Republican pair need crash course on economics
Business Times - 12 Sep 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT A FRIEND of mine who lives in New York City told me that she and her husband were planning to vote for independent party presidential candidate Ralph Nader this year. 'He is the only one who is ready to tax all these millionaires in Manhattan,' she said. The only problem is that these two Naderite voters make a living making expensive jewellery for a rich clientele on the East Side of Manhattan. And a Nader administration that would end-up squeezing her customers for more taxes could eventually hurt my friend's business. 'Don't you get it?' I asked. 'Well, I didn't think about it,' she responded. 'I didn't take economics in college.' Indeed, as George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan explains in The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, 2008), the average American voter holds mistaken views about econ...