This is part 3 of the interview with James K. Galbraith. Previously I posted Inequality and Instability and Inequality and Instability – Part 2.

I will post Part 4 when it becomes available. You may find part 4 before I do if you go to The Real News web page that provides a link to all the pieces of the multipart Inequality and Instability interview.

At the conclusion of this part of the interview we find out why the Democratic party is so ineffective at changing these policies. Even more sadly we find out why the labor unions are not contending for power in the current system.

Here is the second part of the interview with Jame K Gakbraith.  The first part is in the post Inequality and Instability.  There will be at least two more parts to follow the current one.

There is a trememndous amount of clarification in these interviews about the role that Equality did or did not play in the difference in economic growth and unemployment between Europe and The United States. The actual relation is quite different from what you have been lead to believe. Again, an indication that what seems like a logically consistent theory in books and academic papers can be turned on its head when you look at the data in a realistic way. The data is where you find the factors that you forgot to include in the theoretical analsysis.

In the article, The Republican Brain on the Republican Brain, author Chris Mooney discusses the reaction to his book The Republican Brain.  The following quote gives you a hint as to the material in the book:

… I further argue, you realize that there are some psychological traits that tend to accompany conservatism – especially in its current form in the United States – that naturally conflict with the nuanced, uncertainty-laden thinking style of scientists and liberals alike (members of the “reality based community”). These traits include authoritarianism – seeing the world in black and white, intolerant of uncertainty – but also a lack of openness to experience (a personality trait), a higher need for closure and so on.
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In fact, all the researchers I interviewed for the book stressed that conservative psychology is perfectly normal and has many advantages to it (although also, of course, some disadvantages). The conservative critics either seemed not to have actually read the research in question, or were, for some other reason, unable to take such a nuanced view of it.

At the end of the article, the author describes an experiment which was intended to measure the extent to which the book’s thesis could be proven scientifically.  One surprising outcome for the researchers is described as:

The conservatives in the study were spending a lot less time reading our essays than liberals.

The author advises caution in interpreting these results until it is replicated by other experiments. I see another reason to be cautious about jumping to conclusions as to what this observation proves.  Perhaps conservatives are faster readers than liberals.  Maybe they are all graduates of Evelyn Woods’ Speed Reading classes.  (Of course they could be faster readers because they skip over nuance in what they are reading.  This is one of the main ideas of the book.  The psychologists need to devise an experiment where they see which explanation is more likely to be the main one.)

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