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My GMU Economics colleage Dan Klein has this excellent and revealing op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal [2]. In it, he reports the results of a survey that he, along with Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic, conducted to test American adults’ grasp of basic economic ideas. They find that people who self-indentify as “libertarian,” “very conservative,” or “conservative” understand basic economic principles far better than do people who self-identify as “liberal” or as “progressive.”
Here’s the opening paragraph:
Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.