Redstate

Republicans perceive reality, Democrats perceive... something else

By blackhedd Posted in Economy — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Here's a story with an ominous-sounding title: "Republicans See a Healthy Economy, Democrats see a Bad One."

Adding to the glut of public-opinion polling, there now is such a thing as the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. And they went to three early-primary states looking for trouble. Sure enough, they found manufactured some:

More than six in 10 voters in the three states who plan to participate in their Democratic 2008 primary said the economy is doing badly, while about eight in 10 Republican voters in each of the states said it's doing well. Democrats in all three states ranked the economy higher as an election issue than did Republicans.

Keep reading. Let's unpack this...

If we're to believe this poll, it turns out your views on the economy are determined in large measure by where you sit politically. But I think there's a lot of selection bias at work, on the part of the people who are expressing their opinions.

In large part, polling tends to reflect the last information you consumed from your chosen media sources. (In identical fashion, the material you emit from the nether end of your alimentary canal tends to be conditioned by the food you ate about 36 hours prior.)

If you ask people who watch mainstream news broadcasts about the state of the economy, they'll give you the party line:

Seventy-seven percent of South Carolina Republicans said the economy is doing well, while almost two-thirds of the state's Democrats, among them Alfred Smoak, have a drastically different outlook...
``We're losing our manufacturing jobs to overseas and creating service jobs at Burger King,'' said Smoak, 81, a retired electrical engineer in Branchville, a small town 65 miles south of Columbia. ``Plus, this mortgage stuff is going to have a lot of fallout,'' Smoak said, referring to the increase in defaults among subprime mortgages. He hasn't decided who he will back in the Democratic primary.

Wow, can you count the talking points? In the first place, we have no manufacturing jobs left to lose, except for a handful of final-assembly in airliners and automobiles, and those aren't going anywhere. If anything, places like South Carolina are attracting foreign automakers.

In the second place, a job is a job. Most of the kids who work at Burger King are happy to have the income, as they get ready to become young Gamecocks, or to go to law school or med school.

Perhaps Mr. Smoak is concerned because, as an electrical engineer and a retiree, his outlook is determined by the economic realities of the past, and his concerns are determined by a desire to make sure the government keeps paying for his healthcare. But I snark.

The tipoff that a lack of thinking is at work in this man's comments is his fear of fallout from "mortgage stuff." In other news, the sky is falling.

Now the other thing that has been noted (and stated) by many here at RedState is this: if you ask people who are convinced the economy is in trouble about their own situation, things are really going pretty well. It turns out, if you believe the Bloomberg/LATimes poll, though, people who think things are going well tend to be Republicans:

``My business is steady,'' said Ann Richardson, a survey participant from Columbia, South Carolina, who sells electronic controls and describes the economy as doing ``pretty well.'' ``There seem to be plenty of jobs,'' added Richardson, 64, who plans to vote in the Republican primary.

Look at the language this participant is using: "My business..." and "There seem..." She's telling you what she sees herself, not what someone else told her to think she sees. It might just be me, but I tend to consider this a far more reliable kind of information.

And it turns out that she's right, too. The United States is indeed heading for lower growth (as I've warned here since early this year, long before the Subprime Crisis was even a twinkle in Hillary Clinton's eye). That doesn't change the fact that the economy is healthy.

Our low growth is secular in nature, caused largely by the maturity of our economy and our demographics. US growth is also strongly attenuated by idiotic government regulation and tax policy. (Oh, how I'd like to see the retired engineer's reaction to that point, given that as a Democrat he voted for most of it.)

We're going to get a recession. But it won't result in widespread job losses, which are the most important symptom that economic distress is turning into social distress.

Ok, let's move on to a couple of other sacred cows: the Democratic voters in the three state survey seemed to have globalization on their minds in a big way:

According to a healthcare consultant who plans to vote in the Iowa Democratic caucuses: ``Nafta was a big mistake... there were manufacturing jobs here in Iowa that were taken to Mexico for its cheaper labor.'

And how does he know that those manufacturing jobs would have stayed in Iowa if it weren't for free trade? I'm only scratching the surface of a subject that deserves half a dozen RS posts (I've probably written that many on the subject already), but globalization in itself doesn't destroy American jobs. Instead, it lowers costs for Americans.

Our economy is already in the process of adapting to the new realities that globalization presents. Trying to "fix" it based on what worked in the past or, even worse, on media-driven conventional wisdom, is asking for trouble.

And of course Democratic primary voters are asking for plenty of trouble:

Among New Hampshire Democrats, 78 percent said an economic agenda focused on beefing up health and education spendalmost eight in 10 Democrats called for health and education spendinging would be the best medicine for the U.S. economy...Only 13 percent of Iowa Democrats said tax cuts are the best path to economic growth, while 75 percent said health care and education spending are...[A]lmost eight in 10 [South Carolina] Democrats called for health and education spending.

I think that sums up the arguments we're going to be hearing next year: the economy is in trouble, and it needs more spending on healthcare and education.

Sure, folks, let's do that. Then when things get worse, we can always blame the Mexicans and the Chinese.