Scott Adams's Political Survey of Economists 939
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."
Re:Wait .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Accountants (Score:4, Informative)
That's like saying you should ask burger flippers at McDonalds what the long-term growth strategy for the company should be.
Economics is fundamentally different from accounting, they are barely even related fields.
Re:Interesting Read (Score:5, Informative)
How about this (according to Michael Kinsley, Larry Bartels, etc.): Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.
Unless you are already independently wealthy, you will do better under a Democratic administration than a Republican one. Plain and simple. And if you are independently wealthy, well then you probably don't really care about a GDP percentage here or there. Bottom line, if you are voting "with your feet" on the economy, a Democratic vote is the clear choice, according to historic performance.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The majority of economists are Democrats? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
who is really responsible for the current bank crisis (whether profit hungry execs, slimy people luring people into bad mortgages, people flipping houses and then wanting a bailout when burned, government policy...)?
Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes. And probably a dozen other reasons as well.
Of course, a lot of the people flipping housing couldn't have done it without an easy to get loan. The people giving out bad loans wouldn't have done so without the support of profit hungry execs. The profit hungry execs never would have been able to allow the bad loans without the deregulation of the industry (something both right and left politicians have had a hand in at one time or another over the past 15 years). In theory, this could have been avoided at any point in the chain, in reality it was inevitable anyway.
Our housing market was unsustainable, the definition of a bubble economy. The value of homes was going up solely because people expected the value of homes to go up (i.e. 'this house is a bit more expensive than we can afford, but in a few years we can sell or refinance and everything will be fine'). To make matters worse, the construction industry in the US was way, way, way, overgrown. To the point that there would be more houses in the US than people by 2050 if the construction rate had stayed the same.
Re:How many are longtime party-members? (Score:3, Informative)
And not only that, they are now working with a legislature that is entirely run by Democrats. You know, the legislature that is the only body that can appropriate funds and vote on a budget? It doesn't matter who is in the White House, since all that person can do is propose a budget. Congress then has at it, and either writes their own, or modifies it. They say how much is spent, and they say how much is raised, and who is taxed to get it.
No surprises (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, the economists have joined the parties that they think are best for the economy. Shocking.
Not even this is surprising:
In January 2009, the total national debt will be the same, regardless of whoever is going to become president. This is a massive drag on the economy.
Furthermore, this is just a president, not a central committee chairman. The president obviously has some power, but he's definitely in second place. The part of government that has the most influence over the economy (congress), isn't getting nearly as much media coverage for their elections, as the president is. The next truly economy-related election is in two years, not in two months.
Re:How many are longtime party-members? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe, long-term, Democrats have been better for the economy
There's certainly evidence [wikipedia.org] for that. [wikipedia.org]
To summarize:
Since 1933, Republican administrations have averaged 1.25% annual job growth, while Democrat administrations have averaged 3.25%. Even after removing FDR's terms the Democrats still average 2.9% annual growth.
Since 1978, Republican administrations have increased government spending by an average of 3% annually, while Democrat administrations have averaged 2.5%.
Since 1978, Republican administrations have increased the national debt by an average of 9.1% annually, while Democrat administrations have averaged 1%.
Since 1978, Republican administrations have increased the GDP by an average of 2.7% annually, while Democrat administrations have averaged 3.1%.
It's quite a testament to the GOP's marketing skill that the average American associates them with smaller government, stronger economic growth, and more jobs.
Re:Obama favored, 59-31% (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know if you ever did survey work, but in the article you'll note the survey was conducted by the OSR Group. This means they created the questionnaire, randomly selected 500 folks from the Economists that said they would reply to surveys, and very likely processed and analyzed the results.
I used to work for a Market Research company and they did a lot of what you are calling "dressing up". The focus for them would have been telling you which group (Demographics) to sell your widget to. So 80% of Republicans in this case, and 88% Democrats is still statistically valid if you want to know what Republicans/Democrats are thinking. Most of this type of research if focused on Demographic slices of the survey group. You don't get anywhere with "Everybody likes Pizza" or 'Obama' for that matter, you have to cut it up a little in order to really draw any conclusions from it. Its worth noting that 20% of the Republicans surveyed don't think McCain is the man for the Economy, or maybe they are part of the 8% Neither Candidate would make a difference camp.
A Marketing firm might also tell McCain to court the Independent Economists largely working in Academia that were 27% of the survey and 39% thought he'd be better vs. Obama. They'd also likely tell him to focus on the No Difference segment.
Adams probably got a few tables of numbers and maybe a presentation with some trends, maybe an XY Scatter chart or two, and is basing his editorial on that with who knows how much actual stats training.
It'd be very interesting if he gave away the survey data, and let other more statistically knowledgeable people 'do for their country' as well.
Re:Interesting Read (Score:3, Informative)
In the US, there are basically three effects from declaring a party affiliation: (1) you are permitted to vote in that party's primaries, (2) you receive targeted political junk mail, and (3) you show up in state-released statistics on how many registered voters there are for each party. Primary election rules vary by both party and state: in some states you don't even need to register with a party to vote in its primary, so in those states declaring a party is almost pointless.
It actually does (Score:3, Informative)
For whatever reason, apparently "economist" is a field that attracts liberals.
Maybe that's why republicans think you can cut taxes and increase spending and everything will work out okay.
OK, I'll bite.
The truth is that for the last 50 years or so, the "profession" of "economist" has attracted what you would call "liberals" (or what I would call "statists") who believe in increased government control of or interference in economic affairs.
Since the late 1940s Keynesian macroeconomics have been the fashion with the vast majority of economists. Therefore, economics has tended to attract people who agree with his theories, ie. central government planning of the economy.
Keynesian theories are regarded as "gospel" for most economists. People who view it as wrong are generally not considered "credible." It's not hard to see how this profession would then attract people with a similar political philosophy.
From there, it's not such a stretch to see a fairly heavy statist-leaning bias in this survey of economists.
N.B. : I am not saying one or the other is right, nor faulting Scott Adams in least. I'm merely trying to point out the flaws inherent in the system....
Fucking Cartoonist (Score:5, Informative)
A "fucking cartoonist"?
How many books [addall.com] have you written? Have you started your own food company [naturalcheffoods.com] yet?
Wealthy people don't get that way by being lazy, son.
Re:Wait .... (Score:2, Informative)
No no, *reality* has a well-known liberal bias. Truthiness comes from your gut.
Re:the most productive members of society (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait .... (Score:5, Informative)
Not the way we do it. In the Keynesian model a country is supposed to only run a deficit during times of recession while during periods of economic prosperity a country is supposed to pay off any debt they have accrued and maybe save a little money for the next bust period. Our model goes more along the lines of running a deficit all the time.
Re:Survey is suspect (Score:3, Informative)
have a strong feeling that if they were polled the results would be heavily skewed towards the candidate that is not announcing large tax increases...
Well, let's get past taxes for a minute.
You have a government of size X. You need funds to pay for that government.
It would be nice if that government could be pared down to a more reasonable size. Every president in my lifetime has promised that. Interestingly, the ones who were most philosophically aligned to do so have done the least to actually do so. How much of that is due to the political difficulties of asking Congress to defund projects to their constituents, and how much of that is because they were being dishonest to one degree or another I will leave to the reader.
The fact is that not one president in the last 30 years I have been paying attention to these things has shrunk the federal government. If you think the next one will, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and I are having a party at my place on Friday. Come by, we'd like to hang out.
Back to reality, as an elected politician, you have a few choices as to how to raise money to pay for the functions of government.
Borrow it from the capital markets and let your successor worry about how to pay for it (strangely popular!)
Raise taxes on the broad base of taxpayers and risk their ire and having them vote you out of office.
Raise taxes on a small percentage of people at the top, knowing their assets are much more fungible than the bottom 95%, and that if they are overtaxed, you will be in the uncomfortable position of having lost both a large part of your revenue base and a large segment of the capital that makes the economy possible.
I don't particularly want my taxes raised, or anyone else's. At the same time, we've had this narrative for the last 8 years that
a) If you slash taxes on the top few percent, the capital markets will flood over and the economy will explode! (it has, but not quite the way we were promised).
b) If you raise taxes etc. etc., you'll ruin everything. This ignores that the marginal tax rates through much of the era from WWII through the early 1980s had confiscatory rates (90%) on the top end.
For the record, you'll never see a 90% tax rate ever again. The modern economy wouldn't support it. At the same time, the argument for regressive taxation is growing pretty thin.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
The Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 (H.R. 1461/S. 190). Google is your friend. Use your friend. This gave the power to HUD to include "fair affirmative action", HUD then ordered Fannie Mae to increase it's percentage of high-risk mortgages. The Globe and Mail [theglobeandmail.com]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not just any lender. They are government backed "corporations" that operate under restrictions passed by law. They are holding The People's money, taken by force at the end of a gun barrel (see definition of taxation.) As such, they must be much more risk averse than a private mortgage firm with investors who willingly take risks. The change to the law opened the floodgates for making bad loans on a "corporation" that just got investigated for making years of bad decisions and poor financial choices. Which brings us to...
The connection of Fannie Mae to Walter Mondale's campaign manager...
James Johnson was Walter Mondale's campaign manager. He is also Barack Obama's Campaign Advisor. Relevance is up to you...
That "last week" has got to be pre-2004, then...
Wow, if only I'd set off that part as being a quote from a news article, perhaps by putting it all in italics. Shame on me. Maybe this style will help.
ARTICLE QUOTATION FOLLOWS
Fanie's lobbying efforts paid off as liberal politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.T.) and Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.) worked to kill any real reform of Freddie and Fannie. The Washington Post reports: "In an internal memo in 2004, Fannie Mae executive Daniel H. Mudd affirmed what the company's critics had long contended: In the political arena, 'we always won' and 'we took no prisoners.'"
END OF ARTICLE QUOTATION
Oh, and Daniel Mudd was just the (is currently the transitional) CEO of Fannie Mae for the last six months. He'll be receiving a $5.64 million "retirement package" thanks to his friends in Washington. And Daniel Mudd has admitted that after 2005, they "stopped internally scrutinizing" their purchases of Alt-A loans and packages. That's a heck of an admission for a CEO of a "corporation" that's supposed to be about scrutinizing and packaging mortgage loans.
Raines also made no mention of...
Again, I must apologize for not setting off the article in italics or something. That was the reporter's comment. Please note that I just might have included this as a means of demonstrating the racial component of the push at Fannie Mae towards high risk loans. Raines being a major player in the Democratic party top brass might have had something to do with it as well. You might even want to use Google or another search engine to actually research the issue as I urged you to do in my initial message. Everything you complained about fell under the "if you're too lazy" block, which says more about you than about me.
Re:Wait .... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a joke, right?
The only presidents since 1963 to have ever submitted balanced budgets to Congress are Johnson and Clinton. At no time since 1945 when Republicans have been in charge of both Congress and the White House have they ever reduced spending.
The vast majority of the national debt to date was accrued during the Presidencies of three men: Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, all Republicans. In Reagan's case, he was working with a Republican Senate for his first 6 years in office, and Bush had Republicans controlling both houses for 6 years as well.
The Bush II years have seen tax cut after tax cut that were, in theory, supposed to result in increased growth and therefore reduced deficit. Instead, he has posted record deficits year after year. And still, the fiction that large tax cuts will somehow reduce the deficit persists.
The idea that Democrats are the big spending party and Republicans are fiscally responsible is pure fiction, and it boggles the mind why people continue to believe it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even the "big spending" LBJ was more fiscally responsible than the Republicans of the past 28 years.
If people would treat politics less like religion maybe they would make decisions based on actual historical data rather than what their party keeps telling them is the truth.
Re:And so comes the question (Score:3, Informative)
The problem has existed for at least 7 years. It seems to be caused by the fact that Slashdot's page counter doesn't handle nested threads well. It will only create a new page at a top-level thread, so where there are 3-4 pages of one thread, none of the other threads will show up until you've made it to some arbitrary point in the page list where the algorithm punts you to the next top-level comment.
Re:The majority of economists are Democrats? (Score:3, Informative)
You can't treat Europe as a country, because it isn't. And those "individual" European states have far far stronger (and socialist leaning) central governments (even the more conservative ones) than even the most liberal of American states. They've got socialized medicine, paid family leaves for both mother and father with a newborn, remember?
Re:Wait .... (Score:1, Informative)
RTFA. Non-academic economists in the survey had similar party breakdowns.
no, they were balanced on a yearly basis (Score:5, Informative)
The 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 budgets had total spending for the year lower than total income for the year, not based on any sort of future payoff. Those were the first surplus budgets since 1969's small surplus. The deficit returned as soon as Clinton left office, as all of Bush's budgets have been in deficit.
See the CBO data [cbo.gov], the past 15 years of which Wikipedia nicely graphs [wikipedia.org].
Re:Tax bracket (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, it was a pure BS post.. The 2008 federal tax bracket at $1M is 35%. The long term capital gains rate is at 15%, short term at 28%.
Being in the highest bracket can be painful, but there are a few things you can do to lessen the damage.
For one, if you're on the edge of one bracket, you can almost always put yourself in a lower bracket by choosing your investments properly.
If you're well into a bracket you'll be paying a little more, but not more than 35% unless you have a really horrible accountant.
I am actually just skirting the 35% bracket but, like everyone else, can put myself in a lower bracket by contributing to retirement accounts, deferring some payments, paying certain taxes within a given timeframe.
Do I feel badly that I'm paying more taxes that someone making minimum wage and unable to generate a portion of their income from investments?? No. But listening to conservative radio can make anyone feel that a life of leisure is a God-given right..
Re:Wait .... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interesting Read (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait .... (Score:5, Informative)
Clinton never had a surplus. My numbers indicate that he wasn't even close. Despite that, the numbers are extremely favourable for democrats.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have been in office for 26 years, Republicans 36.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have increased the debt by 2407 inflation adjusted million dollars, Republicans 7994.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have increased the size of the budget by 687 inflation adjusted million dollars, Republicans 1450.
Thus, adjusted for inflation, every year the Democrats were in office, they increased the budget by 26 million inflation adjusted dollars, and the debt by 92 million inflation adjusted dollars, every year they were in power.
The Republicans have increased the budget by 40 million inflation adjusted dollars, and the debt by 222 million inflation adjusted dollars, every year they were in power. My numbers are charitable in that they don't take the wars in Iraq and Afganistan into account.
Here are the calculations, done with data available commonly off the Internet. [file-pasta.com]
It's incredible to realise that the Republicans are incredibly fiscally irresponsible. They NEVER cut spending. They HATE cutting spending. They ALSO hate taxes. Basically, you're looking Republicans creating MORE government than Democrats, then NOT PAYING FOR IT.
Ever Dive Near an Oil Rig? (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing that tips economists is, I suspect, the same thing that tips most other analytical minds: the Republican party has been steadily tightening ties to the religious right. While religion is not uncommon among thinkers, secularism is more common, and evangelicalism is generally distrusted as too prescriptive and intolerant
nope, as a degreed economist, the thing which tips competent economists is the republican attachment to reaganomics.
reaganomics attacks the consumption side of the GDP equation, which also happens to be the largest portion.
It places implicit trust in agents who have no real liability, and are subject to moral hazard which republican economic policy-makers ignore.
It ignores the long-term consequences of allowing producers to put the squeeze on their labor (hint: you become unable to sell what you make, and... and this is a very relevant one today... people are financially unable to support a home purchase)
There are numerous other aspects of economic policy which incompetent politicians on both sides ignore: such as the fact that offshoring as a multiple-round game results in destruction of the middle class, but that's a discussion for another time.
Re:Wait .... (Score:3, Informative)