How can the most important election issue be something we don’t understand?
28th January 2008
If this election turns out once again to be about “The Economy, Stupid,” I’m afraid the “stupid” label will apply more to the voters than the campaign staffers. How, exactly, is the average voter supposed to decide which candidate’s plans for the economy make the most sense? Or even to know how to define “makes sense?”
I have a little bit of education in economics. I took Economics 10 at Harvard 23 years ago and I took courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and finance as part of my MBA at Boston University about 10 years later. Now I don’t want to be smug, but I’m guessing that means I have learned more about economics than 90%, 95%, or maybe even 99% of registered voters. And you know what? I DON’T KNOW JACK SQUAT ABOUT ECONOMICS. And if I don’t know enough to make an intelligent decision, what hope is there for the average Joe?
What percentage of voters could give accurate definitions of the following terms?
- Economy
- Recession
- Unemployment Rate
- Inflation
- Federal Reserve Bank
- Gross Domestic Product
- Stimulus
- Corporate Earnings
- Budget Deficit
- Trade Deficit
- Weak Dollar
- Progressive vs. Regressive Taxes
- Tax Credit vs. Tax Cut vs. Tax Rebate
And yet the media and politicians throw these words around as if they were talking about the weather.
Even if we understood what they were talking about, is anyone out there telling us the truth or are they all just saying stuff that sounds good? As far as I can tell, Americans believe that somewhere out there is a magic economic policy that will provide:
- Higher wages
- Lower prices
- Higher stock values
- 100% employment (but only in “good jobs”)
- More consumer spending
- Less consumer debt
- Lower prices for imports
- Higher prices for exports
- A stronger housing market
- More affordable housing
- Lower interest rates (for borrowers)
- Higher interest rates (for investors)
- Lower (preferably zero) taxes
- Less government borrowing
- Everything we want, now
- Nothing we don’t want, ever
Does anyone out there have the guts to explain to us why we can’t have it all?
March 10th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
[...] I noted recently, lots of people like to talk about the importance of the economy in this election, even though very few people have the slightest understanding of economic theory or important [...]