By Justin Wolfers
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, is interested in electing the candidate who will be best for the economy. But along the way he has learned the iron law of the political marketplace: there is an excess supply of political blowhards, and there are far too few unbiased experts. Even worse, it is hard to sort out just who is an expert and who is a blowhard.
But Scott had an ingenious insight: an anonymous survey of leading economists might yield an unbiased snapshot of the opinions of professional economists. He paid a survey company to survey over 500 members of the American Economic Association, and he just released the findings.
The headline: Overall, 59 percent of his respondents think Obama would be best for the economy’s long-term prospects, compared to 31 percent for McCain, while 10 percent thought there would be no difference.
Some might argue that these results aren’t too surprising, given that 48 percent of the sample are registered Democrats, compared to the 17 percent registered as Republicans. As such, it might be more interesting to focus on the independents, who chose Obama by a margin of 46 percent to 39 percent.
The most important issues? According to the economists surveyed, the top four issues are education, health care, international trade, and energy. They expect Obama will do a better job on education, health care, and energy, but they give the nod to McCain on international trade. I was surprised to see that “reducing the deficit” ranked so low on the list, but perhaps that reflects the myriad of other concerns currently on the agenda.
There’s another very nice finding in this survey: economists’ views on the candidates are not really shaped by their incomes. Hopefully this suggests that we are able to see beyond pure self interest.
You can read more from Scott Adams here or see his own interpretation here. You can also view the raw data in this PowerPoint deck.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, is interested in electing the candidate who will be best for the economy. But along the way he has learned the iron law of the political marketplace: there is an excess supply of political blowhards, and there are far too few unbiased experts. Even worse, it is hard to sort out just who is an expert and who is a blowhard.
But Scott had an ingenious insight: an anonymous survey of leading economists might yield an unbiased snapshot of the opinions of professional economists. He paid a survey company to survey over 500 members of the American Economic Association, and he just released the findings.
The headline: Overall, 59 percent of his respondents think Obama would be best for the economy’s long-term prospects, compared to 31 percent for McCain, while 10 percent thought there would be no difference.
Some might argue that these results aren’t too surprising, given that 48 percent of the sample are registered Democrats, compared to the 17 percent registered as Republicans. As such, it might be more interesting to focus on the independents, who chose Obama by a margin of 46 percent to 39 percent.
The most important issues? According to the economists surveyed, the top four issues are education, health care, international trade, and energy. They expect Obama will do a better job on education, health care, and energy, but they give the nod to McCain on international trade. I was surprised to see that “reducing the deficit” ranked so low on the list, but perhaps that reflects the myriad of other concerns currently on the agenda.
There’s another very nice finding in this survey: economists’ views on the candidates are not really shaped by their incomes. Hopefully this suggests that we are able to see beyond pure self interest.
You can read more from Scott Adams here or see his own interpretation here. You can also view the raw data in this PowerPoint deck.
4 comments:
I don't believe this election is really based on republican or democrat where only democrat votes for democrats and republicans for republics. They are mostly interested in what is right for our economic standpoint and what we can do to better our country in the time of war and inflation. Economists are doing the same thing since there not going for the one who makes the most money or which one benefits them the most but the one who will lead us out of our troubled times.
I think that this survey of economists is frankly a waste of money. Neither candidate will be able to fix the problems that the US economy is in right now. Obama plans to help the poor and needy with cheap health care and other programs. McCain will continue the conservative plan of lowering taxes to help the people. When the correct answer is not to try to cushion the citizen from the problem but to let the people help to bring us out of the stupid economics that the country has been guilty of. Some regulation should be set for loans and such, and some programs should be cut to try to reduce spending to help cut the national debt.
Are economists really the best example we have of an unbiased group of people? And even so, there may be other factors leading to their conclusions.
I wish less people were like that guy in the comic stip. I wish that people my age who are actually old enough to vote, would start using their brains, instead of just listening to what the candidates are saying, we should research what their voting history is, and where it correlates to where they stand on those issues today. We can't continue to blindly assume that the candidate for change is a change for the better, but we also can't assume that more experience means better choices.
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