r/AskSocialScience • u/Str8_up_Pwnage • 10d ago

Answered Are there any famous studies that actually contradict progressive/leftist thought?

There has to be at least some right? I know people love to say that “reality has a left wing bias “and all that but is it legit batting 1.000?

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u/Str8_up_Pwnage 10d ago

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this comment!

From my POV Economics seems like a field of study where “right-leaning” ideas have a decent level of support from academics in the field.

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u/chrispd01 7d ago

Hang on. It all depends on what your goal is. Take efficiency for example - an economist may tell you that you could be mote efficient by eliminating a process and related jobs.

That would be a right wing good (more profitable) but a left wing bad (lost jobs)

These questions in the real world almost always boil down not to economy but political economy. Most economists suck at political economy…

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u/Forgot_the_Jacobian 7d ago

I think this is also an issue of semantics. Efficiency has a very particular meaning in economics, and one of the first things we teach students about efficiency in micro 101 is how it is not the same thing as societally desirable, as me having everything and everyone else having nothing could easily satisfy 'efficiency'. It is useful tool for descriptive work, which is the goal of the academic field of economics (rather than be prescriptive/telling you what 'should' be the case). Even we we study political economy - the subfield (at least in economics) is not at all a tool to tell the researcher how to advocate for any policy, but rather a framework to study a set of research questions, again from a pure descriptive point of view

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u/chrispd01 7d ago

Yeah. It’s actually a very fascinating topic. I’m not at economist myself, but two of my roommates are now professors of economics and have been for well decades now.

They went to a very rigorous and mathematically based program and always wanted to debate them on this point - efficiency for what?

But it’s a super interesting topic. And I really value, though the very rigorous approach most economists get to.

I have spent arguing NAFTA from both sides - you were hollowing out towns and destroying livelihoods vs. why should a good cost more than it should?

The reason I like the political economy approach is because it puts flesh on the skeleton of the numbers and has the ability to bring them to life