Who Do You Believe?

There are two contrasting sets of economists' viewpoints about Bush's policies floating around. Pick your poison.

The legacy media is pushing a non-scientific survey of academic economists put out by The Economist which shows broad displeasure with Bush's policies. All 4 questioned policies poll badly, 2 of 3 election plank proposals rate badly, and Bush is worse than Kerry on 5 out of 6 policy areas.

Yet, this week a team of economists chose the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics. And here's what one of them (Prescott) has to say: "What Bush has done has been not very big, it's pretty small ... tax rates were not cut enough." (N.B. I know the other winner, and I'm fairly sure he'd agree). You can read more in the post entitled "Prescott on Bush's Fiscal Policy" over at Marginal Revolution.

So, make your choice for whose opinion to trust: a guy who won a Nobel prize, or a bunch of people who once thought they could win a Nobel prize (every graduate student does) but have not been able to back that up? Oh, and the latter group would prefer to work for Kerry 5 to 1 according to the survey.

Comments

[Dan Ryan]

I'm not sure what Prescott meant to say. Based on the yahoo summary of his statements, it's hard to square his quote about the Bush tax cut with his comment on the Reagan cuts. I suspect some clueless journalist has lost much of the meaning of what he was trying to communicate.

I would assume, however, that Prescott has elsewhere commented on these matters in a more coherent form than the article managed to capture.

[Trent McBride]

I'm not sure you wnat to stick to the point that "because a Nobel winner said so." I mean, what if Krugman had won?

[John Top]

You usually don't make it this easy:

MSNBC: 10 Nobel Prize winning economists endorse Kerry.
"Experts criticize Bush's 'reckless and extreme course"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818277/

10 Nobel recipients were opposed to Bush tax cuts
http://www.epinet.org/stmt/2003/econlist_final.html

Joe Stiglitz-2001 Laureate-Chaired the Council of Economic Advisor for Bill Clinton:

The Bush Black Hole: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries/commentary_text.php4?id=1302&m=series

Bush's Tax Plan—The Dangers - The New York Review of Books (subscription required)http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=16116

[Dave Tufte]

I hit a raw nerve I guess.

I was trying to write a post about why not to put much stock in The Economist's survey ... and I'm getting flamed about Nobel winners.

But, that's my fault: I wrote it, and I wasn't careful enough with my constrast to make my point.

So ... once more ... a non-scientific poll of economists that ends up with a group who'd prefer to work for Kerry 5 to 1 isn't very informative about what economists as a whole think.

[cigars]

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