I work in a public policy school full of economists,
almost all of whom seem to lean left.* In contrast to my anecdotal experience,
the general public and everyone outside of economics seems to think that
economists mostly lean right. This has long puzzled me. I have a few thoughts.
The first is that people mistake economists for
businesspeople. If you’re trying to make a buck, the taxation necessary for
redistribution is usually not very interesting to you. Of course you want
infrastructure, rule of law, a stable macroeconomic environment etc. and all
that requires state financing, but right-wing governments are inclined towards
that level of taxation so there is no reason to lean left.
Similarly, people seem to conflate economic analysis with
financial analysis. The latter leaves out things like social and environmental costs
and benefits; economic analysis does not. Economists are also very aware of
equity considerations and have developed quite formal frameworks for thinking
about equity-efficiency trade-offs.
There is no reason why an economist will favour efficiency
over equity simply because they are an economist. Economics does not value efficiency. Its models show you
where efficiency is maximised and how much efficiency you lose if you deviate
from that point. You might still want to for social or political reasons.
That said, economics is pretty obsessed with efficiency. One
definition of the discipline is ‘the study of the efficient allocation of
scarce resources’. Someone who is inherently left leaning might value the
insights of economics because they allow you to analyse how to efficiently increase equity. This is a
theme of a book we’re currently putting together, but more on that in the
future.
What about someone who is inherently right-leaning?
Specifically, what about someone with an innate inclination towards
proportional equity?
Proportional equity means getting what you deserve. It is
typically placed in contradistinction to relative equity, which is an even
share of resources. So someone inclined towards proportional equity sees
unemployment benefits as inequitable, while someone inclined towards relative
equity sees them as sacrosanct for equity. One of the most important findings
from moral psychology is that both left- and right-wing people care about
equity; they just care about different kinds
of equity.
Because of its emphasis on efficiency, economics goes
some way towards screening its disciples from deep thinking about relative
equity. I speculate that proportional equity types are drawn to economics
because of its emphasis on efficiency (and work) and they find their the
ammunition they need to wage war against relative equity types.
A similar phenomenon plays out in reverse in sociology
and anthropology. One of the three founders of sociology was Marx (alongside
Weber and Durkheim). It should surprise nobody that even today, sociology
remains substantially driven by the study of difference: racial differences,
class differences, gender differences, sexual differences etc.
It seems unsurprising then that sociologists tend towards
the relative equity disposition and are somewhat blind to proportional equity
considerations. For example, when commenting on the numbered of coloured
authors in Australia, there is rarely an acknowledgment from equity advocates
of the proportion of white authors
who get published and, by extension, how many coloured authors you need in the pool
to achieve equity. If there are 5000 white authors for every 1 that gets
published, you also need 5000 coloured authors for 1 to get published, and this
is assuming all other things are equal. Unless demography is equal, inequity
does not imply un-meritocratic selection. If you try to
forcibly overcome those demographic forces (which may be a good thing to do)
then you’re inevitably going to cause some meritorious white author not to get
published, which would inflame someone with strong proportional equity views.
It is also unsurprising that sociologists loathe
economics’ blithe attitude to equity—it strikes sociologists as shallow just as
sociologists’ blithe attitude to efficiency strikes economists as shallow.
I think what’s important to emphasise here is that both
the proportional and relative equity people, both the economists and the
sociologists, think they are on the side of the angels. And they are. They are both mounting equally plausible ethical
arguments.
More generally, it seems silly to associate a discipline
with a political view, but it is also foolish for people within a discipline to
be ignorant of the political biases their discipline encourages them towards.
This is particularly the case in disciplines whose avowed aim is political
rather than scientific or even scholarly.
* My suspicion is that being employed in a university is
a much stronger predictor of your political leanings than being an economist.
Academics almost always take a pay cut to work in the university sector instead
of the private or public one, so you’re automatically selecting people who don’t
care about money as much as the average person. University economists also
depend on the state for their livelihood and their occupation. They consider
their occupation valuable, so of course they also think the state is valuable.
Cue left-leaning political tendencies.
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