{"id":1042,"date":"2006-12-01T11:30:34","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T16:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2006\/12\/01\/what-economists-agree-upon\/"},"modified":"2006-12-01T11:30:34","modified_gmt":"2006-12-01T16:30:34","slug":"what-economists-agree-upon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/01\/what-economists-agree-upon\/","title":{"rendered":"What Economists Agree Upon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Study by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bepress.com\/ev\/vol3\/iss9\/art1\/\">Robert Whaples<\/a>, summarized by <a href=\"http:\/\/gregmankiw.blogspot.com\/2006\/11\/consensus-of-economists.html\">Greg Mankiw<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> 90.1 percent disagree with the position that &#8220;the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li> 87.5 percent agree that &#8220;the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>  85.2 percent agree that &#8220;the U.S. should eliminate agricultural subsidies.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>85.3 percent agree that &#8220;the gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li> 77.2 percent agree that &#8220;the best way to deal with Social Security&#8217;s long-term funding gap is to increase the normal retirement age.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>67.1 percent agree that &#8220;parents should be given educational vouchers which can be used at government-run or privately-run schools.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>65.0 percent agree that &#8220;the U.S. should increase energy taxes.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They like the free market, don&#8217;t they?  Well, so do I.  I basically agree with all of them except the bit about school vouchers &#8212; I even willing to be convinced about that, but the data so far seem to speak strongly against the success of vouchers (as I vaguely recall).  The incentive structures don&#8217;t really point in the right direction.  From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bepress.com\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&amp;article=1156&amp;context=ev&amp;type=additional\">table<\/a>, note that the above answers lump together &#8220;agree&#8221; and &#8220;strongly agree&#8221;; in fact, when it comes to vouchers, the agreement is not strong.<\/p>\n<p>If you disagree with the economists, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/mld\/inquirer\/business\/16085802.htm\">here&#8217;s why<\/a>.  All via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2006\/11\/assorted_links_2.html\">Marginal Revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Study by Robert Whaples, summarized by Greg Mankiw: 90.1 percent disagree with the position that &#8220;the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries.&#8221; 87.5 percent agree that &#8220;the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.&#8221; 85.2 percent agree that &#8220;the U.S. should eliminate agricultural subsidies.&#8221; 85.3 percent agree that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}