WHO TO TRUST?

 

The very first sentence of a book by the Nobel Prize winners Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo over economic challenges is “We live in an age of growing polarization.”[1]  Early in their book they cite the following: 

·       81% of Americans who identify with one of the major parties has a negative opinion of the other party;

·       61% of Democrats classify Republicans as being racists, sexists, or bigots; 55% of Republicans dismiss Democrats as spiteful; and

·       Roughly one of every three Americans express their disappointment if a close family member married someone of the opposing political party.[2]

Other works cited in this blog support this overall descriptive conclusion by providing further relevant statistics.

          These feelings of disdain have become so much a part of the political environment that one tends to define politics as including this sort of emotional response to having political disagreements.  But this is not new.  Thomas E. Ricks, in telling the story of four founding fathers, describes how reluctant their acceptance of political parties and their entailed level of factionalism was.  But then he goes to describe that once accepted, with the exception of George Washington, they were not shy in practicing a fairly virulent form of the practice.[3]

          But to get back to the two Nobel laureates, their point is, and is supported by a good deal of related responsible theorizing, that to sustain a healthy democratic polity, such dissent needs to be reasonably respectful and that demands for a level of understanding.  Understanding of what?  Well, at minimum one should attain an understanding of the contentious issues under debate, of the affected interests of the other party, and of the motivations – both recognized and hidden – that encourage people to act as they do.

          And since the current stage is polarized, the highlighted issues under contention do not stand alone.  As this blog has also explained, there are political forces at play that have become operative because of the system’s polarization itself.[4]  Banerjee and Duflo describe these issues as coming “together as a bunches of grapes.”  But they go on to say that at play are certain core beliefs that determine these various opinions over the array of concerns.

          These beliefs refer to such aspects of life as gender roles or the role of hard work.  With these more fundamental biases, they lead one to believe, for example, if one supports liberal or restrictive immigration policies, supports liberal or restrictive trade policies, or active or limited government role in the economy. 

But while such mental posturing has always functioned in this way, more seems to be at play presently and this blog, as just alluded to, has addressed earlier this more encompassing political environment.  The concern here is a more specific consequence, that being that the current state has become so prevalent within the current arena that a qualitative augmentation has taken place.  “We seem to be back in the Dickensian world of Hard Times, with the haves facing off against the increasingly alienated have-nots, with no resolution in sight.”[5]

So, does this situation just reveal or reflect the Marxian dictum, that all social maladies boil down to class warfare?  Banerjee and Duflo claim that nations are doing little to solve the basic conditions feeding the polarization.  One does not read or listen to reports in the news or other sources describing a turnaround in how wealth or income is becoming less inequitable, only that they are becoming more so.

And one finds that the general attitude among people is not to look to economists for explanations or proscriptions as to what to do.  Generally, they are not seen as reliable sources of good information or so claims Banerjee and Duflo.  This was supported with a survey study they conducted.  They found that only 25% of Americans trusted economists know what they are talking about when it comes to economics.  Is that the worst judged professional group?  No, politicians do worse.

Further they report other research that points out how much economists disagree with the basic opinions of average people.  They can’t seem to agree on tariff policy over steel and aluminum, much less what one would consider prudent in terms of controversial issues such as the economic effect immigrants will have on an economy as a study asked in the case of Germany. 

And the gap between economists – who, by the way, don’t always agree among themselves – and common folk can be quite significant.  In administering an opinion questionnaire of twenty questions, the gap of disagreement was as high as 35 percentage points between how the economists answered a question and how others did so.  It’s no wonder that one can observe people ignoring economists.

Hence, a goal for this blog is to investigate this gap.  Why?  Because this writer does have faith in what economists have to say as long as they back it up with evidence.  That is, he at least believes they, the economists, are not out to lie to their fellow citizens.  Having experienced the “academic” way of finding the truth, he generally holds as truthful academic efforts to report what’s happening and why.

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[1] Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York, NY:  Public Affairs, 2019), 1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles:  What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2020).  He analyzed George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison with telling information regarding Alexander Hamilton.

[4] See, for example, Robert Gutierrez, “Twiddle Dee and Something Else,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics” (August 14, 2020), accessed February 18, 2021, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020_08_09_archive.html .

[5] Banerjee and Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times, 2.