FACT: Studying Economics makes you a Republican

[Buffalo Souljah]

source: baseline scenario (http://baselinescenario.com/2010/06/08/the-perils-of-studying-economics/#more-7733)


The Perils of Studying Economics

with 84 comments (http://baselinescenario.com/2010/06/08/the-perils-of-studying-economics/#comments)
By James Kwak
Patrick McGeehan (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/does-studying-economics-make-you-more-republican/) at the New York Times recently wrote about a New York Fed study (http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr450.pdf) finding that studying economics makes you a Republican. The headline conclusion is that the more economics classes you take, the more likely you are to be a Republican. Majoring in economics or business is also more likely to make you a Republican. (See Table 2 in the original paper.) The study is based on thousands of observations of undergraduates at four large universities over three decades, so it is focused on undergraduate-level economics.


Studying economics also affects your position on several public policy issues. Of seven issues, economics courses were significantly associated with the five following positions (Table 6):


Tariffs are bad.
Trade deficits are not so bad.
The government should not cap oil prices in response to a supply shock.
Raising the minimum wage increase unemployment for low-wage workers.
Income distribution should not be more equal.

These are all pro-free market, anti-government intervention positions.
What I thought was particularly interesting, however, was that on some issues people who study undergraduate economics are more doctrinaire free marketers than professional economists. Table 5 compares the undergraduates responses to those of a survey of people with a Ph.D. in economics. The Ph.D. economists were more likely than economics majors to hold the textbook position on tariffs or the minimum wage. However, they were also more likely than economics majors (or, frankly, any majors) to think that income inequality should be reduced and that government spending should not be reduced, and they were somewhat less worried about federal budget deficits.


This is something I’ve mentioned in passing often. I think that basic economics, the way it is taught today, tends to give people reflexive pro-free market, anti-government positions — positions that are not held by people with a deeper exposure to economic thinking. When your understanding of government finances is based on reading the newspaper, it’s somewhat eye-opening to come to college and learn that free markets lead to maximum societal welfare and taxes impose a deadweight loss on society — the pictures are so simple and compelling. That’s why a little bit of economics makes you more likely to be a Republican.


But when you learn more about principal-agent problems, information asymmetries, and so on, you learn that those simple pictures are simplistic to the point of being misleading. That’s why Joseph Stiglitz argues in Freefall that understanding economics is crucial to understanding why free markets often lead to suboptimal outcomes. The problem isn’t knowledge per se; it’s a little bit of knowledge.

[The Red Next Door]

I disagree with that fact, marxists have to study economics to understand, why capitalism is fuck up ans socialism is AWESOME!!!!. Does that make us republicans?

Also, make one. A republican is if they support, the richer getting richer and the poor getting poorer, by the rich getting tax cuts benefits, and us common folks get fuck you over benefits.

[leftace53]

The problem isn’t knowledge per se; it’s a little bit of knowledge.This rings quite true for Econ. In my few econ classes so far as an econ major, my teachers have been capitalists talking about how the capitalist system deals with scarcity. Economics is basically the study of scarcity, but what is seen as most relevant in it is how the capitalist system deals with it. Delving deeper into you can find out how the capitalist system overproduces and encourages waste and exploitation. I seriously hope that these things are taught later on in my classes, and think that they should introduce it sooner.

I like to think I'm not a republican

[NecroCommie]

What a stupid conclusion. Matter of fact is that being a republican makes you study economics, not the other way around.

[ed miliband]

From my own experience, the vast majority of people who study or plan to study economics do so because they want to be filthy rich one day. As such, I don't believe that people studying economics are turned into Republicans, but rather that the course acts as a form of confirmation bias.

My friend wants to study economics. He doesn't know who Keynes is, or Marx, or Adam Smith, and he's not a stupid guy.

[Raúl Duke]

Most people who study economics in my uni are libertarian types.

[ed miliband]

Coincidently, the London School of Economics is the most pro-Labour of all British universities (or at least statistics show that to be the case).

[Zanthorus]

Well that's pretty obvious since "mainstream" economics is just capitalist apologia and the system is basically designed to prevent dissenting opinions, since you can barely get published in economics journals unless you subscribe to things like perfect competition, SMD theorem, marginal productivity of capital etc. One of the users here, BAM, apparently once worked for a finance magazine and they weren't allowed to publish anything that wasn't majorly pro-market. It's because economics is such a major pillar of the ideological justification for capitalism. If they started letting Marxists publish in the Financial Times it would seriously damage capitalist ideological hegemony. The only way they can even teach Marxist economics is by seperating it from it's inherently revolutionary content.

[Ligeia]

From my own experience, the vast majority of people who study or plan to study economics do so because they want to be filthy rich one day.
That's what I've come across mostly,too or want to have a "safe" job.Though I've also known other sorts of students, but they seem to be pretty scarce.
Anyway, it probably depends on the university, the region and other personal factors whether or not economics-students mostly tend to one or another way of understanding capitalism.But I sense there are more unis with free-market ideology-driven tendencies than others.
Though I'm not sure but it seems study fields and contents have also changed over time,...while in the late 60s and early 70s you could come across Marx,Mao..etc., it's not visible today.

[#FF0000]

Economics is really detatched from reality anyway. Study math instead.

[Sendo]

Economics is really detatched from reality anyway. Study math instead.

But the widgets! Those wonderful widgets! They have no emissions and no consumer safety is needed! And the consumers are never the same workers who make them, so you never have to worry about living wages!

[Red Commissar]

Well, it is not too surprising. If by "studying economics" they mean the economics curriculum most universities have, those generally tend to be very pro-capitalist. Of course that doesn't mean that economics in general leads you to this, but it's no secret that economics departments in many universities tend to be pro-capitalist (and teach socialism as inefficient).

[Dean]

Economics as taught in college is by and large neoliberal bullshit. The correlation makes sense.

[Angry Young Man]

Coincidently, the London School of Economics is the most pro-Labour of all British universities (or at least statistics show that to be the case).

I wonder if there's a basis to make a cultural assumption here: it seems like academia in Europe is far to the Left of the States.

ED: Also, the LSE does all of the social sciences, so History, Sociology and Philosophy are going to supply the Left-wing of academia

[lulks]

when people study first year economics they believe in free market capitalism because first year economics is a very simplified picture of how society functions and assumes that people are "rational".

[soyonstout]

I think economics should be distinguished from political economy which was the study of classes and their functioning in the reproduction of wealth (in some ways as a campaign against the landlords by the industrial capitalist). Economics rests on a number of assumptions, mostly the permanence of scarcity based on money, markets, etc. and the marginal utility theory of value, which is a totally individualized view of the way human relate to "the market" which is just human activity structured in a certain way. In many ways the transition can be seen as a response to Marx (not to be conspiratorial, but I really do think the focus away from classes and their revenues onto price theory and other specifically capitalist institutions has to do with the limits of the bourgeoisie to explain the former adequately), or at least the inability of political economy to fully explain these things, partly due to the ahistorical view taken of capitalism as an eternal system (or at least a system without a successor).

Certainly if someone studies a "science" with a number of pro-capitalist assumptions, they will need to assimilate these assumptions to get very far in this study.

Check out these (sorry for the broken links. Only 2 more posts & I can make real ones!;))

libcom.org/library/commodity-fetishism-fredy-perlman

I can't find a link for this one, but if you buy a copy of Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (or better yet borrow one from a library or whatnot) she has a fantastic article called "what is economics" which is basically about this. Pointing out the absurdity of asking a scottish peasant "what is your wealth, what does it consist of?" the guy would just say that he has a family and they have cattle, land, etc., and that in a society which produces directly for someone (even a feudal lord) rather than for exchange, there is no need for a science to understand these things and that therefore "economics" is a specifically capitalist study.

Hope that wasn't too rambling.

-soyons tout

[Sir Comradical]

Not true. I'm studying economics and I was able to use what I've learned to counter nonsense vomited on me by some right-wing degenerate. He was talking about how privatization of utilities would lead to efficiency - bullshit! Why? Because if utilities were privatised then they're dominate an oligopolistic/monopolistic market and set prices that would NEVER fall to the point of allocative efficiency, which is when price is equal to marginal cost. I drew a graph and explained it to him mathematically.

In hindsight, I should have ended it by throwing the pen on the desk and proclaiming "you got schooled, son" just to humiliate the prick.

[Sir Comradical]

From my own experience, the vast majority of people who study or plan to study economics do so because they want to be filthy rich one day. As such, I don't believe that people studying economics are turned into Republicans, but rather that the course acts as a form of confirmation bias.

My friend wants to study economics. He doesn't know who Keynes is, or Marx, or Adam Smith, and he's not a stupid guy.

This one piece-of-shit I was arguing with told me he was a follower of Adam Smith. As the conversation progressed he started talking about intellectual property rights.

Him: We need intellectual property rights because it provides an incentive for individuals to invest their time and money in creating new technology.

Me: (1) The majority of patents are held by corporations, not people. The workers who spend their time innovating have no claim over the technology they created. (2) I thought you said you were a follower of Adam Smith?

Him: Yeah I am, what does that have to do with it?

Me: Everything. Adam Smith was dead against intellectual property rights and considered them to be inherently anti-free market.

Him: *Verbal Diarrhea*

[Obs]

A lot of people study economics to find the best ways to fuck over other people and take their money.

[Nolan]

Studying Economics makes you a RepublicanYou have it backwards. Most people who study economics do so because they plan on going into business or are will be in some related occupation. We all know which party more blatantly favors business.


Economics as taught in college is by and large neoliberal bullshit. The correlation makes sense.Also this.

The starting assumptions of mainstream economics:

- People are always rational. Always.

- The Market works. It is our God. No question asks. Anything bad that happens is due to big government, labor, or, if this is not sufficient, space aliens. Thus, problems with the economy are due to a conspiracy between the big bad socialist guvmint and the all-powerful poor rather than carelessness on Wall Street:

http://www.thetruthaboutplas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/RAMclr-011810-625.jpg



- The mudpie argument utterly destroys any labor theory of value.

- Feed a man a fish, and he eats. Privatize his water, and everyone lives happily ever after when the wealth magically trickles down. Thus the IMF is like Mother Teresa, only richer.

We then proceed to formulate our system of economics on this.

[RadioRaheem84]

To be honest, most of the stuff I learned as an Econ major I found dull and utter mental gymnastics. So many things were presumed. I pretended to understand some of the theories because I just couldn't wrap my head around some of the logic. Thank God for Marx! Now basic economics makes much more sense to me and I can that it was mostly just BS.

[DavidX]

It's true that institutions such as department faculties and journals have a tendency to sanitize themselves politically in one direction or another, and that neoliberal economics generally dominates the economics scene in academia today,but that does not mean there are no exceptions. University of Utah for examples has a very strong economics department with figures such as Minqi Li who is very influential in the chinese left for his critique of neoliberal economics. Along with him there are over 20 professors with marxist or leftist tendencies.

Here's a paper detailing more or less how Neo-liberal economics came to prominence and what there is that can be done about it today:

"Nineteenth-century neoclassical economics is largely a late 20th century success story. It was not until the 1970s that in academia it became truly and ruthlessly hegemonic.... So long as the country’s university economics departments are allowed to be operated as political propaganda centres and one-paradigm closed-shops, successive generations of citizens, including journalists and politicians, will be indoctrinated in the Neoclassical-Neoliberal creed. This situation is not compatible with normal ideas of democracy."

You can find the paper here at
www(dot)paecon(dot)net/Fullbrook/Economicsandneoliberalism.pdf

The author politics are most likely of a sanitized humanitarian type leftist but his critique of neo-liberal economics and it's history is informed and really insightful.

~~~
While it's greatly true that in most undergraduate courses "The only way they can even teach Marxist economics is by separating it from it's inherently revolutionary content." In my experience for the most part when discussing the intricacies of Marxist theory of labour value or whatnot, they will outline the theory and then summarily dismiss it with arguments of the "human nature" or "in the real world" type arguments. Mind you these were lower year economics courses, and most of my collegues were either preppy Sauder school business types or bored general arts students.

[Raúl Duke]

Anything bad that happens is due to big government, labor, or, if this is not sufficient, space aliens.I never understood why they blame labor or government as if this comes out of a dimension separate from that which "the market" resides in (i.e. they put the market separately from the rest of society and as something up in the air and that should not be touched, it's "unnatural" to mess with it), I mean that perspective is just detached from reality. Economics as its taught is detached from the reality of the overall society.