…of Democrats:

That Democrats are generally illiterate about basic economics is not a matter of mere conjecture. In 2010, Daniel B. Klein and Zeljka Buturovic analyzed answers provided by a random sample of 4,835 Americans to a list of eight questions about economics. The results, which noted the party affiliation of the respondents, were not flattering to our friends on the left. “Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.” And these were not arcane questions. They involved elementary concepts, like the effect of price controls, covered in any Econ 101 course taught at the lowliest community college and even some of the better high schools. Yet the average Democrat respondent got nearly 60 percent of the answers wrong.

It is precisely this kind of ignorance that led so many Democrats to believe Obamacare would somehow render health care less expensive. One of the first items covered in any introductory economics course is that the price of any good or service will rise if the quantity demanded increases without an accompanying increase in the available supply of that commodity. Nonetheless, it held no message for the average Democrat that the supply side of the equation was ignored by “reform,” though it increased the number of patients in the health system as well as the range of services to which they are entitled. The issue of supply and demand was utterly lost on Obamacare’s Democrat supporters. Thus, at the time of its passage, fully 78 percent of them favored the law. Even now, 52 percent still support it.

This is typical of the ignorance that was on full display in the president’s speech the other day.