Please don't read this post as any indication of my beliefs regarding the President or politics, but rather as a question about an experiment in economics:
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
I'm skeptical already. 1) An anonymous economics professor, and 2) Obama's socialism? I can't imagine a class of college students uniting and declaring the President a socialist. Crap, I can't even get them to agree on what made-up food item to use as an example.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
Obama's plan is strict communism? Either 1) This is made up or, 2) This is a really bad economics professor.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little..
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
This where I want to see if this really happened? In my intro classes I spend significant time trying to explain the trade-offs between equity and efficiency. Between the size of the pie and how it's divided. The incentives involved in different pie-cutting policies. One way I illustrate the point is I offer the students a chance to vote on how we will divide grades for the next exam. Option 1: Everyone gets their own grade based on their own performance, Option 2: Everyone gets the average grade in the class. I then open the floor for discussion. The discussion is always fun, and invariably someone always points out that there is less incentive to try under option 2 so the average grade is likely to be lower. The vote has never been close. Option 1 is always chosen. So I'm curious as to whether the experimental results in the Facebook post actually hold.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.
The beauty of tenure?
