random economic opinions of the day

AEA survey report

Some comments here are appropriate.
For example, economists at the highest levels tend to lean Democratic by party affiliations. I am not sure if this was true of the survey respondents. Nor did this data break out any ideological variances. But there are some clear(er) consensus on some issues that I've seen throughout the economic spectrum every time there's a survey like this done, or a study of published works and opinions.

1) The U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade
73.3% for, mean of 4.1 on a 5 point scale. - I have never understood the "advantages" of protectionism. Even before studying economic theory it did not make sense to try to advantage individual people just on the basis of where they lived, worked, or were born.

3) The U.S. should ban genetically modified crops. 82.1% against, mean of 1.79. Don't get this one either. If they are legitimately dangerous or unhealthy, that's a different story. But pretty much all modern agriculture is from a process of "genetic modification" anyway.

5&6) Employers should be required to provide their full time workers with health care insurance (and 6, provide all their workers with health care insurance). 62%, 2.49 mean, and 71.7%, 2.21 mean. This isn't very definitive, for example it doesn't examine why they should or should not. I suspect you could very easily say that employers should have to do it in an environment where this is the means that most people receive health care benefits: through their employers. But that doesn't say that it would work all that well.

7) Employers in the U.S. should be taxed if their employee health insurance
expenditures fall below a certain threshold. 63% against, 2.24 mean. - I didn't initially understand what the premise of this question was to be used for. What if the company managed to pay for its health care for all its employers, as they might find is "ideal" and did so below that threshold by using competitive forces or selecting effective but cheaper forms of insurance? But then it became clear. Maryland's law, overturned in court, targeted Wal-Mart for spending too little on employee health care in the state of Maryland (the law was deliberately structured such that no other private employers were actually effected which is why it was overturned, it's basically a bill of attainder).

Couple of other major for or against "biases".
Barriers to entering the medical profession in the U.S. should be reduced.
63.7% for 3.6 mean. Medical licensing has been on the agenda for at least 50 years. And it's widely sourced as something like "Doc-in-the-box" competition. Recent discussions showed that there are lots of people who seem to think these are bad ideas, along with pharmacists distributing vaccines apparently. But economists are not "lots of people".

The U.S. should allow payments to organ donors and their families. 70.3% , 3.75 - I don't get the revulsion on this one. If you don't want a price tag on your kidney, you don't have to put one there.

Should impose taxes on unhealthy foods 60.8% 2.39. I have some disagreement here for cost recapturing, but the issue is likely bound up in "unhealthy", as in what constitutes an unhealthy food and who decides this. It is similar to the standards movement in teaching in my opinion and hard to come up with a coherent and transparent government policy to make it work, but it is probably in the long run a decent idea if you can figure out how to enforce it and provide some workable criteria for making the judgments necessary.

Wal-Mart generates more benefits than costs 72.3% 3.86. Don't get this one even being on the list.

Economic growth in developed countries leads to greater feeling of well-being
87.8% 4.24. There was no measurable report for "happiness" however, despite "happiness" indices tracking well with economic development and growth. In this I might have some agreement. After a certain point more wealth in a country isn't really that useful for "happiness". But a lack of growth and wealth is almost certainly a significant cause of "unhappiness" because of various factors like unemployment, wage deflation, investments being destroyed in value, and a lack of innovation.

Government subsidies on ethanol should be eliminated, 55%, reduced a lot or somewhat, another 23.3%. I suspect this is wrapped up in part with the free trade issue generally, but it's also just not that efficient a means of alternative energy relative to alternatives (at least corn ethanol is not).

Targeted inflation rate should be around 2%. Sounds about right. I think I'd prefer NGDP targeting like Australia does, but that would probably result in most years having a targeted inflation rate of around 2%.

Typical American saves too little 69.5%. Really? Most of these should come as no shock to people familiar with economics and economic theory.

But the more divided questions.
Taxing health insurance benefits as income was split almost down the middle. Along with eliminating health care mandates for insurance companies as to what they must cover. That second part surprised me. Though it is possible that a strict reading of "eliminating" such mandates dissuaded some people.

Sarbox was not popular among some, fairly popular among others, and pretty much everybody else had no real opinion.

Eliminating the home mortage interest deduction was about evenly split, slightly in favor. I think this should be phased out. There are lots of reasons to purchase property which provide value. Most of the current reasons are to protect wealth against taxation because of the tax code rather than to provide stability against inflation, provide basic investment value, provide rental income, etc. There are other things that a government could do to get lower and middle income families into homes that they can sort of afford, but one such thing would be to eliminate the price premium paid because home values are artificially inflated upward by the favorable tax treatment.

I was somewhat surprised to see that casinos were slight disfavored, and mostly neutral. If gambling doesn't really benefit society relative to its costs, that wouldn't be terribly surprising. But I'm not sure that it provides a local or state government with a true cost either. I suppose I shall have to examine any research on impacts on local crime, drunken behavior, or if there's some sort of significant damage to society caused by a handful of people gambling away their mortgage or something.