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Showing posts from January, 2018
So I was reading a piece on The Outline about identity politics when the author, Sean McElwee, brought up a survey he had penned and collated to establish how positions on economic and racial issues align; Could Democrats win over racially conservative whites with economic populism? It’s unlikely, because people who oppose racial justice also tend to oppose liberal economic policies.  To test this, I created scales of economic and racial liberalism, using two questions that have been on the American National Election Studies surveys since 1972. One question asks respondents to place themselves on a one-to-seven point scale on government aid to black Americans, the other on a one-to-seven scale on guaranteeing jobs and income for all Americans. In 1972, only 54 percent of white Americans who took the racially liberal position (supporting aid to black Americans) also took the economically liberal position (guaranteeing jobs and income).  By 2016, 74 percent did. And in 1972,

Some cool posts on r/badeconomics

The subreddit called Badeconomics is a great place to go if, like me, you are trying to nudge your way towards being serviceably knowledgeable about economics. So I decided to share a few links to posts that recently pleased me... Badecon posts re often so-called R1s in which an article, book, video or other piece is savaged for its economic illiteracy. The links that kick off each paragraph below are R1s added in the last two months. Socialism is astonishing... Apparently economic growth over the past two centuries has not also led to growth in leisure time... despite clear data showing that it has . Most Americans don't understand basic economics and r/Socialism thinks that's great... This R1 is attacking this post wherein some silly sausages get all confused over the significance of the opinions expressed in the survey, and over the consequences of actually implementing those policies. Economists... a piece critical of economics using the matter of causes of the