politics and economics all up in this bitch

[Nychthemeron]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... on_LEADTop

I just read this article as well as the findings in their entirety. Now, I have a lot of faults with this study, especially after reading the eight questions, but having taken some economics/business courses, I can see why this would be the case.

I was wondering what you all thought about this (even you non-US people).

[hclapp219]

That is interesting and unfortunately, not terribly surprising. I am liberal and majored in economics in college, so I'm sure I could've helped the liberal side somewhat, but oh well. Some things about the study: I'd be interested to see the sample size for each political group, as opposed to just the total number of people in the study as a whole. I also think that the conclusions drawn about these answers are somewhat misleading. As the authors themselves acknowledge

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

It could be that liberals are more knowledgeable about these atypical cases. Also, as a student of economics, I know that many of the models used are incredibly oversimplified, and there are many more factors that go into each of these questions than a supply and demand graph. Take for instance this statement: 6) Free trade leads to unemployment. Free trade in and of itself does not lead to unemployment, but in most cases, it does lead to increased unemployment in certain groups (in the Western world, low-skilled workers). I think this study might show that liberals are more aware of these kinds of issues rather than just stupid. Other statements, like 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly. have fewer excuses, as they are purely wrong. So basically, some of these statements are much more ambiguous than others. I would be interested to read the full study to look at their methods, conclusions, etc...

Thanks for sharing!

[MKULTRA]

From The Rude Pundit......

Memo to Sarah Palin: A President (or Governor) Is Not a CEO:
Could someone please hold a flip phone up to Sarah Palin and get her saying something like, "We use Trig as a door stop"? No, really, could someone get this nouveau riche redneck twat on camera talking about how she'd never shop at Wal-Mart 'cause she might get some trailer trash tears on her? 'Cause the idea that she is "a force" in the American political discourse is like coming across a tribe in the jungle that worships a monkey head.

In her latest Facebook posting (which is exactly where Thomas Paine would write Common Sense today so he could only reach people who "like" him), Palin takes Barack Obama to task for not having spoken to BP CEO Tony Hayward directly: "The current administration may be unaware that it’s the President’s duty, meeting on a CEO-to-CEO level with Hayward, to verify what BP reports." She says that she was "a CEO" when she was governor of Alaska.

Now, while Palin may look at the words "chief executive" in reference to a governor or president and think it's the same thing as "Chief Executive Officer" in a corporation, it's that very analogy that has fucked us over. The government ain't a company. The president ain't a CEO. Palin is either an idiot, Chauncey Gardner with tits, or an unconscionable, self-aggrandizing moose-fucker.

See, a CEO's job is to make money for the corporation. That's it. Shit like laws and taxes and safety are impediments that must be dealt with on the way to making money. A CEO has to be a greedy bastard, a cuntish conqueror who doesn't give a fuck what has to be done to get more money. The second you say that the President of the United States is on an equivalent level with a CEO is the second you reveal that you don't know fuck-all about government and you degrade the presidency. The logical leap to President-as-CEO is a callous manipulation of the expectations of the governed, and it turns citizens into selfish shareholders.

Obama call Tony Hayward to get answers from him? Fucking why? Obama answered that well enough himself: "I have not spoken to him directly. Here's the reason. Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions." Palin's response to this? "Mr. President: with all due respect, you have to get involved, sir." What Palin is demanding is that the CEO of BP be elevated to world leader status. And, with no respect because none is due, she is the kind of oil pipe-sucking whore who would see it that way. Of course, it also completely erases all the involvement Obama has had, short of texting Tony Hayward with "hell of a spill lol".

One last thing: that Sarah Palin would invoke her two-and-a-half year stint as governor of Alaska as her "executive experience" is fucking pathetic, like a first-time tourist attempting to give directions to the locals.

[devnulljp]

Palin is either an idiot, Chauncey Gardner with tits, or an unconscionable, self-aggrandizing moose-fucker.

Use of the word "or" implies those things are mutually exclusive...although I'd take exception to the Chauncey Gardner analogy, he was a decent fella.
And it wouldn’t matter if you got Sarah Palin on tape in a 3-way scat orgy with Glenn Beck and the Pope, reading extracts from Das Kapital and the Q’ran to each other, wiping their arses on walmart hockey moms and killing kittens by wrapping them in American flags and setting fire to them. The people who go for this schtick do so unreservedly and from a place that does not involve reason or evidence or higher cognition. It’s a purely limbic response to an implanted narrative.

Palin’s unwed teen mom daughter gets $30,000 to give a 1-hr talk about the struggles of being a teen mom.
Carrie Prejean gives the opening speech at Liberty University because, no she’s not an obnoxious airhead beauty pageant contestant (hey, seem familiar?) … with a (premarital, underage) sex tape, she’s a Christian hero and bastion of family values…or something.
And every single one of their “Let’s run round the world telling everyone how much Jesus hates gay people” turns out to be hiring rentboys to help lift their luggage and give them backrubs with meth.

This is hypocritical denial la-la land.

[floating opera]

[devnulljp]

[Nychthemeron]

[floating opera]

ha ha !!!

[Sockgazer]

Did anyone read the comments on that page? Some of the most unbelievable ignorant bullshit I've ever read; like that only conservatives and people with kids should vote because liberals will abort themselves out of existence so don't have any stock in the future.

I find it hard to imagine people like that scoring higher on ANY test.

[floating opera]

i kind didn't read that link. i pretty avoid WSJ like the plague cuz i don't think its a good newspaper. i'd rather read the Financial Times.

[hclapp219]

i'd rather read the Financial Times.

pink paper > normal paper

[futuresailors]

[Nychthemeron]

I posted it more for the article that the WSJ was talking about rather than the WSJ thing itself. It was pretty interesting reading what the questions were and what their conclusions were. Finicky, but it is a somewhat surprising result.

Of course they never say anything about the specific make up of each individual group (i.e. what kinds of people declared themselves as Liberal, Conservative, etc), but rather the entire group that they surveyed.

[devnulljp]

i'd rather read the Financial Times.

pink paper > normal paper

ORLY?
Picked a fine time to come out of the closet

[floating opera]

alright. so i read that OP-ED. in a roundabout way i have to agree that most liberals & progressives don't have a general grounding in Economics but it definitely didn't have anything to do w/ that survey/poll. i have alwayz believed that though. & not becuz they don't know what the proper definition of a monopoly is.

secondly. i think economics is a great "bi-partisan" non-biased discipline. it is pretty much agreed upon in economics by both conservative & liberal economists that free-trade is a good thing & even, say, a Communist would agree it is a good idea to support workers globally (e.g. workers of the WORLD unite...) instead of being "nationalistic" & REFORMISTICALLY focusing on domestic labor concerns like many latte liberals do.