Deliberate or not, Econ 101 classes generally are highly ideological indoctrination classes which make numerous college freshman believe lots of wacky stuff every year. When I taught I really tried to make sure to emphasize some thing to counteract this, but even courses taught by this crazy liberal probably turned a bunch of people into free market fundamentalists.
Even with Atrios teaching economics, enough truth got through for students to see the light! Let me be the first to thank Atrios for turning a bunch of people into free market fundamentalists.
4 comments:
Did you read the original article Atrios links to? Definitely NOT written by a free marketer. :P
Here's the link:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/06/061108.sanderson-itt.pdf
I find it interesting to see how a liberal, in this case Christopher Hayes, would view an economics class. But like most liberals, he apparently has a problem with simple things like facts.
For example, Hayes says his economics professor, Allen Sanderson, points out the liberal media's error in using large corporations' sales figures instead of net profits, and then comparing those figures with GDP of poor countries such as Bangladesh. But then Hayes adds, "In Sanderson's zeal to play 'gotcha' with the press, he too can slant the pure data...I went online and found that Wal-Mart's $65 billion of net revenue was still larger than the GDP of 132 countries, including Bangladesh..."
Well, I went online too. Bangladesh's GDP of $305.6 billion still is greater than Wal-Mart's net revenue, which is actually only $11.2 billion. Also, Bangladesh's current form of government has only been in place since the early 1970's, whereas Wal-Mart was founded in 1962.
But let's overlook the factual errors. What difference does it make if Wal-Mart did make more than some countries? Does it ever occur to liberals that maybe Wal-Mart is better run than most countries?
Sorry, bad link. One more time:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations
/06/061108.sanderson-itt.pdf
Thanks for the link! Hayes never refutes the economics. He and Atrios are worried about the political implications of students learning economics. Hayes is afraid that thousands of Sanderson's students will think that the flat tax is a good idea. Well, it is a good idea, but one that would be bad for people who want big government.
I prefer the FairTax myself. ;)
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