The Science President?

Steven Horwitz

That's the title of this week's NBR blog entry.

Here's the opening:

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama promised that, in contrast to his predecessor, his presidency would be a "science presidency." In his first year, Obama may well have taken some science more seriously than his predecessor, but one set of settled scientific research he has chosen to ignore has been the economics of the minimum wage. The result has been a nightmare for young workers, especially young workers of color.

Comments

[Mario Rizzo]

You got him. Now, if we could only impeach him on that basis.

[Roger Koppl]

Nice piece, Steve. It's true, isn't it? Science matters as long as it's science I can live with. Otherwise the jury is still out. In this regard, Bush and Obama are pretty similar, I suppose.

FWIW, here is my take on Obama as the science president:
http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/science-and-truthiness/

[RickC]

Alex Berezow has another interesting take on Obama as "science President," though from a different angle.

http://nasblog.org/2009/11/24/they-blinded-us-with-science/

[Greg Ransom]

As he tells us in his memoir, Obama studied the economic science of Marx and the Marxist at Occidental and spent his free time at socialist conferences while attending Columbia. The person who inspired Obama's political ideas was his socialist father, Harvard traded socialist economists Barak Obama, Sr.

When it comes to economics and political economy, Obama's mind lives in a different scientific universe than most academic economists.

[Greg Ransom]

Obama is fairly explicit in his memoir.

Working as a copy editor for a market research firm was "working behind enemy lines."

[The_Orlonater]

His supposed future attendance of the climate change summit in Copenhagen seems like a contradiction. I bet that the modern Left will gobble this whole new "scientific" presidency.

[Brian Pitt]

Excellent piece. I am sure that our president is aware of this. I only hope that minorities take this information into account before they aver that Obama "stands for change."

[Troy Camplin, Ph.D.]

He may show support for some areas of science, but he's not the "Science President" by any stretch of the imagination. He understand as little about any of the sciences as he does economics. Do you think he understands self-organizing complex systems, emergence, game theory, information theory, chaos, bios, evolution? Of course not. If he did, he couldn't remain a socialist or even an interventionist. We will know the first true Science President when all creationist (socialist) and intelligent design (interventionist) theories are completely discarded.