My thoughts in trying to make sense of the world. My main interests at the moment are politics and economics.
Politically, I lean towards the left, but at this moment, I want to learn about all kinds of views.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Pew Research survey
The Pew research centre has come out with a new survey of attitudes around the world.
"Ajay Shah has a post on the results of the Pew Institute’s latest survey:
They have three key questions that measure economic liberalism, covering attitudes towards international trade, attitudes towards foreign companies and attitudes towards free markets. The results contain many surprises. As an example, in urban India, they find 89% are supportive of international trade, 73% are supportive of foreign companies and 75% are supportive of free markets.
"Urban India is at rank 9 out of 46 countries. China is at rank 11.
"The report also shows sharp changes over the last five years… support for foreign companies in India went up from 61% in 2002 to 73% in 2007, a gain of 12 percentage points. On the question People are better off in free markets, support went up from 62% in 2002 to 76% in 2007, a gain of 14 percentage points. Most interesting is page 20, where the fraction that believes that government has too much control has risen from 52% in 2002 to 71% in 2007 - a rise of 19%. [Ajay Shah]
"Roughly 2000 people were surveyed in India, of which city dwellers constituted 79%. At least 7 in 10 Indians you’d meet in cities, it turns out, are free market fundamentalists. Unless of course the survey itself is part of a vast free market fundamentalist conspiracy.
"The survey doesn’t say—but it would be interesting to know how many of the survey respondents actually voted in the last elections, and whether they voted on the basis of their economic beliefs."
Alas, if only there was a way of effectively restricting the franchise to the urban population. :) None of the present political impasses would exist, and the Left would be reduced to a tiny handful of seats in the Lok Sabha. Oh well, hope springs eternal, as Alexander Pope once wrote...
a) As everyone noticed immediately, the survey was only for urban people.
b) "Free markets" is a value judgement. If the answer depends on the dismantling of the "license raj", most people (including me) would welcome it. The survey, of course didn't monitor closely attitudes relating to say, social spending in urban and rural areas. It's quite untrue to say that they're "free market fundamentalists".
c) A huge percentage of people (around 85%) said that they'd prefer slower growth and less incomes if it meant taking more care of the environment. There wasn't much debate over the recent UN climate forum and the US climate farce.
d) Disenfranchising the rural population would be a terrible step, in my opinion. I'm not sure if you're seriously in favour of that, so I won't comment further.
e) Bolivia and Venezuela also had pretty low levels of approval, (also urban population).
2 comments:
Interesting snippet from the IEB on the survey:
"Ajay Shah has a post on the results of the Pew Institute’s latest survey:
They have three key questions that measure economic liberalism, covering attitudes towards international trade, attitudes towards foreign companies and attitudes towards free markets. The results contain many surprises. As an example, in urban India, they find 89% are supportive of international trade, 73% are supportive of foreign companies and 75% are supportive of free markets.
"Urban India is at rank 9 out of 46 countries. China is at rank 11.
"The report also shows sharp changes over the last five years… support for foreign companies in India went up from 61% in 2002 to 73% in 2007, a gain of 12 percentage points. On the question People are better off in free markets, support went up from 62% in 2002 to 76% in 2007, a gain of 14 percentage points. Most interesting is page 20, where the fraction that believes that government has too much control has risen from 52% in 2002 to 71% in 2007 - a rise of 19%. [Ajay Shah]
"Roughly 2000 people were surveyed in India, of which city dwellers constituted 79%. At least 7 in 10 Indians you’d meet in cities, it turns out, are free market fundamentalists. Unless of course the survey itself is part of a vast free market fundamentalist conspiracy.
"The survey doesn’t say—but it would be interesting to know how many of the survey respondents actually voted in the last elections, and whether they voted on the basis of their economic beliefs."
Alas, if only there was a way of effectively restricting the franchise to the urban population. :) None of the present political impasses would exist, and the Left would be reduced to a tiny handful of seats in the Lok Sabha. Oh well, hope springs eternal, as Alexander Pope once wrote...
Yeah, the survey was interesting. A few comments.
a) As everyone noticed immediately, the survey was only for urban people.
b) "Free markets" is a value judgement. If the answer depends on the dismantling of the "license raj", most people (including me) would welcome it. The survey, of course didn't monitor closely attitudes relating to say, social spending in urban and rural areas. It's quite untrue to say that they're "free market fundamentalists".
c) A huge percentage of people (around 85%) said that they'd prefer slower growth and less incomes if it meant taking more care of the environment. There wasn't much debate over the recent UN climate forum and the US climate farce.
d) Disenfranchising the rural population would be a terrible step, in my opinion. I'm not sure if you're seriously in favour of that, so I won't comment further.
e) Bolivia and Venezuela also had pretty low levels of approval, (also urban population).
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