The Dumbing Down Sweepstakes
Stupidity is so rampant now that the problem is to distinguish between the trivial and the significant.
Lost in the flood of sewage news about Anthony Weiner’s underwear and Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere gaffe are much more important examples of the dumbing down of American politics, where knowledge and insight keep giving way to slogans and invincible ignorance.
“Last October,” writes an MIT professor, “I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve–at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination…
“Analytical expertise is needed…to make government more effective and efficient. Skilled analytical thinking should not be drowned out by mistaken, ideologically driven views that more is always better or less is always better. I had hoped to bring some of my own expertise and experience to the Fed. Now I hope someone else can.”
Shutting out knowledge is only half of dumbing down. Replacing it with misinformation is the other, as Paul Krugman points out in analyzing the Paul Ryan Plan to replace Medicare with Vouchercare:
“Medicare is a government-run insurance system that directly pays health-care providers. Vouchercare would cut checks to insurance companies instead…If you couldn’t afford a policy adequate for your needs, even with the voucher, that would be your problem.
“And most seniors wouldn’t…A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that to get coverage equivalent to what they have now, older Americans would have to pay vastly more out of pocket under the Paul Ryan plan than they would if Medicare as we know it was preserved…the typical senior would end up paying around $6,000 more out of pocket in the plan’s first year.”
If we can’t get facts and figures straight on such tangible issues as employment and health care, how can we deal with anxiety over the relatively unknowable risks of giving ourselves brain cancer with cell phones, as new research warns?
MORE.
6 Responses to “The Dumbing Down Sweepstakes”
I would be careful in using Paul Krugman is an example of someone who knows what he is talking about just because he was award a Noble Prize.
In March, an amateur blogger demonstrated that Dr Paul Krugman, PhD, Noble prize in economics did not understand basic statistics and made a huge error when comparing Texas to Wisconsin. http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
Just because a Noble prize winner is an expert in his very narrow field does not make the Noble Prize winner an expert or even competent in anything else.
I doubt if the left would have support Milton Friedman for the Federal Reserve Board even though Dr Friedman had been award a Noble prize and Dr Friedman’s area of expertise was monetary policy.
We have stupid politicians because we vote for stupid politicians. Welcome to America…land of bliss.
I don’t think that the OP was referring to Mr.Krugman in the lead. Of course “amateur blogger” would know the truth.
Home Run Robert Stein.
SD Where is the Krugman statistical error. All I found at your link was more “cracker” racism!!
All Krugman derangement syndrome aside, the point Stein makes is painfully obvious and has been for a long time, although I supposed the dumbed down are less inclined to notice it.
Stein also alludes to a dynamic that has been observed here many times, that being the exploitability of the dumbed down by a political party that increasingly depends on it.
“Ignorance may not be bliss, but it certainly helps in a “What? Me Worry?” world.” ~ RS
JSpencer,
The point of the left is that a Noble Prize winning economist in labor market economics is is qualified to be on the federal reserve and make policy on monetary policy.
I showed by example a Noble prize winning economist quoted as being intelligence on everything in the post had made a glaring mistake by either not understanding Simpson’s Paradox or by refuse to believe the data showed what it did.
If anyone wants to talk about dumbing down politics, they should be talking about Noble Prize winning economist who do not understand statistics that they should have learned in their first year of graduate school.
As shown by Rudi approve, pointing out that liberals make glaring mistakes on simple statistics is considered racist.