Interesting Links for 05-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish
  (tags: politics society intelligence democracy )
• Sex and the modern girl: living in a world where women aren't ashamed of their desires
  (tags: uk sexuality sex women )
• Archie gay marriage comic sells out in face of boycott call
  (tags: lgbt comics )
• Bechdel Testing Comics
  (tags: bechdel women

Comments

[steer]

take the economy for example, I'd say I'm pretty well educated, and I can't make head nor tail of it, how's someone who doesn't have a maths degree supposed to know what's best?

I have a maths degree, regularly attended seminars in economics (as they have a high maths content) and conclude that while economics is a fascinating subject and well-founded mathematically, the evidential basis for most economics is not so clear cut that we can yet make important decisions on that basis.
Take two really basic "macro economic" questions:
1) At which point by raising the tax rate do we lose money in the short term by "rich people leave".
2) At which point in the taxation curve can we reduce tax rates and get more money in the longer term (because people are incentivised to work harder by the lower taxes) -- see Laffer Curve and Reganomics.

These are really very basic questions about economics but have no clear cut answer from mathematical and statistical answers yet.

So, despite having strong opinions on economics myself, I'm not convinced too much mathematics helps. I do worry that people tend to default to "simple" arguments -- e.g. "low tax is good because you have more money" is a simpler argument than "with higher tax we can increase the productivity of society as a whole by pooling our resources to increase net wealth and money invested as tax often produces returns which outstrip the investment so by paying £1 in tax you often accrue much more than that £1 in reward although indirectly".

I believe the second argument is much more correct but the first argument is much easier to make in a debate where the people judging are of average intelligence.