Libertarian Scholar Corrects Self

When a noted libertarian scholar concocted an economics quiz which conservatives passed and liberals failed, right-wingers who read it high-fived each other, figuratively speaking.  Liberals, as you might guess, had a more sanguine reaction.

“Back in June 2010, I published a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that the American left was unenlightened, by and large, as to economic matters,” George Mason University professor Daniel B. Klein writes in next month’s issue of The Atlantic. “Responding to a set of survey questions that tested people’s real-world understanding of basic economic principles, self-identified progressives and liberals did much worse than conservatives and libertarians, I reported.”

“To sharpen the ax, The Journal titled the piece ‘Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?’—the implication being that people on the left were not.”  As it turns out, the questions gave conservatives the home court advantage, revolving around statements respondents had to agree or disagree with such as:

• “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.”
• “Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.”
• “The standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.”
• “Rent control leads to housing shortages.”
• “A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.”
• “Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited”
• “Free trade leads to unemployment” and
• “Minimum-wage laws raise unemployment.”

So, Klein and researcher Zeljka Buturovic developed a quiz more congenial to the Left but testing economic principles. This time, liberals passed and conservatives struggled.

“Writing up these results was, for me, a gloomy task—I expected critics to gloat and point fingers,” Klein admitted in The Atlantic.” In May, we published another paper in Econ Journal Watch, saying in the title that the new results ‘Vitiate Prior Evidence of the Left Being Worse.’”

“ More than 30 percent of my libertarian compatriots (and more than 40 percent of conservatives), for instance, disagreed with the statement ‘A dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person’—c’mon, people!—versus just 4 percent among progressives. Seventy-eight percent of libertarians believed gun-control laws fail to reduce people’s access to guns. Overall, on the nine new items, the respondents on the left did much better than the conservatives and libertarians. Some of the new questions challenge (or falsely reassure) conservative and not libertarian positions, and vice versa. Consistently, the more a statement challenged a group’s position, the worse the group did.”

Now, here’s a question: When will a scholar from the Left admit to survey bias and attempt to correct same? Most of the ones I’ve dealt with won’t even entertain inquiries.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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