We're screwed

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Are you talking about all economists, or economists in universities? If the former, I don't buy for a second that 60% are Democrats.

You are right.

Business economists go for GOP.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/searc...sts+go+for+gop

[ChinoCoug]

Studying economics makes people more conservative!

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/...servative.html

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

I'm speaking about the university level Democrats accounting for 80 percent, which what I believe was Pelagius's number.

academic economists:

58% Democrat
23% Republican

http://www2.sofi.su.se/wp/WP06-6.pdf

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

academic economists:

58% Democrat
23% Republican

http://www2.sofi.su.se/wp/WP06-6.pdf

The three to one ratio doesn't surprise me. Where in the Swedish paper can I find the support? I don't feel like looking for it.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Archaea

The three to one ratio doesn't surprise me. Where in the Swedish paper can I find the support? I don't feel like looking for it.

Check out the ratios here.

http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf

[Tex]

I just have to interject here: there is some wonderful unintentional comedy in watching you guys fall over yourselves debating Cali's completely irrelevant assertion that "virtually every" economist thinks Obama has accelerated recovery and slowed job losses.

I guess Noriel Roubini is in the minority.

Sorry to interrupt. Do carry on.

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Check out the ratios here.

http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf

Absolutely nuts. I'm suprised how many depts have 0 Republicans.

Originally Posted by Archaea

The three to one ratio doesn't surprise me. Where in the Swedish paper can I find the support? I don't feel like looking for it.

p. 6

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by Tex

I just have to interject here: there is some wonderful unintentional comedy in watching you guys fall over yourselves debating Cali's completely irrelevant assertion that "virtually every" economist thinks Obama has accelerated recovery and slowed job losses.

I guess Noriel Roubini is in the minority.

Sorry to interrupt. Do carry on.

Goodness gracious Tex, finish reading your own links.

There's really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers.

He's saying we need more of the same because the first stimulus was insufficient.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

Absolutely nuts. I'm suprised how many depts have 0 Republicans.

The others noted that a 2 to 1 ratio is grave cause for concern but a 5 to 1 ratio marginalizes the minority too significantly.

And as you noted, many departments had ZERO Republicans. Talk about experiencing a variety of ideas.

The Green Party is represented disproportionately and the Libertarians aren't even represented at all.

[Archaea]

Note this comment, on page 24,

Some might suggest that Berkeley and Stanford are non-representative, because the San Francisco Bay Area is significantly more Democratic that the national average. We suspect that this point deserves some weight. However, we doubt that geography has very much to do with the intellectual character of academics and researchers. By self-sorting, training, and professional immersion, they identify (intellectually) primarily with their discipline, not their institution or their locale, and the “invisible college” of their respective disciplines cuts laterally across geography. The Klein & Stern survey evidence helps to mount a general case that all academic disciplines, including economics, range from predominately to rock-solidly Democratic.

and the following observation:

The meaning of lopsidedness for university life is a topic for another occasion. Here we offer a single point: University governance consists primarily of departmental autonomy, and departments operate on the basis of majoritarianism (and to a small extent chair prerogative). A ratio of even 2 to 1 is deadly to the minority. A ratio of 5 to 1 means marginalization. Someone of a minority viewpoint is dependent frequently on the cooperation of her departmental colleagues for many small considerations.


7 CSPC’s report (Horowitz and Lehrer 2002) included findings uniformly across all schools for six departments: economics, English, history, philosophy, political science, and sociology, while their Berkeley and Stanford datasets in Excel files (obtained from Mr. Andrew Jones) also include Civil and Environmental Engineering. For all seven departments, our study arrives at a one-big-pool ratio for Berkeley of 13.6 to 1, versus CSPC’s 8.1 to 1, and for Stanford 8.2 to 1, versus CSPC’s 9.6 to 1. On a department by department basis, in 10 cases our D to R ratio was greater than CSPC’s, and in four cases theirs was greater (this counts 17-to-0 as greater than 14-to-0). The data generally match up, except that ours more reliably obtained a reading, and that the lists differed somewhat. Because our investigation was conducted two years after CSPC’s, discrepancies need not be indicative of error.
30

Lopsidedness means that dissenters are avoided or expelled, and that any who survive are very unlikely to be vocal critics of the dominant viewpoints.
These facts are inherently important. Academia is a major part of the political culture; it profoundly influences how tens of millions of Americans will understand social affairs and, indeed, their own personal selfhood. The next step, then, is full awareness. All interested parties—students, parents, taxpayers, and the faculty themselves—should become aware of the facts.