A survey yielded some interesting results about the basic level of economic enlightenment of people who identify with a political position. The article is titled Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, subtitle: Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics. Via Carpe Diem, via Big Twitter Tent.

Not too many years ago some smug liberals were trying to persuade the masses that people who agreed with them were so much smarter than those who disagreed with them. One seldom hears that these days, but it's still refreshing to see that old saw get a beat down.

They used eight questions from a 21 question 2008 Zogby survey and designated certain answers as wrong, or as they prefer, "unenlightened." Here are the eight questions with the "unenlightened" answer:

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.

Unenlightened: Disagree

2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.

Unenlightened: Disagree

3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

Unenlightened: Disagree

4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.

Unenlightened: Disagree

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.

Unenlightened: Agree

6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited.

Unenlightened: Agree

7. Free trade leads to unemployment.

Unenlightened: Agree

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

Unenlightened: Disagree

They couldn't correlate economic enlightenment with education. But they did make some conclusion about political ideology from the incorrect answers. From the article:

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8:

Very conservative, 1.30;

Libertarian, 1.38;

Conservative, 1.67;

Moderate, 3.67;

Liberal, 4.69;

Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics.

Links: Abstract -- Economic Enlightenment in Relation to College-going, Ideology, and Other Variables: A Zogby Survey of Americans ;

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