If you remember year-old news about lefties’ lack of comprehension of basic economic facts, you might want to read this article from the latest issue of The Atlantic.

Libertarian George Mason University economist Daniel B. Klein has confirmed earlier results that self-described progressives and liberals tend to flub questions about the impacts of rent control, free trade, minimum-wage laws, and mandatory licensing.

But Klein has also found that conservatives and fellow libertarians miss the boat on issues such as drug legalization, gun-control laws, and abortion.

The bottom line from Klein’s latest research:

The new results invalidated our original result: under the right circumstances, conservatives and libertarians were as likely as anyone on the left to give wrong answers to economic questions. The proper inference from our work is not that one group is more enlightened, or less. It’s that “myside bias”—the tendency to judge a statement according to how conveniently it fits with one’s settled position—is pervasive among all of America’s political groups.


If nothing else, the results highlight the difficulty of convincing people of facts that contradict their preconceived notions.

(In the interest of full disclosure, there was just one question with which I disagreed with Klein’s assessment of an “incorrect” response. I would have answered at least “somewhat agree” to the statement “When two people complete a voluntary transaction, they both necessarily come away better off.”

The notion of both parties benefiting from the exchange is an essential element of voluntary exchange. To consider disagreement to be the “not incorrect” response, one must assume an outside arbitrator who can, in certain cases, judge that at least one of the parties has chosen poorly in making a voluntary transaction. That’s a judgment call external to the transaction itself.)