Magic Buttons: Summary Findings

by Will Wilkinson on February 13, 2009

Here’s what I can give you so far. I’ll give you the breakdowns of answers by ideological identification in the next post. Let me emphatically state that the presence of pie charts in no way suggests the presence of science. The poll sample is representative of nothing other than the set of people who either read this blog and are willing to take unscientific polls or who follow me, or certain other people who follow me, on Twitter and like to take unscientific polls. That said, I think the result are suggestive, and fun to talk about. I’m personally most interested in the ideological breakdown of poll participants, which gives me a rough sense of my readership. I will show you later what “Other” included, since it’s sort of funny.

Huge props go to The Fiery Scribe for volunteering his or her mad spreadsheet skilz.

Jeff Yager

I could have predicted the Magic Button #2 response. However, the fairly even split in almost all the other categories is interesting. Any chance we could see the breakdown of which political ID voted which way?

GoriGirl

It'd be easy enough to do in excel - I'll volunteer if no one else will. Sadly, I do this stuff pretty much every day at work...

Growth Fan

I wonder if people really grasp the value of sustained 1% growth. In just ten years that means a 10% boost in income, and exponential benefits into the indefinite future. On guns, that's enough to pay for improved police response times, digital camera and surveillance systems, TASERS and other less-lethal items, etc. On abortion, that's more than enough to pay for plenty of condoms, the Pill, the male Pills in development, vasectomies, IUDs, and adoption systems, as well as research on even more effective contraception.

Thane

Right ... the last two questions can only be explained by people not realizing how much 1% year-on-year growth can make a difference. Add an extra percentage in annual growth, say, from 3% to 4% annually, and you will create fabulous improvements in human well-being over time. In 40 years, the span of most people's working lives, you get a country that is almost 50% richer than the country without the extra growth. On a per capita basis, that's the difference between living in Germany and Portugal (which means something if you've been to both). And that just keeps compounding over time.

Certainly more than enough to cancel out any negative effects of banning guns, and likely the same result with abortion.

Will Wilkinson

Can't they be explained by the fact that some people aren't consequentialists, and aren't willing to trade certain liberties for results?

Greg N.

Are we going to get a post with your answers (and Kerry's), and the reasoning behind each?

Growth Fan

My point was that the benefits accrue in kind, e.g. in reproductive autonomy and equality for women. I think that there are very few people who would think it very important to have a right to abortion if free, 100% reliable, convenient but easily reversible, contraception was guaranteed to be universally available. Then we're just haggling over the price.

Christopher Monnier

I think I answered "yes" to both questions about trading GDP for liberties (it was an easy choice for the guns question and a very difficult one for abortion), but there are definitely certain liberties I would never trade away, the most obvious of which is freedom of speech.

GoriGirl

I wonder what the gender split would be on both of the GDP questions. It's obvious which way one would expect the sexes to split, but by how much (if at all) would be an interesting question. Oh well, no data on that one.

huadpe

I am curious what people wrote into the "other" box to describe themselves? Any way you can give maybe the top 3 or 4 entries?

GoriGirl

I wrote in "classic liberal".

AdamGurri

Didn't see the poll, but I'd go with "other" if I had. Vulgar Moralist did a great post a while back on being an unlabeled man which is the best way to describe how I feel about lumping myself into these categories.