It’s only natural. Everyone does it.
Economics, that is. And free market economics, at that.
A national test given to high school kids in the US came back with some surprising results. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, more than half believe that poverty is best reduced by economic growth - not government intervention. Given multiple choices and a supply curve chart, a plurality also believed that setting a price floor on chocolate would cause a chocolate surplus. Would these kids reach the same, logical conclusion if the test replaced the term “chocolate” with “labour”?
While about half of the kids fail at science and history, almost 80% passed the economics section of the test. That’s a pleasant surprise, for a non-mandatory subject. Where do they get this knowledge? Surely not from the media? Could it be (gasp) common sense?
The Wall Street Journal suggests a few politicians might like to take the test themselves. I’m thinking perhaps Congressional approval ratings lower than even those of George W Bush don’t need yet another knock.
C’mon, pro-business propaganda is relentless in the US, to the extent that to call some one a socialist is akin to calling them a sex offender.
Could it be that they picked up the ideas from the general cultural ambience, i.e. the fact that they’ve been brainwashed their entire lives?
America’s education system (or Hollywood, for that matter) is hardly pro-business. Given a choice, would they teach the moral lessons of Erin Brockovich or Sam Walton?
Either way, is demonstrably not pro-economics. Only a third of states require it. Yet the kids fail their history and science, but pass basic economics questions with flying colours.
But if what you say is true, why do I notice, wherever I go, that even people with minimal formal education, even in the poorest countries, work hard and trade for mutual benefit? They understand basic economics, though they’re clueless about science and history too. In conversations, why do so many of these people volunteer that the government’s sins of omission (property rights) or commission (intervention, graft) are to blame for many of their economic ills?