I dislike political parties so much. One of the many reasons I think they are stupid is contradictions between parties. One of the Democrats’ principle criticisms of Republicans is that they “don’t believe in science,” and therefore push to teach creationism in schools, ignore climate change, and want to restrict stem cell research. The Democratic party believes this ignores science because almost all scientists believe differently than the Republican party.
However, the Democratic party is just as stupid. When it comes to economics, all economists believe that free trade is a good thing. However, the Democratic Party consistently stands for a variety of trade restrictions.
It’s incoherent for either party to criticize the other at not believing in science. This is just one of the many ways that both major party platforms are incoherent. I am glad not to call myself democrat or republican, and I never plan to do so.
2 Comments for Do you believe in science?
Steve | May 8, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Author comment by George | May 9, 2009 at 10:52 am
I’ll have to respond to this after my final exam on monday… a little crunched for time right now…
Hey George. I see what you’re saying about Democrats ignoring the opinions and empirical data of the majority of economists, but I think there’s something else to consider as well. The concept of free trade may be viewed favorably by the majority of economists, but just because an agreement like NAFTA has “Free Trade” in its name, doesn’t mean it’s actually free trade. The U.S. is an economic superpower and has a lot more weight to throw around in the kinds of negotiations that led to NAFTA. It’s not free trade if we allow our heavily subsidized corn to be sold in Mexican markets at prices way below market value. This is still artificially determing the price of a commodity through government intervention. This kind of agreement may be good for the U.S. economy in the short run, but it has some pretty negative effects on the Mexican economy.
One other point about free trade is that there needs to be a way to support the people who are losing their jobs, due to outsourcing, while they search for other jobs. You wouldn’t want people going homeless in the time between jobs, even if it is more efficient for our economy in the long run for jobs to be specialized in other areas of the world. It would also be nice if oil was priced at its true value, not just the cost of production. If oil was given an honest value, taking environmental impacts into consideration, then we would be closer to the true cost benefits or disadvantages of outsourcing various jobs. If these things are in place then free trade would probably be a lot more palpable to people.
You know a lot more about economics than I do, so what do you think of these points?