three times that he would have his taxes raised by Obama. Well yeah, he makes zillions of dollars. No mention of Obama's plan to cut taxes, for almost everyone, by more than McCain's plan.
I look forward to his next survey of economists, in which he asks which is better economically, capitalism or communism, and then weights the results before revealing them. ("Not surprisingly, 88% of market-favoring economists think capitalism would be best, while 80% of socialist economists pick communism. Our economists favor capitalism on 11 of the top 13 issues, but keep in mind that" etc.)
From time to time, Scott will do something interesting and write it up on his blog. I subscribed to his blog for a while, but I ended up unsubscribing because of the over-the-top sarcasm and overall negative tone. It just didn't feel healthy to *read* it.
The fact that Adams has attached himself to a medium through which he distributes mockery as social commentary is really not surprising to me at all. I know smart people who are trying to make the world a better place by making positive things happen, so it frustrates me that Adams won't just drop all the grudges and stop acting so defensively. We need more smart people on the offense, starting awesome new projects and using their creativity to lift people up.
From the CNN article:
Moneywise, I can't support a candidate who promises to tax the bejeezus out of my bracket, ...
Then maybe you are in the wrong tax bracket. Try being in mine for a while. I think most people would prefer to be in a tax bracket that gets taxed like that and keep the rest, rather than where they are now.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Take some time and learn about Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and who ran the "corporation" since 2000. Add to that, researching the 2005 bill that forced FM/FM to give out loans based on racial profiles instead of financial stability, and you'll have a good idea who to blame.
Who was in charge of Fannie Mae when they "misreported" $10.8 billion in 2006? Washington Times
For those too lazy to find out, consider that Obama, despite being in the Senate for only 2 years, is the #1 recipient of donations from FM/FM at $112,000. (McCain has also taken $16,000, Joe Biden also got $500.)
"Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines last week called for continued efforts by Fannie Mae and mortgage lenders to reach out to those 'at the margins' of home ownership. Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants trying to buy homes would be a major focus of outreach, Raines said." Raines made no mention of assistance for the millions of white families who have difficulty purchasing homes.
And who is Franklin Raines? Why, Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton. (He was the chairman of the same department under Jimmy Carter.) He's currently under investigation by several different groups, including the SEC, the OFHEO, and others.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Add to that, researching the 2005 bill that forced FM/FM to give out loans based on racial profiles instead of financial stability, and you'll have a good idea who to blame.
I'm gonna call bullshit unless you can back this up with a link or two including one pointing to the actual legislation.
Loans favoring people of a certain income class and demographic with interest rates that might not otherwise be available to them under conventional market proceedures, aren't particularly controversial, but *requiring* them to loan to a candidate who wouldn't qualify under normal market conditions would be.
However, anyone familiar knows that "normal market conditions" in 2005 included No Income, No Job, No Asset loans, which should make one *highly* skeptical about the assertion that congress twisted lender's arms.
Who was in charge of Fannie Mae when they "misreported" $10.8 billion in 2006?
The connection of Fannie Mae to Walter Mondale's campaign manager is supposed to be evidence of Democratic malfeasance here? It's been 20 years since Mondale ran. Focusing on Enron and its spectacular collapse that took down a colluding Big 5 accounting firm instead of FM's *understating* their earnings? I guess that's evidence of a massive media conspiracy... especially since the media DID report on problems with FM.
For those too lazy to find out, consider that Obama, despite being in the Senate for only 2 years is the #1 recipient of donations from FM/FM at $112,000.
A bit of further research reveals that this is out a total of a recent $390 million in lobbying dollars. So, Obama's the largest recipient... at .02% of FM donation dollars. I guess that means he's tight with FM, although he's also raised more money than anybody else from just about everybody.
"Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines last week
That "last week" has got to be pre-2004, then, since that's when he was pushed out over the accounting issues.
called for continued efforts by Fannie Mae and mortgage lenders to reach out to those 'at the margins' of home ownership. Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants trying to buy homes would be a major focus of outreach, Raines said." Raines made no mention of assistance for the millions of white families who have difficulty purchasing home
Raines also made no mention of his support for the troops, ending Islamic Terrorism, and the state of Israel, which means he is against these things.
And yet
Tweet, tweet.
Scott Adams is an idiot. He had a funny take on the other idiots who surrounded him in his PacTel cubicle in the 1990s, but that's just the idiot leading the idiots. Read his "Dogbert management books" for business insights that aren't even funny, in ways that show he actually knows as little about business management as the idiots he mocks.
Here's Adams' latest demonstration of his idiocy, in this stupid (and not funny) editorial:
The surge escalation has failed. Of course throwing tens of thousands of new US troops at a civil war will succeed in beating back the enemies, making them less likely to try attacks than when the US military was spread too thin to intimidate. No one questions whether our military is good at killing and intimidating enemies, when Washington (run by Bush and McCain's Republican Party) isn't keeping them too weak to do the job.
But the surge's job wasn't just to drop the killing. That was a means to an end, to create a political opportunity that was totally squandered. The Iraqi government is a farce that hasn't governed anything, even when we give it a break in the action during which it can concentrate on governing. It has failed. And since the purpose of the surge escalation has failed, the surge has failed. Anyone saying any different just thinks that the purpose of war is to kill. It's not, and those people have lost the Iraq War since they started it.
But hey, if the surge worked, then we won. Let's get the hell out of there already. Not stay the "100 years, maybe forever" that McCain thinks equals victory. If we've got to keep troops there, we're losing. Only getting out of there is any real measure of victory.
Yeah, and then he totally ignored that most economists are Democrats. Because people who understand the economy vote for Democrats. Even among Republican economists, more Republicans support Obama than Democrat economists for McCain. That speaks much more than what Adams' single datapoint survey says.
Of course, that is what every single American (who isn't crazy) says about their political bias.
And there we have the basic evidence of Scott Adams idiocy. Or rather, his lying. Obama might be raising Adams' taxes, if he makes over $250,000 a year. He's almost certainly not going to raise yours. You can see for yourself with the Obama Tax Cut Web Calculator, which takes 15 seconds and 3 status facts about you to show you the dollar amount of your Obama tax cut.
Adams is a rich guy who makes his money satirizing incompetents running big orgs. His pocketbook is threatened by Obama because he's made so much more money than most people, benefited so much more than most people, from the exact kinds of idiots he needs in power for him to sell more books and cartoons. He's as scared of McCain as he is of Obama, because though he believes McCain won't tax him (but the country would fall apart, an expensive proposition even for a cartoonist who has to live in it), because McCain is boring. Which means he won't be a good c
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make install -not war
In Scott Adams's survey of members of the American Economic Association, he found 48% Democrats, 17% Republicans, 27% Independents, 3% Libertarian, and 5% Other or not registered. However, in this working paper by Gross and Simmons (at Harvard and GMU, respectively), surveying economists working in academia, they find 34.3% Democrats, 37.1% Independents, and 28.6% Republicans.
Anyone have ideas on what's up with the disparities in the statistics? The only explanation I can think of is that the AEA includes economists in the public sector, where (as one might expect) folks tend to favor government intervention in the economy.
(By the way, for anyone curious, the stats for academia as a whole are 45.2% Democrats, 38.9% Independents, and 15.9% Republicans. In English it's 51.0/47.1/2.0, in computer science it's 32.3/58.1/9.7, and in electrical engineering it's 13.2/55.3/31.6)
Let's play the monopoly game. You have a market monopoly, and I'll name a monopoly propped up by government. Last person to name a monopoly wins. I'll go first, so the game will be over sooner. Your local water company is a monopoly. Now you go. You'll name Microsoft sooner or later. In spite of its being propped up by copyright law, I'll give you that one out of pity. Now I'll go. Your local sewer company is also a monopoly. Now it's your turn again.
I'm waiting....
Nothing? I thought not.
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Oh, and did you know that the government FORCED banks to make CRA loans? "CRAP" loans are more like it. Countrywide was very proud of how well they complied with the law -- how many CRA loans they made .... and where are they now?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist