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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (482461)	5/21/2009 11:55:48 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577920

What NFL team does he own ?

To: tejek who wrote (482461)	5/22/2009 5:20:43 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577920

[Ilya Somin, May 20, 2009 at 11:25pm] Trackbacks Political Ignorance and Blaming "the Jews" for the Economic Crisis: Political scientists Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit have an article describing survey data showing that some 25% of [non-Jewish] Americans believe that "the Jews" deserve at least "a moderate amount" or "a great deal" of blame for the current economic crisis. Some 32% of self-identified Democrats and 18% of Republicans take that view. Similar results were obtained in a recent survey of opinion in several European nations. I. Blaming the Jews as a Consequence of Rational Political Ignorance. These figures are shocking, but not as surprising as they might seem. Previous surveys show that large percentages of the public endorse a variety of ridiculous conspiracy theories about political and economic events. As I explained in the post linked in the previous sentence, such beliefs are in large part the result of widespread "rational ignorance" about politics. Because any one vote has only an infinitesmal chance of affecting electoral outcomes, there is little incentive to spend time acquiring political information in order to become a better-informed voter; consequently, most citizens know very little about politics and public policy. People who are ignorant about politics are more likely to endorse crude or simplistic explanations for political events. "The Jews did it" is a much simpler explanation for the financial crisis than a variety of complex policy errors that most voters don't know about and might not understand it if they did. Unfortunately, Malhotra and Margalit don't provide data correlating general political ignorance with belief in an anti-Semitic explanation for the crisis. However, they do note that blaming the Jews is inversely correlated with education; only 18% of respondents with bachelor's degrees blame the Jews at least a "moderate amount." By contrast, that view is held by 27% of respondents with lesser educational attainment. Obviously, education is highly correlated with political knowledge. II. Blaming the Jews as a Form of "Rational Irrationality." Simple ignorance is not, of course, the sole explanation for widespread belief in anti-Semitic explanations of the financial crisis. Also relevant is the fact that most people are highly biased in their evaluation of whatever political information they do know"rational irrationality." Thus, a person with preexisting anti-Semitic prejudices (perhaps a belief tha Jews have excessive influence over banking and finance) is likely to interpret whatever she hears about the financial crisis in light of those biases. A 2007 ADL survey conducted before the current crisis found that 18% of American gentiles believe that Jews have "too much control/influence on Wall Street" and 20% think that they have "too much power in the business world." These figures are comparable to the 25% who today blame the crisis in large part on the Jews, and suggest that many of those who blame the Jews do so in part because of preexisting anti-Semitic biases. Obviously, such biases are reinforced by simple ignorance. The less you know about economics and public policy, the less likely you are to be aware of more sophisticated explanations of the crisis, and the more likely you are to fall back on crude prejudices in trying to understand it... volokh.com