I've been recently accused of being a partisan hack in the comments section by an anonymous troll (and here):
I noticed some followers actually seem to have to apologize to you for even considering a GOP view. Am I the only one who challenges your opinions? Do your politics follow you into the classroom? I hope you realize that if less than 2% of those that voted for Obama would have voted for Mitt, Mitt would have won the popular vote. Point being this country remains pretty evenly split. I hope you present a fair and balanced classroom.
via www.env-econ.net
This criticism stings since I try my best to be objective and politicians on both the right and left tend to ignored the efficiencies of incentive-based environmental policy (albeit, for different reasons). That said, politicians on the right tend to be more critical of nonmarket valuation.
However, I do vote a certain way and some of that might creep into my posts. Considering the political bias of the entire blog, I'm a little left and Tim is a little right (we even did a test to confirm it). But, amazingly we seem to come to the same conclusions about environmental and natural resource policy. I would claim that we have a neoclassical economic bias at this blog instead of a political bias.
I would also admit that, having worked in the UNC system for 25 years and with two kids in public schools, I have a pro-education bias. When the NC state government cuts funding to schools I tend to find that to be a bad decision because it hurts my income and hurts my kids. But I don't think that criticism of policitians who ignore the consensus of climate science and social science (public finance) is necessarily political. Is it?
Now, to address the comment:
- Please point me to an example of someone apologizing for even considering the GOP view and I'll be more inclined to look inward.
- Are you the only one? No, we used to have a lot more criticism.
- Do my politics follow me into the classroom? I don't think so. I once asked my my students if they thought that I was Republican or Democrat. There was no consensus. I think this is because belief in economic theory tends to make one more politically conservative (for lack of a better term). For example, I know a number of political liberals (for lack of a better term) who prefer the earned income tax credit to the minimum wage as a policy to help low earners.
- Al Gore won the popular vote. If he had become President we would have likely signed the Kyoto Protocol and adopted a bunch of command and control environmental policies. Hoo boy! Imagine how we would have been criticized by anonymous trolls for being partisan hacks.
- Thank you for your concern for my students.