A poll says that two-thirds of the American people think they could do a better job on the economy than Congress.
Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided.
For Bryan’s sake, I wish the poll respondents had been asked whether a group of people selected at random from the American Economic Association would do better or worse than a group selected from the phone book.
READER COMMENTS
RL
Feb 11 2009 at 7:31pm
I find it hilarious that 1 in 5 Americans are allegedly “undecided” on this question. It’s hard to even know what “undecided” means in this context. Is there some additional information about the nature of phone books that is needed to answer this question?
Gary Rogers
Feb 11 2009 at 11:50pm
I think I would trust a GMU economist, but the economics profession as a whole gets pretty low marks in my book.
How can a ligitimate economist completely ignore the unsustainable borrowing our government relies on? I do not pretend to know what our debt limit is, but economists should certainly be trying to find out and come up with some contingency plans when we reach it.
How can a ligitimate economist evaluate a stimulus package by starting with a dollar that is ready to be spent rather than looking at what happens to our balance of payments when we have to borrow the money from overseas?
How can a ligitimate economist stop evaluating the stimulus package when the immediate stimulation is done but ignore the problem of paying back the loans in coming years?
I have heard these people talk and they are not stupid. There must be something in what they are taught that makes them so narrow in their thinking.
Greg Ransom
Feb 12 2009 at 12:40am
The membership of the AEA played a central role in creating this economics Titanic.
And most of them had essentially no idea what they were creating.
They’ve knocked over and smashed the crystal case, and now they tell us they are just the ones to clean up the crystal shop.
If _only_ we could keep the AEA economists away from the economy.
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