Freakonomics Radio - 18. Freakonomics FAQ, No. 1

Episode Date: January 19, 2011

Levitt and Dubner field questions from the public and hold forth on everything from dating strategies and rock-and-roll accordion music to whether different nations have different economic identities. Oh, and also: is it worthwhile to vote?

What kind of questions do you think we're going to get here? You think they're going to be like life advice, stock advice, or more like, you know, boxers or briefs kind of questions? Frequently Asked Questions from Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. I am Stephen Dubner here with my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt. Now, Levitt, this is the first time we're doing this. It's called Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions that the readers of our Freakonomics blog and people who listen to this podcast have sent in.

What kind of questions do you think we're going to get here? I think they're going to be a mix of economic questions that we have no way to answer, like is the stock market going to go up and down or when's the recession going to end? Mostly what people want us to do is to figure out puzzles, and that's good because that's the only thing we actually are any good at. All right, so you got some coffee there? You got your muffin? You ready to go?

I got some water. Hi, my name's Tom. I'm calling from Boston. I'm a big fan of the books. My question is, I was wondering if you or others have looked at different economic groups or people and see if they have economic personalities and if these fit in with existing stereotypes. And what I mean by that is, like, are Americans enthusiastic go-getters that bounce back from things? Are Germans reserved pragmatists? Who are the romantics,

the gamblers, the cynics? Can you see this at an economic level? That's my question. Keep up the great work, guys. Bye. So that's a pretty neat question. Do you have any answers to it? Well, I know less about nationalities and whether there are different personalities, but I will tell you one thing which I have seen overwhelmingly, and that is that exposure to traumatic macroeconomic events forever scars people. And I think anyone who's known someone who lived through the Great Depression absolutely changed that generation in a couple of ways. Number one, it just made them very cautious and very likely to save. It also is ironically, the Great Depression was an incredible instigator

to the field of economics, not just because of the trauma and the need to study it, but it turned out that some of the most brilliant people in the world, having lived through the Great Depression, decided that that's what they should devote their life to, studying economics. So the cohort that was a child in the Great Depression turned out to be this unbelievable cohort of economists, far greater than any cohort since. I think there's been a real decline in the quality of the kind of people who go into economics, precisely because there hasn't been the sort of traumatic economic event that leads the greatest people

to go do it. Now, one other thing that might be worth saying, the question asked about economic identities, but I'm always hesitant to attribute differences, say, across countries to the people who inhabit those countries as opposed to the incentives and the institutions that exist. That's a good point. Yeah. So, for instance, you think about a place like Spain, which is – Italy, which is very high unemployment.

And you might say, well, that's because people are lazy. Or you might say it's because they're incredibly high replacement rates so that if you become unemployed, you're paid almost as much as if you work. Or they have rules in place so that if it's impossible to fire people, then it turns out that employers don't want to hire a lot of people either because they know that the costs of hiring become much, much higher. So I think if you take some Germans and you bring them to the US and you let a couple of generations pass, their kids look a whole lot like Americans that have been here forever. So I think there's probably less

that's different about people and more that's different about places. Here's a question from a reader named QZ. He or she asks, what is the one piece of advice you would give to all of us in our 20s entering this post-2008 economy? So the one piece of advice

I always give to my students and high school kids, basically anyone who's just getting started, is I give them a two-pronged piece of advice. First, I tell them, find something to do in life that you love, that there's no substitute for finding a career that you think is fun, that you want to get up in the morning and there's nothing else you'd rather do than whatever career you pursue. But the second piece of advice I always give them is make sure that whatever you love doing is something that other people don't love to do. The worst thing in the world is to find some kind of job that everybody wants to do, like be a rock star. Steven, you've tried to be a rock star. It's hard work. Being a movie star,

you have to find something that is idiosyncratically something that you love, whereas everyone else despises it. So if your dream is to be a garbage man, for instance, you're guaranteed to have success in life because very few people will share that dream. To a certain extent, being an economist has a little bit of that flavor. There aren't many kids who sit around dreaming of being economists. And so I think that in that regard, I was very lucky to find something that I loved and that no one else really loved the way that I did. All right. So, Levitt, here's one that's near to your heart. This is actually something we've written about, part of this question at least. Reader named Max writes, does voting involve some self-deception that your one vote makes a difference, especially when the race isn't even close.

Nobody in their right mind votes because they think they're going to affect the outcome of an election. If you look over the last hundred years of, say, elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, I think there's been maybe one election that was decided by votes. And in the modern era, elections that are closer are always decided by the courts. There's always litigation. Look at what happened with Bush against Gore. So that there's really in no meaningful way can you say that your vote will ever decide an election. The reasons for voting have to be something very different. if you go do it. It makes you feel like a proud American, but never should anyone delude themselves into thinking that the vote they cast will ever decide an election. Now, here's part two of the voting question. Do you ever feel like voting is not worth the hassle and that the time, this is the part that particularly interests me, that the time spent researching the issues to make an informed decision could be better spent on just about anything else that benefits you or your community? Because I think that honestly about like why people consume a lot

of media. Well, maybe you seem smarter around your friends if you can talk about the issues in the newspaper. Again, it's not like any of us, most of us can have any effect on what goes on in the world around us. But being knowledgeable, we can teach our kids things. You know, but not everyone, I think, reads hard and learns a lot about the issues because the studies that have looked at, say, the order they put the names on the ballot show that if your name is on the ballot first, you get a lot more votes than second, which suggests that it's not all careful appraisal of the issues. And I also quiz my students. I ask my students, my college students, who their representative is in the U.S. House of Representatives. And basically nobody knows. Nobody knows who their representative is. I actually don't even know

who my representative is in the House of Representatives for sure. The last thing I know for sure is that when I lived in Cambridge and Somerville in Massachusetts for a long time, and the thing that struck me, I did actually vote a few times when I was there, although I'm not a big voter. And the thing that struck me was that there were always about 14 Kennedys on the ballot. And one time I actually went to the trouble to figure out how many of them were actually part of the Kennedy family. And as far as I know, only two out of the 12 or the 14 were actually Kennedys. It's just that everyone who's got the name Kennedy in Massachusetts thinks that they can run for election because who knows? They might be a Kennedy. We might as well vote for them. They're

a Kennedy. Now, did any of these Kennedys change their name to Kennedy or did you not find that out? Great question. Certainly, that would be the logical next step. Just about anything you would do with your time would be more productive than voting. I mean certainly you could actually change something. You could say pick up trash along the street or you could volunteer. I think when the alternative is voting and voting has in my view essentially zero value to the community, more or less anything you do that isn't destructive would be a good alternative. So we should have national don't get out the vote day if Levitt were running the world. Don't spend any time voting and take your time that you're spending thinking about voting and

all the media bandwidth that's consumed with shouting about voting and just actually do something more productive. Well, I think that's going too far because it's not that we don't want anyone to vote because we need somebody to vote because, you know, we like democracy. We like elections. It's just that we don't need everybody to vote. Look, when they do the Gallup poll to try and figure out who's going to win the election, they only have to ask about a thousand people to have a pretty good idea who's going to win the election. So if we had just, you know, a few thousand carefully chosen people voting, we could get a lot of the same benefit we get from having 50 or 100 million people voting. And the rest of the people could pick up trash. And that would probably make our country a better place.

So people are always complaining about the low voter turnout rate in this country, somewhere around 50, 55%, let's say, for a presidential election. Do you think that's low? Well, it depends how you look at it. Economists would predict that almost nobody would vote. So in that regard, 50% is quite high. On the other hand, compared to some other countries, especially the countries where they more or less mandate that you vote, it's pretty low. But I think ultimately it comes down to if you're worried about the people who do show up, and you might say, well, geez, the people who show up are the ones who have the lowest value on their time and the ones who don't understand that voting can have no benefit. So maybe they're not the smartest ones who are going on voting.

Then you might worry about low voter turnout because you didn't like the composition of who votes. But other than that, I think that one of the joys of a democracy is that people get to make their own choices. And one of the choices they get to make is whether or not they think it's worth voting. Coming up, a question about my sordid past as a rock and roll accordionist. Plus, Levitt gives some priceless Freakonomics dating advice. And the easiest question we'll ever get. Who's smarter, Levitt or me? From American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. So Jenny Dilworth writes, I just want to know if Stephen still plays the accordion.

Stephen, you ever play the accordion? I used to play a lot of accordion in my little rock band, but the short answer is no. I don't really play that much music anymore, which is a great sadness because I was in this band and it was great fun and I kind of went cold turkey. I still do have the accordion. I'm pretty sure it is the only accordion in the world that is fitted with heavy duty automobile safety belts as the straps to actually hold it on because one of the other guys in my band, Jeffrey Foster, Jeffrey's dad had a store in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that

was a hunting, fishing, auto muffler and reupholstery store. And he – my accordion was – my straps were falling apart. So he reupholstered it with safety belts, which was great. How important was the accordion to your band's success? So I was the guy who played a bunch of different instruments. So I grew up playing piano. And then in college, I saw these guys would sit around at parties playing acoustic guitar really badly. And I couldn't play guitar.

And these guys would be surrounded by girls. I thought, my God, if you can play guitar that badly and be surrounded by girls, I should learn to play guitar because I'm already a musician. So I did. So then I played some guitar. And then I played some accordion and some lap steel. So we were kind of like – I liked all those sounds that the Rolling Stones had on Exile on Main Street and that the band and Bob Dylan had. So like very noisy guitars mixed with jacked-up acoustic instruments. And so the accordion is a good acoustic instrument to jack up because it's an awesome instrument.

Did you find the accordion had the magical effect instrument to jack up because it's an awesome instrument. Did you find the accordion had the magical effect on women that the acoustic guitar had? It had exactly the opposite effect on women that the acoustic guitar had. What about the older polka set? I think you probably could have made some headway there. Well, it's interesting. I tell you, the accordion makes you look kind of brawny or know, like you have shoulders, which I don't really have many shoulders. I mean, I have two shoulders, but they're narrow.

But you look like you're really – you look like a linebacker when you're wearing an accordion. So my advice to young people out there would be to take up an unusual musical instrument because, you know, if you can get in with the bassoon or the accordion or the French horn even, you're going to just really dominate your space is my feeling. All right. So a reader named Nick writes – this is a question I think you're going to love. He writes, I'm a young gay man. I'm no supermodel but I'm attractive enough. He did not send a picture. I have a great future career ahead of me. I'm currently in a top law school on scholarship and I want to pursue a job in public service or

nonprofit management. My friends think I'm funny, kind, and interesting, if perhaps not as humble as you might be. So why can't I get a date? So I have no idea why Nick cannot get a date, but I will tell you this. As I look back on my life, one of the greatest regrets I have is that I spent my youth thinking that I could get a date when I never could get a date. And if I only had perfect foresight, I would have realized that if you can actually have some success in life, then you can get dates once you have success. So this fellow Nick, he says he's on a once you have success. So this fellow, Nick, he says he's on a track to be successful. He's not yet successful, but will be successful.

My advice would be, while you're waiting to be successful, spend your time, invest your time in becoming successful and worry about dates once you are successful, because it'd be so much easier to get dates once you achieve success. You're good. Now, see, that was some practical advice. I think that was worth something. Well, that was drawn from my own personal experience. My only good practical advice is the experience of my own mistakes. A reader named Andrew writes, who is smarter, Levitt or Dubner? Now, I am smart enough to know the answer to that.

But, Levitt, I'm going to let you take it. Well, I think smart has many dimensions. And, Dubner, you are – so if we had an IQ test, I don't know. Oh, you would dust me an IQ test. IQ maybe. I mean, people don't know this, but when I met Dubner, he knew nothing about economics. But he really started to think about economics a lot, work on it. And I would say you're now an honorary economist.

I mean, when we get together with economists, you say smart things. People treat you like you're a real member of the club. So I don't know. I think... Look, I don't mean to downgrade my... I am of above average intelligence. I'm going to say that. But you're fairlyimately smart. That does it. Our first installment of Frequently Asked Questions. I hope you'll agree that it was fairly legitimately worth your time. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions.

There were way more than we could get to, this time at least. Freakonomics Radio is a co-production of WNYC, American Public Media, and Dubnew Productions. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and you will get the next episode in your sleep. You can find more audio at FreakonomicsRadio.com. And as always, if you want to read more about the hidden side of everything, please visit our blog at Freakonomics.com.