conversableeconomist

Taking Your Nobel Medal Through the Fargo Airport

Brian Schmidt was a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for \”for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.\” This is the discovery that leads physicists to infer the existence of \”dark energy,\” which although we have no direct way to measure or observe it is apparently causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. At the Scientific American blog, Clara Moskowitz reports the story recently told by Schmidt about ttaking his Nobel medal to show his grandmother in Fargo, North Dakota — a city on the eastern edge of North Dakota, on the border with my home state of Minnesota. Fargo has a little more than 100,000 people, which makes it the largest population city in North Dakota. Here\’s how Schmidt tells the story:

“There are a couple of bizarre things that happen. One of the things you get when you win a Nobel Prize is, well, a Nobel Prize. It’s about that big, that thick [he mimes a disk roughly the size of an Olympic medal], weighs a half a pound, and it’s made of gold.

“When I won this, my grandma, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, wanted to see it. I was coming around so I decided I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays—it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’

I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’

They said, ‘What’s in the box?’

I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.

So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’

I said, ‘gold.’

And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’

‘The King of Sweden.’

‘Why did he give this to you?’

‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’

At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”

conversableeconomist

What Americans Know About Their Economy

An old friend of mine, when teaching a course in introductory economics, used to give students a list of 10 economic statistics that he wanted them to know on the final: basic stuff like the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, total federal spending, the level of Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the like. The first 10 questions of the final just asked students to recite these statistics. He used to rant and laugh a bit about the results: \”It\’s 10 easy points!  I tell them the ten statistics in advance! And many of them have no clue!\”

The Pew Research Center does regular national surveys of what Americans know about the news. Here are the questions and answers about economics from the September 25-28 survey.

Many Americans dramatically overstate the unemployment rate and the poverty rate.

Nearly half of those surveyed don\’t even venture a guess about who runs the Federal Reserve. Indeed, of those who answered, a certain number seem to have some confusion about the difference between the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve.

In many surveys over the years, Americans state that a huge share of U.S. federal spending goes to foreign aid: a common finding is that Americans think about 25% of US spending goes to foreign aid, when the correct answer is about 1%. And while interest payments on past federal borrowing are up in recent years, they are far short of Social Security payments.

One statistic where Americans do seem fairly accurate is the minimum wage.

There\’s an old saying often attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan that \”Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.\” In public opinion surveys, of course, people are offered a chance to assert facts that reflect their own frame of mind. For example, Social Security is popular, while foreign aid is  not, and therefore people (wishfully) hold the opinion that we must not be spending too much on Social Security, but are spending a lot on foreign aid that could cut with little domestic pain.  But it\’s obviously tricky to have a productive social discussion about economic issues when there is little agreement on central facts.