The Left and Right appear to agree: it’s important to discuss this country’s failures and flaws. This is not the impression I’ve gotten from the media or in conversations.
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Politics and Economics
What does it mean to “act in the public interest”? Is this about intentions, self-belief, behavior or impact? In other words, do scientists want to do good, believe they’re doing good, act like good scientists, or directly benefit the public?
That’s pretty strong support, but not strong enough for politicians to pass environmental legislation without at least some buy-in from those who have the most to lose from stricter regulations, such as farmers and small businesses.
[This is] “a top-down vision of the state that replaces the decentralized wisdom of millions of entrepreneurs and consumers with the ideological preferences of a few people at the top — people who do not risk losing their money if their decisions result in failure.” - Johan Norberg & Christian Sandström
What about climate change? Here’s a chart that reveals major left-right disagreement on this issue…
Americans on the left tend to see more Big Problems than those on the right. Take inequality…
Do Americans think their compatriots lack the wisdom to make political decisions? Apparently that’s the opinion of many…
Inspired by a recent holiday celebrating the birth of this nation, this post will address Americans’ confidence in its future, by political type. Here we go…
I’m particularly interested in how many people of each political type are doing okay financially, operationalized as middle-income or higher. This is what Pew found…
What’s surprising is how well the No Apologies Right and Faith First Conservatives are doing, given that only a third are college graduates. These are the strongest Trump supporters on the right, by far (90% and 81% approval, respectively) and they seem to be doing okay, financially-speaking. Yet Trump supporters have often been portrayed by the media and academics as “left behind” by the economy, struggling to make ends meet…
Pew Research has just come out with a new typology that sorts the American public into nine groups based on their political values and beliefs. The typology is based on a survey of 10,357 U.S. adults conducted in November 2025. The Pew report draws additional data on the same respondents from 15 separate surveys conducted over the course of 2025 and 2026, as well as records from prior Pew Research election surveys and commercial voter files.
This post will look at the relationship between economic freedom and worker well-being. For the latter I’ll be using survey data from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report in which Gallup classifies employees into three wellbeing categories:
Thriving: Employees with positive views of their present life and the next five years
Struggling: Employees who manage day to day but express concern about the future
Suffering: Employees who report that their lives are going poorly and are likely experiencing significant challenges
The overall pattern is clear for these 11 countries: greater economic freedom = higher GDP per capita, with a few bumps along the line from Singapore to China. The US is the big exception… I’m not sure why this is the case, but I suspect the American work ethic has something to do with it. Specifically…
To my mind, “business freedom” and “ease of doing business” are very similar ideas. I expected country-level scores to reflect that, which is exactly what I found - at least for the eleven countries I’ve been comparing in this series…Once again, Denmark stands out: higher business freedom and ease of doing business than all the others, except Singapore.
No surprise that the US, France and UK – the worst performers in the above chart - have super-high levels of public debt as a percent of GDP, while top performers Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden have low levels of debt/GDP. But what about Singapore’s debt? A whopping 177% of GDP—second highest after Japan among the advanced economies. And yet Singapore is Number One in overall economic freedom in the Index. How to explain this paradox…
The surprise here is communist China: third best after Singapore and Switzerland*. How does Exhibit A of big, intrusive government manage to rein in spending?
Note that the Nordics - Denmark, Sweden and Finland - rank much higher than the US on overall economic freedom, but they’re also high-tax countries. How do they do it? Long answer short…
Of course, plenty of economists, political scientists, psychologists, and just plain people are less enamored of free markets, economic freedom and small government. I have quibbles myself.
“Back when Obama 1st took office I advised anyone who would listen that it’s a "fool’s errand" to EVER view [the opposition party] as people who can be dealt with as anything other than bitter opponents, with one side winning and the other utterly vanquished.” (Reader’s Comment to a news story about Kamala Harris.)
Core values are default values that people rely on to make decisions and to guide behavior in the absence of detailed information. But default values aren’t enough to govern wisely, nor are they enough to know what a good policy or politician looks like.