I'm a big fan of Scott Adams' blog. While I don't always "get" Dilbert, I do like to read about Scott's writings that go behind and beyond his work.
Scott recently paid for a survey of economists to assess their opinions on the ability of the two major US Presidential Candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, to have a positive impact on the major economic challenges facing our country. You can learn more on CNN and Scott's blog.
A strong majority of economists are democratic, a fact which surprised me. Scott had the surveyed economists rate the major economic issues and then rank the presidential candidates with respect to those issues.
Education was #1. Let me say that again, Education was #1. I have always believed this in a very visceral way. If you want to change the world in the long term, education is the only answer. Clearly, I am not alone in this belief. The next key issues were Health care, International trade, Energy, Encouraging technology and innovation (let's hear it for Entrepreneurship! of course I am biased.), and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (homeland security).
On these key issues, Barack Obama was the clear winner, except for International Trade. I found this to be funny since so many people around the world hope that Obama will become our next president (see e.g. this article). Of course, the entire survey is biased given that most of the economists are Democratic (and thus lean towards Obama); in spite of this limitation, I found the data very interesting.
Of course if you don't want to ponder the substantive issues (or data), watch this parody instead. As the fake Hillary challenges the media to grow a pair, so to do I offer mine. Get some.
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