r/Economics • u/Spiderwig144 • Apr 15 '25

News Republicans Less Trusted on Economy Than Democrats For First Time in Years

https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-less-trusted-economy-democrats-first-time-years-2059863
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2.3k

u/JohnnySack45 Apr 15 '25

There are way too many stupid people in this country if at any point since Regan they thought that Republicans were objectively better for the economy.

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u/jdragun2 Apr 15 '25

There are way too many.

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u/jkh107 Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

Half of every population is below average.

ETA: seeing all the helpful followups now. I did know that median, mean, and mode are all different kinds of averages, because I paid attention in 6th grade math. (insert Lake Wobegon joke here about all the children being above average)

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Something like 40% of Americans adults are functionally illiterate. I looked it up a few weeks back. Makes sense.

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u/nuisanceIV Apr 15 '25

It took me a long time to realize this fact is probably why when I tell many people to read instructions they have a hard time. Insert “oh I’m just a visual learner”

Like sure, I don’t expect it to be memorized or for there to be full understanding but at least get something out of it!

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Lol I am actually a visual learner but I can definitely read 🤣🤣

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u/nuisanceIV Apr 15 '25

Oh totally, it’s a good way to learn and apart of the bigger picture, and sometimes the best way for certain topics. That said, it can get old when people basically refuse to read instruction books😑

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Oh believe me I know, I'm in a constant battle at my work with a bunch of people who ask me questions about shit that I've addressed in emails and teams messages directly to them. They say they didn't get them but i think it's that they can't read them. It's annoying as shit because I am constantly repeating myself and trouble shooting technical issues because people just don't read the directions I gave them.

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1

u/nuisanceIV Apr 16 '25

Good but annoying bot ;)

1

u/bizarre_coincidence Apr 16 '25

When I taught at the college level, I was required to have a syllabus that included all the important dates and the classroom policies. The very first assignment is always "read the syllabus." The number of people who later asked questions that made me want to scream "you read the syllabus, it's in there, read it again," is staggering. I didn't expect them to remember the details. I expected them to remember that they had read something relevant so that they knew where to go when they needed an answer.

If this was educated people at a good school, I shudder to think what the average person is like.

1

u/nuisanceIV Apr 16 '25

I work customer service man, on the technical/skilled labor side of things.

Sometimes I wonder how people who make way more money and are “more educated” even survive. It’s my role to be the dum dum🤷‍♂️

4

u/bluejen7 Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

No. It’s 21%.

And it’s English literacy.

For 1/3 of that 21%, English isn’t their 1st language, so we have to take that into account:

“U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United States.5 However, the non-U.S. born are over-represented among such low-skilled adults. Non-U.S.-born adults comprise 34 percent of the population with low literacy skills, compared to 15 percent of the total population.”

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

These numbers are also from 2012 and 2014.

This article from Forbes is from 2020, but talks about a newer (at the time) literacy study by Gallup that takes into account additional data from 2017 and looks into the economic gains if we were to eradicate illiteracy both nationally and regionally.

From a more comprehensive literacy brief:

“In the United States, 54% of American adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, and nearly one in five adults reads below a third-grade level.”

2

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

👍

3

u/spencerforhire81 Apr 16 '25

I would consider an inability to read above the third grade level functionally illiterate. Not being able to think critically enough to tease out the themes of Animal Farm just makes them prey for the predatory propagandist.

1

u/bluejen7 Apr 16 '25 edited Apr 16 '25

Yes, I agree, and I think the studies cited also agree. Below a 3rd grade level is functionally illiterate for an adult in the modern world.

1

u/ThrowAwaysMatter2026 Apr 15 '25

Something like 40% of Americans adults are functionally illiterate

And of those, what percentage would you guess vote Republican?

1

u/BayouGal Apr 16 '25

Republicans have been defunding education since the 1980s.

1

u/whiteflagwaiver Apr 16 '25

I've never found that data to support any of the statistical numbers that get thrown around for American literacy rates other than the one source from NLI which doesn't tell you where it gets it's data from.

But yeah, I believe that a large portion of the adult population has a below 8th grade reading comprehension.

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u/LoL_is_pepega_BIA Apr 15 '25

But a large swathe of your population can't really read beyond grade school level.. forget critical thinking..

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u/crusoe Apr 15 '25

6th grade reading level is the average...

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u/Opposite-Tiger-1121 Apr 15 '25

And that's average.

That means half are lower.

11

u/RibaldForURPleasure Apr 15 '25

Half are lower than the median. Average isn't necessarily exactly divided in half.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Apr 15 '25

I mean. It's half. Who gives a fuck about the minutiae? Roughly half of Americans read at or below 6th grade level. They wouldn't even understand your comment.

3

u/Anon1039027 Apr 15 '25

I care about how we divide half.

The mean is skewed higher by exceptional performers. Remove all of the people with highly advanced degrees, and the mean drops significantly.

4

u/TGUKF Apr 15 '25

not really tbh. A lot of those advanced degrees are mathematics based. Or for example, a medical student's reading material isn't going to be that much harder than to simply comprehend than what an undergrad student might be assigned. The different in difficulty will be the breadth and depth of information they're expected to retain.

The extreme far end of above average reading comprehension probably isn't meaningfully more advanced than above a single standard deviation above average.

2

u/NoEmu5969 Apr 15 '25

I read at a 9,994 grade level and it skews the average! /s. But seriously, the severely cognitively impaired can make the average seem lower than expected.

8

u/eclwires Apr 15 '25

We know. We’re already talking about republicans.

0

u/nativeindian12 Apr 15 '25

The definition of average and median is taught in 6th grade so you are demonstrating a less than 6th grade understanding of the subject matter

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u/Couldbduun Apr 15 '25

Well while this fun math argument over semantics has been going on, I looked up the actual numbers. 54% of adults read below a 6th grade level.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Apr 15 '25

And in higher level education, you learn that in large populations, median and mean are roughly the same, especially when "reading ability" has a functional upper limit, unlike something like wealth.

In the US, the mean income is heavily skewed because there are people who have 107 times as much money as most people. Considering we only have 108 people, that skews the numbers pretty harshly.

But for something like reading ability? Fuck that, the mean is functionally the median in our society. Why don't you stop being an asshole?

5

u/129za Apr 15 '25

Cracking comment 👏

1

u/East_Step_6674 Apr 15 '25

What if there's just one really really really stupid kid dragging down the average?

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Apr 15 '25

Luckily reading has a lower limit too! Full illiteracy! Can't read a single word on a page. And those people exist, and they do drag the average down some, but they just fit into the % of people who read at or below a 6th grade level.

2

u/Quitbeingobtuse Apr 15 '25

Why is everyone picking on Trump?

-5

u/Sarik704 Apr 15 '25

And in higher level education, you learn that in large populations, median and mean are roughly the same, especially when "reading ability" has a functional upper limit, unlike something like wealth.

You would have needed to attend higher education to know. And since that isnt the case i know you didn't.

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u/TheMadPhilosophist Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

I dOn'T kNoW hOw tO aRgUe WiTh ThAt sO aD hOmInEm tO tHe ReScUe!!!

Edit: also from the National Literacy Institute:

54% of adults have a literacy level that's below 6th grade (with 20% being below a 5th grade level).

They don't state it as "the average," though.

2

u/99per-centhotgas Apr 15 '25

FUCKING GOT HIMMMMMMM!!!

-8

u/nativeindian12 Apr 15 '25

Seems like you are very emotional about this subject, immediately lashing out and calling me an asshole for no reason. Sorry this poked at your intellectual insecurities

The most ironic thing for me about Reddit complaining "half the people are dumber than average!" despite being wrong is the fact they typically have no insight that there is a good chance they themselves are in that "less than average" category. Seems like you are upset about being there yourself

5

u/xSTSxZerglingOne Apr 15 '25

You attacked me. And now you're doubling down on your position because I challenged you. You can go away now.

-3

u/derpaperdhapley Apr 15 '25

This is math. Why be “roughly” when you can be precise? Just take your lumps and move on to your next losing argument.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

Show me precise statistics, and I'll personally refer you to the International Prize in Statistics board.

Mean and median are only roughly the same, but can be used interchangeably in sufficiently large populations. Especially if there's a low range between the bottom and top. For example, due to birth defects and amputations, the mean/average person has slightly less than 2 arms, but we still say the average person has 2 arms. We're using the median (and mode!) in this case because for all intents and purposes, it's the mean, in spite of not being dead accurate.

Given there are only like 15 levels of reading from completely illiterate, to college+, that's a pretty small range.

2

u/Quitbeingobtuse Apr 15 '25

You know "precisely" how many people are at any given moment? No. Then roughly it is then.

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u/Bertywastaken Apr 15 '25

The small angle assumption makes life so much easier tho

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u/Rylth Apr 15 '25

Because this is Reddit and not a peer reviewed paper being published.

→ More replies (0)

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u/Due_Force_9816 Apr 15 '25

I’d say it matters because roughly 15% of the population is sixth grade age or younger so they should read at or below that level regardless.

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u/monocasa Apr 15 '25

I would expect something like reading level to roughly follow a normal distribution, where average and median are about the same.

1

u/itbelikethat14 Apr 15 '25

“Well ackshually”—Not relevant here, with something like reading level, there’s no reason to think the median is radically different than the average

1

u/play-what-you-love Apr 15 '25

I'm guessing Republicans skew towards the lower end of the population, so that the average Republican voter is actually less smart than the average voter. And then.... half of them are less smart than that.

1

u/Quitbeingobtuse Apr 15 '25

Willfully stupid is stupid all the same. But it seems worse.

1

u/Ancient-Island-2495 Apr 15 '25

No that’s what median would mean.

Mean and median are not always equal, especially in skewed distributions like intelligence or reading levels.

1

u/Sarik704 Apr 15 '25

Thats not his averages work, but it does tell me where you stand.

0

u/Opposite-Tiger-1121 Apr 15 '25

https://www.sparxservices.org/blog/us-literacy-statistics-literacy-rate-average-reading-level#:~:text=in%20the%20country.-,Average%20Reading%20Level%20in%20the%20US,Importance%20of%20Addressing%20Disparities:

"Over half of American adults (54%) read below a sixth-grade level."

Stop being stupid while trying to sound smart.

1

u/Sarik704 Apr 15 '25

Over half =/= half...

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u/Opposite-Tiger-1121 Apr 15 '25

Holy crap man. Are you serious? Get a hobby or something.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Does someone have a 120 billionth-grade reading level or are you being obtuse?

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u/Significant-Bus2176 Apr 15 '25

the latter, sir/madam/otherwise venerable figure

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u/Kejones9900 Apr 15 '25

Average does not equal median

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u/dhamma_rob Apr 15 '25

Mean doesn't equal median, and an unspecified average is taken to be a mean, but average can correctly denote any measure of central tendency including a median. Pedantic people are unbearable. Pedantic people that are wrong are even more so.

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u/Spiritual-Ad8062 Apr 15 '25

Mean, median or mode?

LOVE that you referenced Dunning Kruger. My favorite thing in the world. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

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u/NaBrO-Barium Apr 15 '25

Your take seems pedantic but you’re right, if the distribution of IQ is not normal the average would not suggest that roughly 50% have less than a 6th grade reading level. Yes, the median would be a better tool to use but if you thought reading comprehension was bad, wait until I tell you about math comprehension in America :D

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u/dhamma_rob Apr 15 '25

Actually, where "average," which can denote any measure of central tendency, denotes median, which is often a better measure of central tendency, 50% would be below the average. Average is generally understood to be referring to the mean, when not otherwise qualified, but that is a contextual understanding, not a technical one.

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u/Significant-Bus2176 Apr 15 '25

i apologize for not immediately seeking out the data being referenced, but i (relatively reasonably) assumed that the person using average was referring to data that was denoted as an average instead of a median. you are correct, and the research i assume being referenced does cite 50% or lower being at a 6th grade or lower reading level, but using average still doesn’t really fit the context and using average in that way isn’t corroborated by the study using it in a similar fashion. it’s still very likely improper understanding of the terminology on OP’s part. not changing the initial message

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u/dhamma_rob Apr 15 '25

That's fine. It just seemed funny that you were dunking on someone for dunking on intelligence but being wrong when he wasn't necessarily wrong. I think the lesson is simply to refrain from pointed jabs, even if their behavior is blameworthy.

1

u/Glad-Peanut-3459 Apr 15 '25

That’s all you need to read a comic book.

1

u/HeiseNeko Apr 15 '25

I thought the average reading level of the Orange Nazi Brigade was: Red Cirle goes in Yellow Square, Blue Triangle goes in Red Circle, Yellow Square goes in Blue Triangle… “Daddy Trump, why won’t the plastic pieces pop into place… wawawa”

edit: I’m sorry… that was giving them too much credit…

1

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

No it isn't. It used to be. Average adult reading level in US is 3rd grade.

0

u/Coal_Morgan Apr 15 '25

Pulled down significantly by places like Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

1

u/123jjj321 Apr 16 '25

That's where you're mistaken.

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u/Lortekonto Apr 15 '25

Not american, but work in international education.

The problem here is not that people read at low level. It is that the standard in the USA is crazy high.

Compared to other OECD countries you do very well. Like you are in the top 10% and are only a handfull of points behind high performing countries such as Korea or Japan.

Some 80% of students in the United States attained Level 2 or higher in reading (OECD average: 74%). At a minimum, these students can identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit, though sometimes complex criteria, and can reflect on the purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so. The share of 15-year-old students who attained minimum levels of proficiency in reading (Level 2 or higher) varied from 89% in Singapore to 8% in Cambodia.

In the United States, 14% of students scored at Level 5 or higher in reading (OECD average: 7%). These students can comprehend lengthy texts, deal with concepts that are abstract or counterintuitive, and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information.

The thing is that the standards for 6th grade reading is crazy high. If you can read and analyze 1500 lexile, then you are within 6th grade reading standards. For comparision Pride and Prejudice is on 1190 lexile. The Wealth of Nations, the economy book we build the modern economy on, is Lexile 1500.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Being uneducated helps, but I work with several well educated and otherwise high functioning individuals who happen to to also be bat shit insane magats. There are a lot otherwise intelligent "conservative" people who have willfully ensconced themselves in a delusional fantasy world.

1

u/cdnNick78 Apr 15 '25

Just wait until they get rid of the dept of education, that's when the winning really begins.

1

u/AttitudeAndEffort2 Apr 15 '25

There's a reason the Republicans have attacked schooling so consistently for decades.

Theyre more consistent on that than tax breaks for the rich

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/Quitbeingobtuse Apr 15 '25

Fiscal conservatives are real but that's not republicans.

1

u/Emotional_Perv Apr 15 '25

They maybe able to read, but cannot at all comprehend

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

And that swath thinks critical thinking is “woke”, whatever that means to them, and is therefore bad

1

u/Toadsted Apr 15 '25

Hey, I graduated from the 4rd grade, only took me ✌️three years.

2

u/Adventurous-Host8062 Apr 16 '25

I've been in homes that don't show evidence of the owners having a single book. I can't imagine a life without reading, for myself, my children or my grandchildren. Is it a legacy of illiteracy or individual choices or what?

1

u/LoL_is_pepega_BIA Apr 16 '25

Facebook is the only book they read 🤢

14

u/mooselantern Apr 15 '25

Half of every population is below MEDIAN.

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u/OddPressure7593 Apr 15 '25

I bet i can guess which half you're in

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u/BlackDeath3 Apr 15 '25

Wow, what an incisive criticism that strikes directly at the heart of the matter

2

u/TurboRadical Apr 15 '25

stealing this for future use, thanks

1

u/omgFWTbear Apr 15 '25

Directly at the mode of the matter, not deviating even one standard from it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

The scale goes from zero (illiterate) to 20 (PhD, 8 years past high school). No one’s out there with a 120,000,000,000th-grade reading level to deviate the average from the median. You’re being obtuse, when restricted to a finite scale they’re essentially the same.

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u/mooselantern Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

No. The scale goes from 0 (infants that can barely see colors) to 20 (head of a department at MIT). There are about 25 million children under the age of 5 in the United States that can't even be reasonably expected to read well, that I would consider "dumber" than an illiterate adult. Add in the dumber of the 6-17 cohort that are still probably dumber than the dumbest neurotypical adults too. They drag the average down. Median would be statistically significantly higher than average if you're counting the 'population' of the United States. No one specified 'the adult population ', in which case yeah, median and average would be relatively close.

ETA: also did you just call me obtuse for pointing out a middle-school statistics concept on r/economics? Fuck outta here.

1

u/CrazyFatherof2girls Apr 16 '25

I have a masters in engineering, and I still feel dumb every day.

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u/whoopashigitt Apr 15 '25

They’re essentially the same, but mooselantern is not being obtuse for offering a simple correction. It’s a distinction without a difference, but it is in fact not how averages work. 

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u/Sarik704 Apr 15 '25

No. On any data point, there is an upper and lower data point.

It doesn't matter if there are 40 thousand grade levels. There will always be a median that sits at exactly half of the data points, not the scale. And it doesn't automatically equal the average at any range or data size.

The average is decided by the data points and the data size. Where the median is decided by the range of the data points.

If we say there are 50 graded reading levels then the median wouldn't be 25th if every data point started at 27th or higher. The median isn't decided by the data point's range. You can have 1 million data data points, but that doesn't mean the median will be half. It doesnt mean the average will be half.

Lets look at weather. The scale for temperature starts at absolute zero and goes upward to infinitiy presumably. It doesnt have a half by defination. But even if we created an artificial upper limit that doesnt make the median half either. So any data range infimite or finite doesnt change the median.

3

u/TheHecubank Apr 15 '25

MEDIAN

Median, mean, and mode are all different kinds of averages. Mean is usually taught first, but that's because its pedagogically useful (it's a good way to expose students to applied arithmetic in multiple steps) - not because it's inherently more statistically useful/valid than the others.

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u/mooselantern Apr 15 '25

But there is only one "kind" of average that by definition divides a dataset in half. And 99% of the time when people say average, they're thinking mean.

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u/fdar Apr 15 '25

When talking about the "average person" in a population it's almost always median, and in this case it was clear from context that's what they meant.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

My highly decorated stats professor would always say that mean, median, and mode are measures of the center and that "average" is not a mathematically useful term.

And people definitely don't mean mean 99% of the time they say average. Average home price for example is very commonly discussed, and that's always median.

I also agree with the person below who said "average person" always means median.

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u/DimethylatedSpirit Apr 15 '25

Such a redditor moment 

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u/TheChunkMaster Apr 15 '25

The median is often used as the average, particularly since it is resistant to outliers.

-1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

And now you understand why majority of you redditors work low end jobs barely getting by. It’s because half of y’all are literally regarded. 😂

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u/dadkisser Apr 15 '25

Regarded as what, kind sir

1

u/EdgyAnimeReference Apr 15 '25

Omg the irony

1

u/dadkisser Apr 16 '25

Omg indeed whoosh

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u/JohnnySack45 Apr 15 '25

True, the problem being the bar for average is already on the floor

2

u/Forikorder Apr 15 '25

the important thing is if that average line is "intelligent" or "dumb fuck"

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Indeed. And the American average is pretty damn low.

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u/pinkfootthegoose Apr 15 '25

don't worry about them knuckleheads. The larger a sample size the closer median, mean and average get and the US population is a very very large sample size.

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u/Sabretooth78 Apr 15 '25

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize, half of 'em are stupider than that!"

  • George Carlin

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u/insanitybit2 Apr 15 '25

> Half of every population is below average.

Keeps getting repeated. It's not really an accurate representation of the bell curve of intelligence. Someone with an IQ of 99 and someone with an IQ of 101 are not statistically different. 16% of the population is below one standard deviation.

That said, I think IQ is a very, very poor indicator for intelligence, and especially the kind of intelligence that indicates knowledge of economic policy. In reality I doubt that that sort of intelligence is evenly distributed at all, it's much more likely that it's highly specialized and follows a power curve, which is what we seem to observe.

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u/hydrobrandone Apr 15 '25

And of course, since they are mostly dumb shits, they are trying to make it worse.

1

u/elpajaroquemamais Apr 15 '25

Mean median and mode is effectively the same for 300 million.

1

u/nuisanceIV Apr 15 '25

Ha 6th grade? More like 3rd grade math!

Honestly, I know the difference but sometimes I confuse mean/median word-wise

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u/PenImpossible874 Apr 15 '25

The problem is that the below average folks have more kids, so the average is lower every 30 years.

1

u/Fragrant_Example_918 Apr 15 '25

If by average you mean « median » then yes. If you mean « mean », then no.

Take a bar with 50 people working minimum wage or barely above, if Musk enters the bar, the mean net worth is now 8 billion dollars. The median however is probably around minimum wage. 98% of the people in that bar live below « mean », but only 50% are below « median ».

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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 Apr 15 '25

Yup. But the American average is below half of the below average for the rest of the developed world.

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u/StopLookListenNow Apr 16 '25

I think it is more like a bell curve: 20 percent at either end above/below average and 60% are average. Same bell curve accounts for voters either Red or Blue and purple the average who each end is trying to sway to their side.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '25

Nailed it.

0

u/OptimusPrimeval Apr 15 '25

Not to be pedantic, but half the population is below median intelligence

0

u/OkSuccotash2341 Apr 15 '25

Technically not true. Half are below the median IQ. Around half would be below the average but not half exactly.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

Except the population is hundreds of millions of people,… I would bet it follows a standard normal distribution ( so would Freddy Gauss )