If people were educated about just some basic simple economic principles and tenets as well as some basic statistics, the democratic party would go the way of the communists in Russia and Beanie Babies in the suburbs.
Alas, capitalism produces so much wealth that it pacifies the masses intellect into laziness and sloth, making them ripe picking for idiotic ideologies or religions like global warming and socialism.
Regardless, here is a recent example of such ignorance. The API (American Petroleum Institute) came out with it's 3rd annual "Energy IQ" survey. It's scary just how much it's like an intellectual version of Jay Leno's "Jay Walking."
Now there were many questions, the results of which you can find here, but my favorite is this one in that it shows you just how damn ignorant the masses are and how easy it is to get them to believe lies:
I'm being dead serious when I say there must be some kind of civics or intelligence test before you can vote. Call it dictatorial, but you'll all soon pay the costs for giving any uninformed, dumbass moron out there the right to vote.
Oh, and let me point out again
BIG OIL DIDN'T NEED A BAIL OUT
I would have been in the "I'm not sure" category but if I were forced to choose one I would have picked correctly.
ReplyDeleteI can respect the 36 percent who know they don't know. I'm concerned about the 50 percent who underestimated the tax rate. I have no doubt almost all of them were Obama voters.
To be honest I would have gotten it wrong, I probably would have guessed the 46% category as I would have ballparked it at 50% or so. At least I wasn't guessing below 15% :-\
ReplyDeleteSing it on the mountain Capt!
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth do schools have to spend a year teaching kids about the history of Mesopotamia and what happened to the Spanish Armada, but economics is superfluous?
Yes indeedy, who needs to know about monopoly tactics and supply vs. demand? What really needs to get sorted out right now is that those darn teachers keep teaching evolution!
How will kids survive if they don't know that cephalapod means head-foot in latin and are mainly squids? Everyone needs to know that! But ponzi and confidence schemes? Who needs to know about THOSE?
Crazy talk. Now get back to studying the Ottoman empire, you.
Robert M. is 100% correct. It is the 50% that underestimated the rate that are getting us into the trouble we are currently in.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is because the companies did not need a bail out that the average voter thought they were not paying anything in taxes. The problem is not with thinking that way, it is with basing your votes on that thought.
Follow the logic on this:
Exxon made $60 Billion last year. That is too much (first mistake, on what basis are you making that statement?)
We should increase their tax rate because they are making too much. (Second mistake, you do not currently know what their tax rate is.)
Obviously, the oil companies are benefiting from the Bush economic policies (third mistake, they have no idea exactly which policy that may be, but by GOD! Bush is to blame.) therefore, I am going to vote for whomever is running against the Republicans in the next presidential election.
Of course, they do not think twice about who is running for Congress, Governor, State Legislature, etc... which is their fourth mistake.
There are many points of ignorance regarding oil which come from the left.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to their monstrous corporate tax rates, remember that gasoline is taxed. Because gasoline demand is inelastic, consumers bear a majority of the burden of that tax, but not all of it. So oil companies bear some of that tax burden too.
Oil companies also pay for leases to explore for oil on government land, much of which produces no oil in commercial quantities. Again we have oil companies paying government and getting nothing out of it.
Those monstrous profits have to be put into the context of their capital outlays. Oil companies use tremendous amounts of capital and have huge depreciation, fires, etc. As a rate of return to capital, oil profits are below average among American industries.
Finally, oil prices are volatile. When oil prices are low and those companies take a serious beating, few people in Congress or on Main Street cry any tears for lost profits and lost jobs. Most Americans can't remember the last time oil companies had losses. Hint: it was in this decade.
Energy is the most important industry we have in America and the most maligned. It is precisely because it is so important to our economy that liberals attack it so vehemently.
Every American ought to screw the mailman and paper boy and send Christmas cards with tips to the American energy industry, thanking them for their service. What the hell would we do without our cars, trucks, railroads, airplanes, plastics, petrochemicals, and electric goods?!