About This Blog

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the greatest economist of my time. His greatest works can be accessed here at no charge.

Mises believed that property, freedom and peace are and should be the hallmarks of a satisfying and prosperous society. I agree. Mises proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prospect for general and individual prosperity is maximized, indeed, is only possible, if the principle of private property reigns supreme. What's yours is yours. What's mine is mine. When the line between yours and mine is smudged, the door to conflict opens. Without freedom (individual liberty of action) the principle of private property is neutered and the free market, which is the child of property and freedom and the mother of prosperity and satisfaction, cannot exist. Peace is the goal of a prosperous and satisfying society of free individuals, not peace which is purchased by submission to the enemies of property and freedom, but peace which results from the unyielding defense of these principles against all who challenge them.

In this blog I measure American society against the metrics of property, freedom and peace.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

MUST READ! Debbie Schlussel: "Study Shows Female Economists Exceptionally Stupid (& Very Far-Left)"

Debbie Schlussel is not a shrinking violet.

I've been reading her blog for years and, frankly, I'm a fan. She says what she thinks and usually her thinking is sound. Yeah, every now and then she posts something sorta off the wall. She's always controversial.

[By the way, she is also the most reliable, informative and honest movie critic around. Her timely and prodigious movie reviews have saved me the price of admission many times over.] 

Her latest post: Study Shows Female Economists Exceptionally Stupid (& Very Far-Left) is no exception.

She begins with this paragraph:
If women were not allowed to vote, the better candidate would usually win the Presidential race. That’s because women are more liberal, more likely to be Democrats, and in poll after poll, more clueless and unlikely to know what they are talking about with regard to Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, the candidates’ backgrounds, and their positions on issues. And so it goes with female economists, where the gender gap is a gender chasm. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln study shows that female economists are stupid (which probably has a lot to do with affirmative action for chicks in math and sciences, every step of the way from education to career) and far to the left.
Whoa! I told ya, she's no shrinking violet. But does she know what she's talking about?

The meat of her article is in this graph:









The data is from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln study she refers to above.

According to the source article in USA Today:
"As a group, we are pro-market," says Ann Mari May, co-author of the study and a University of Nebraska economist. "But women are more likely to accept government regulation and involvement in economic activity than our male colleagues."
This acceptance of government regulation blows my mind, as do the results in the table above regarding both genders. Since when is it the job of an economist to speak in terms of "should?" And the "minimum wage hikes" item is completely unanswerable by any economist without knowing if the "hike" is above, at, or below the market wage rate which would otherwise obtain.

The USA article also states:
The biggest disagreement: 76% of women say faculty opportunities in economics favor men. Male economists point the opposite way: 80% say women are favored or the process is neutral.

To which Ms. Schlussel declares:
The few male economists who said the process favors men are the ones who surrendered their testicles a long time ago.
Fair warning. Schlussel has a pair. If you're going to use any of the material in her blog, you had better give her credit, as I have done. If you don't, she'll let you know about it. She's a lawyer by trade.

2 comments:

John Galt said...

Good post, Sherman, and good topic.

We have said as much before except with more
care; without using the word "stupid". The ladies get pretty 'uppity'
when it come to genre differences in accomplishments.



The whole inequality of women in pay levels
is a charade and politically motivated. Yes, women are more emotional and
therefore more susceptible to be prays of the "bleeding heart" rhetoric
of the liberals. That is not going to change any time soon unless we
intellectually-engineer the female DNA before they are born.

Sherman Broder said...

"Uppity?" You sure you don't want to revise and extend your comment? Hey. Hey. :)

Seriously, economics today is so far removed from the value-free science of Mises it's tragic.