Most Economists Are Liberals

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://stanfordpolitics.org/2016/12/06/conservative-economists-exile-trumpism/

...

[FONT=&quot]While the field takes prevention of political bias in research quite seriously, when explicitly asked about their partisan preferences, a 2003 survey of 1000 randomly selected economists actually reported voting for Democratic candidates over Republican ones by a ratio of 2.5 to 1, and a 2016 study of faculty party registrations found that economists at 40 top US universities were more likely to be registered Democrats than Republicans by 4.5 to 1. In other words, if economists, in general or at top universities, were the only people who voted, the result would be a Democratic landslide unlike any ever seen in American political history.
[/FONT]​

.....

 

[untermensche]

Voting for Democrats does not make you liberal.

If these economists have no issues with the dictatorial structures within capitalism they are on the right.

If they claim there is no other way they are out on the right fringe.

 

[whollygoats]

Question:

Of all these 1000 selected economists, how many of them successfully predicted the oncoming 2008-2009 financial collapse?

I think you will find the number to be quite miniscule, whether they be Democrats or Republicans, particularly amongst those economists at "40 top US universities".

So....Should I care what 1000 clowns couldn't see in front of their faces? I would think that ceasing to listen to the 1000 clowns would be in order.

I don't care if they are Democrats or Republicans, I'd like them to be coherent and reasonably correct in their forecasts.

That seems to have been quite difficult.

**picks up his ukulele and strums**

"Yes, sir, that's my baby...
No, sir, I don't mean maybe...
Yes, sir that's my baby now!"

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Did anyone actually read the fine article? It has some interesting tidbits of information.

...
A good predictor for whether an economics-affiliated conservative supported Trump during the campaign is whether he or she is an economist or one of these political activists. Conservative heavyweight think tanks stacked with economists, like the Hoover Institution or the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), were noticeably reticent about the election. Top officials in previous Republican administrations (John Taylor, Greg Mankiw, John Cochrane, Martin Feldstein, Glenn Hubbard, Richard Schmalensee, William Poole, and more) went on record opposing Trump.
When The Wall Street Journal contacted forty-five economists who had served on the Council of Economic Advisors under eight different presidents, not a single one supported Trump. When Trump initially put out his economic plan, economists across the spectrum immediately savaged it. With days to go before the election, a group of 370 economists, including eight Nobel Laureates, published a letter disparaging Trump for “magical thinking and conspiracy theories” just two days after a group of nineteen American economist Nobel Laureates published a letter endorsing Clinton; by contrast, a quadrennial letter signed by hundreds of economists in support of the GOP nominee this year simply registered objection to Clinton’s policies without mentioning Trump at all....


Today's head of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers is Larry Kudlow. A man notorious for not being right about anything in over 30+ years. He poop poohed the Housing Crisis, the recession that followed and Obama's attempts to address the problems of the deep recession that followed. Despite all of that, he is Trump's economic adviser.

 

[whollygoats]

Awww....Nobody cries for the 1000 Clowns?

And,yes...What passes for 'economic advisors' in this administration is particularly unimpressive.
Egregiously dubious credentials.
More so than the usual run, even.
By far.

 

[Tigers!]

https://stanfordpolitics.org/2016/12/06/conservative-economists-exile-trumpism/

...

[FONT="]While the field takes prevention of political bias in research quite seriously, when explicitly asked about their partisan preferences, a 2003[URL="http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/KS_PublCh06.pdf"] survey[/URL] of 1000 randomly selected economists actually reported voting for Democratic candidates over Republican ones by a ratio of 2.5 to 1, and a 2016 study of faculty party registrations found that economists at 40 top US universities were more likely to be registered Democrats than Republicans by 4.5 to 1. In other words, if economists, in general or at top universities, were the only people who voted, the result would be a Democratic landslide unlike any ever seen in American political history.
[/FONT]​

.....

And people wonder economics is called the dismal science.

- - - Updated - - -

Question:

I don't care if they are Democrats or Republicans, I'd like them to be coherent and reasonably correct in their forecasts.

Cannot argue with this sentiment.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw

 

[DrZoidberg]

https://stanfordpolitics.org/2016/12/06/conservative-economists-exile-trumpism/

...

[FONT="]While the field takes prevention of political bias in research quite seriously, when explicitly asked about their partisan preferences, a 2003[URL="http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/PdfPapers/KS_PublCh06.pdf"] survey[/URL] of 1000 randomly selected economists actually reported voting for Democratic candidates over Republican ones by a ratio of 2.5 to 1, and a 2016 study of faculty party registrations found that economists at 40 top US universities were more likely to be registered Democrats than Republicans by 4.5 to 1. In other words, if economists, in general or at top universities, were the only people who voted, the result would be a Democratic landslide unlike any ever seen in American political history.
[/FONT]​

.....

Meh. Democrats are more likely to employ economists to steer the economy. Republicans just want small government, which means making economists to tinker with the economy redundant. Economists want jobs to.

All this proves is that incentives work

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Republicans just want small government

They do?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Republicans just want small government

They do?

Yes. Google, GOP, small government, quotes for more.


America's Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small-government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big-government sympathizers who want to impose their version of 'righteousness' on others through the hammer of law.... Our movement must avoid the temptations of power and those who would twist the good intentions of Christian voters to support policies that undermine freedom and grow government.

Dick Armey


We believe in individual initiative, personal responsibility, opportunity, freedom, small government, the Constitution. These principles, these American principles are key to getting our economy back to being successful and leading the world. Mitt Romney
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mitt_romney_415548?src=t_small_government

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Or look at what they actually do. You know, actions.

Talk is cheap. Those who prefer to believe it instead of their "lying eyes" are only fooling themselves. I suspect it is because they want to be fooled.

Get a Republican to say "Republicans are small government" and Democrats are quick to point out all the growth of government that occurs under Republicans. Get a Libertarian to say "Republicans are not small government" and those same Democrats suddenly forget all that growth as if it never happened and point to a series of meaningless quotes.

I especially like that you chose Romney as a source, as in "Romneycare", the rough draft of Obamacare.

 

[Copernicus]

Or look at what they actually do. You know, actions.

Talk is cheap. Those who prefer to believe it instead of their "lying eyes" are only fooling themselves. I suspect it is because they want to be fooled.

Get a Republican to say "Republicans are small government" and Democrats are quick to point out all the growth of government that occurs under Republicans. Get a Libertarian to say "Republicans are not small government" and those same Democrats suddenly forget all that growth as if it never happened and point to a series of meaningless quotes.

I especially like that you chose Romney as a source, as in "Romneycare", the rough draft of Obamacare.

I think it fair to say that Republicans are strong advocates of "small government" when it comes to eliminating or reducing social support programs. Not so much when it comes to huge military budgets and corporate welfare. It's a question of which part of the government one wants to shrink down to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub.

 Grover Norquist

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
- Interview on NPR's Morning Edition, May 25, 2001

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't think it is fair to say that Republicans are strong advocates of "small government" when it comes to eliminating or reducing social support programs, unless you count "you want to increase it 3% while I want to increase it 4%" as reducing or eliminating social programs. They just want to "do a better job running it", whatever that means.

They are also willing to create their own social programs.

Dwight Eisenhower
•Increased federal spending 30 percent
•Created Department of Health, Education, & Welfare (and spending)
•Put Earl Warren and William Brennan on Supreme Court
•Helped install Shah Pahlevi in Iran (smart, real smart)
•Extended Social Security to 10 million additional persons
•Started American involvement in Vietnam
•Passed federal highway legislation
•Created NASA
•Started student loan program

Richard Nixon
•Increased federal spending 70 percent
•Created EPA, OSHA, and CPSC
•Started "affirmative action"
•Imposed price and wage controls
•Made your 1968 dollar worth just 78 cents by the time he left office
•Proposed minimum national income

Gerald Ford
•Knocked 8 cents off your dollar in just two years [He didn't WIN (Whip Inflation Now)]
•Increased federal spending throughout term

Ronald Reagan
•Increased federal spending 53 percent
•Elevated Veteran's Administration
•Added 250,000 civilian employees
•Created drug czar's office
•Escalated war on drugs

George Bush
•Increased federal spending 12 percent
•Signed the (litigious) Americans with Disabilities Act
•Managed to knock 13 cents off the value of your dollar in just four years
•Just said "Yes" to new taxes

George W Bush
•S-CHIP
•Prescription Drug Coverage for Seniors
•No Child Left Alone Behind
•Created the DHS
•Don't even get me started on the War on Terror

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yes. look at what they do. More biiiiggggggggg tax cuts for the rich piggies! Ohhh look that! Deficits. Oh how sad, we will have to slash and hack at social Security and medicare to balance the budget. Yup, yup, yup!

Small government coming right up! Didn't you notice any of this? Small government, slash regulations, slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!
America's night mare of clean air and water is finally over! Small government goooooooood!

Are you noticing what the GOP is actually doing?

Bring Kansas style government to us all! Grover Norquist's dream of dragging government to a bath tub and drowning it is coming true, hand over fist.

Google "starve the beast".

 

[Axulus]

Yes. look at what they do. More biiiiggggggggg tax cuts for the rich piggies! Ohhh look that! Deficits. Oh how sad, we will have to slash and hack at social Security and medicare to balance the budget. Yup, yup, yup!

Small government coming right up! Didn't you notice any of this? Small government, slash regulations, slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!
America's night mare of clean air and water is finally over! Small government goooooooood!

Are you noticing what the GOP is actually doing?

Bring Kansas style government to us all! Grover Norquist's dream of dragging government to a bath tub and drowning it is coming true, hand over fist.

Google "starve the beast".

When has social security ever been cut? The republicians control all branches of government and a majority of states, yet social security was not reduced and Medicare hardly got reduced (there are some cost control measures that were put in, but benefits were not reduced).

The previous Republician president, W, increased Medicare benefits with an expensive drug prescription add-on.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Okay, they have one thing (one, as in not more than one) that they cut, and that is top tax rates.

Is that all you have to argue that they are small government?

Oh, and that doesn't include the times they raise taxes. So sometimes they cut taxes and sometimes they raise taxes. That's evidence, one item contrasted to many items, that they are "small government"?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yes. look at what they do. More biiiiggggggggg tax cuts for the rich piggies! Ohhh look that! Deficits. Oh how sad, we will have to slash and hack at social Security and medicare to balance the budget. Yup, yup, yup!

Small government coming right up! Didn't you notice any of this? Small government, slash regulations, slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!
America's night mare of clean air and water is finally over! Small government goooooooood!

Are you noticing what the GOP is actually doing?

Bring Kansas style government to us all! Grover Norquist's dream of dragging government to a bath tub and drowning it is coming true, hand over fist.

Google "starve the beast".

When has social security ever been cut? The republicians control all branches of government and a majority of states, yet social security was not reduced and Medicare hardly got reduced (there are some cost control measures that were put in, but benefits were not reduced).

The previous Republician president, W, increased Medicare benefits with an expensive drug prescription add-on.

SS was cut under Reagan. Reagan did not tell us he was going to slash SS, but once elected he did that. By about 7%. When people finally got wind of what was happening, there was an out cry and that was stopped.

David Stockman, in his book "The Triumph of Politics" laid out the whole history of that in 1986. And lo, these many years everybody has forgotten that little escapade. The GOP had long vowed to cut SS. It helped sink Goldwater when he declared that is what he would do if elected. But Reagan actually did it. Yeah, Bush gave us Medicare Part D. But also made sure that the US Government was forbidden to bargain with big pharma for good pricing. It was a massive gift the big pharma. And got him votes from the older voters who benefited.

It is truly sad that Stockman's book is not on the net.

 

[untermensche]

Taxation of Social Security Benefits

Taxation of the SS benefit began under Reagan

If the taxpayer's combined income (total of adjusted gross income, interest on tax-exempt bonds, and 50% of Social Security benefits and Tier I Railroad Retirement Benefits) exceeds a threshold amount ($25,000 for an individual, $32,000 for a married couple filing a joint return, and zero for a married person filing separately), the amount of benefits subject to income tax is the lesser of 50% of benefits or 50% of the excess of the taxpayer's combined income over the threshold amount. The additional income tax revenues resulting from this provision are transferred to the trust funds from which the corresponding benefits were paid. Effective for taxable years beginning after 1983.

Look at those astronomical levels of income that for some reason, so Reagan could pretend he was cutting, had to suddenly be taxed that were never taxed before.

A tax to hurt the most vulnerable. SS beneficiaries.

Taxing SS means absolutely nothing to the rich.

https://www.ssa.gov/history/taxationofbenefits.html