Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Left Flunks Economics 101

From today's WSJ: "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics."

The questions were:

1) Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable (unenlightened answer: disagree).

2) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree).

3) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree).

4) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree).

5) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree).

6) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree).

7) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree).

8) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

How did the six ideological groups do overall? From best to worst, average number of incorrect responses (out of 8):

Very conservative: 1.30 out of 8
Libertarian: 1.38
Conservative: 1.67
Moderate: 3.67
Liberal: 4.69
Progressive/very liberal: 5.26

HT: Matt B, The Plaid Pundit

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