The 10% Rule

I have written before about how approximately 10% of respondents will answer poll questions inconsistently. According to this study by Public Policy Polling (pdf), 11% of liberals believe that ACORN stole the election for Obama. Mindboggling. Of course, 48% of conservatives believe that.

Horrible statistics

Via Andrew Sullivan, Michael Fitzgerald has an article in the Boston Globe with the sub-heading "the curious economic effects of religion". This sub-heading alone is very misleading. While there are many interesting correlations, there is nothing that proves that religion causes these "curious economic effects". It is possible (I would even say probable) that there is another factor that is influencing both the economic effects and religiosity.

The two collected data from 59 countries where a majority of the population followed one of the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. They ran this data - which covered slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs, and worship attendance - through statistical models. Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.

I assume that it is the author of the article (and not the researchers) who has confused correlation with causation. Their results show a "strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs". However, the article then says that "if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies". It should say that "if church attendance actually rises, it correlates with a slowing of growth in developing economies".

However, the researchers do not escape blame entirely. In the next paragraph:

McCleary says this makes sense from a strictly economic standpoint - as economies develop and people can earn more money, their time becomes more valuable. For economic growth, she says, “What you want is to have people have their children grow up in a faith, but then they should become productive members of society. They shouldn’t be spending all their time in religious services.”

For Christians (the only one of the four religions studied with which I am very familiar), this seems wildly implausible. An hour every Sunday spent in church causes the GDP growth for the entire country to slow?

Anti-urban bias

David Brooks has a new column about John Thune, a cookie-cutter Republican. According to Brooks, Thune "is down-the-line conservative on social, economic and foreign policy matters". What makes him so remarkable?

The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune’s face he’d be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you’d pick Thune.

The gist of the column is that Thune is handsome, "unfailingly genial, modest and nice", so he would be a good face for the conservative policies that the country rejected in 2008.

What I found interesting about the article was how it revealed a little bit about Brooks.

His populism is not angry. He doesn’t rail against the malefactors of wealth. But it’s there, a celebration of the small and local over the big and urban.

The opposite of small is big. And the opposite of local is urban. Because nobody lives in urban areas. According to Wikipedia, 70% of the American population lives in urban areas. 30% of these people (21% of the total population) live in city centers, and the other 70% (49% of the total population) live in the suburbs.

Bias again

Matthew Continetti has an interesting post up in the Weekly Standard saying that Palin can be the new standard-bearer for American populism, following in the tradition of Jackson, Bryan, and Reagan. The piece is poorly argued from start to finish, but his arguments on the financial system are scarily weak.

For the banks, a complicated and technocratic regulatory scheme isn't necessary. A few simple rules that separate the solvent banks from the insolvent would suffice.

And what happens when a bank becomes insolvent, a la Lehman? He doesn't really say, although earlier in the piece he says:

Held to the standards of the marketplace, companies like GM, Chrysler, AIG, GMAC, and Citi probably would disappear. They'd be bought and sold, carved up into little pieces, and the overpaid CEOs who made bad bets would lose their jobs.

So I imagine that he thinks that if Citi were to become insolvent (or admit that it is insolvent, depending on your point of view), it would simply be broken into little pieces and sold off. There would be no major systemic collapse, because... well, Continetti isn't very clear why not. I suppose that if your biases tell you that government intervention makes things worse, then all problems can be fixed by less government intervention. Even if almost anyone who has studied the financial system disagrees with you.

Up is the new Down

Have you heard about the two big wins for conservatives in NY-23? Let RedState's Dear Leader Erick Erickson explain:

The race has now been called for Democrat Bill Owens.

This is a huge win for conservatives.

“Whaaaa. . . ?” you say.

There are two big victories at work in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives.

[snip]

Secondly, and just as importantly, there has all of a sudden been a huge movement among some activists to go the third party route. We see in NY-23 that this is not possible as third parties are not viable.

Third parties lack funding and ability for a host of reasons. Conservatives are going to have to work from within the GOP. The GOP had better pay attention.

The first point is debatable. The second is right, and is completely not a "huge win for conservatives". It is a victory for the GOP. A "win for conservatives" would have been if Hoffman had won and shown that a conservative third party is viable.

Bias

Everyone knows where Megan McArdle stands politically, but it's still funny whenever someone puts their bias on full display.

Either Hoffman will lose, in which case the strategy of policing the party will lose some of its appeal, or he will win, in which case Blue Dog democrats and Republicans in squishy states will probably tack right--a critical win during the health care debate.

Now, try re-writing it slightly...

Either Hoffman will win, in which case the strategy of policing the party will gain some more appeal, or he will win, in which case Blue Dog democrats and Republicans in squishy states will probably tack left--a critical win during the health care debate.

These sentences both rely on the same basic idea: a Hoffman win pushes the country to the right, and a Hoffman loss pushes the country to the left. And yet the two sentences sound so different.