I trust you on the journalism piece

Reader comment on: NPR on the Rich and State Tax Rates
in response to reader comment: What about the facts and statistics in the article.

Submitted by ben (United States), Apr 30, 2011 21:18

I am persuaded by your expert opinion that the NPR piece was not quality journalism, but a good portion of your original post was disputing the conclusions drawn in the study. My points were more about whether you have a leg to stand on when you speculate that people making 400k are reacting in the same way as people making 500k? Is there data to back up this point?

I suppose I do often defer to experts when they know a lot more than me. We can't all be experts on everything, so if 95% of climate scientists tell me the world is warming, I would put a lot of stock in that. If a doctor tells me I have the Flu, I generally believe them. If two professors at distinguished universities show that raising taxes does not effect migration patters, that influences my thinking even if logic might suggest otherwise.

I suppose this is a proxy war for our general disagreement about government regulation. I don't think it is realistic or efficient for consumers to have to understand and be experts on everything they do and buy. Government regulation, while imperfect, is a far better way to help people navigate a world in which there is so much complexity at every turn. We can all be experts on somethings - journalism, teaching - but we can't be experts in everything - economics, climate science.


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The Future of Capitalism replies:

The paper actually considers and gets into that point about the future income expectations of the 400K earners (which, again, disappointingly, the NPR piece doesn't get into.)

In general I agree this gets to a bigger issue; the left/progressive/New Dealer philosophy/politics/inclination puts more faith in credentialed experts, while Hayek/free-market types puts less faith. To me a democracy with near-universal suffrage requires voters who are somewhat generalists. And the experts don't always agree with one another. If a doctor tells me I have the flu, I generally believe him, too, but if he tells me I need an operation, I would try to get a second opinion. Some of this economic stuff is even less exact than medical science. This is a big point of Hayek in his critique of what he called "scientism" — the belief that because some things like physics operate according to predictable knowable laws, other things like economies, which are more complex, must therefore operate under similarly predictable knowable laws.

Other reader comments on this item

Title By Date
Dubious Refutation
[w/response] [115 words]
PeterMay 5, 2011 14:00
AAAAH
[w/response] [59 words]
benApr 29, 2011 09:53
What about the facts and statistics in the article.
[w/response] [324 words]
benApr 29, 2011 17:58
⇒ I trust you on the journalism piece
[w/response] [235 words]
benApr 30, 2011 21:18

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