Empirically testable right-wing beliefs

[Master of Ossus]

That was the point I was trying to make. Since crime is not a simple behavior, we cannot just look at regions with different punishment schemes and try to draw conclusion from them, as the causation of the crime may be different across different regions. So the only way to test for deterrent effect would either be to find two groups of incredibly similar peoples with different punishment schemes (highly unlikely) or figure out a way to empirically test the psychological effect of deterrence on the motivations to commit crime (again unlikely).

Bullshit. We can do before/after studies, for example, since laws are not fixed across jurisdictions and time. If, hypothetically, a state changed a law and saw crime skyrocket or plummet, and then other states passed similar laws with the same effect, that would be very strong evidence that the law was influencing crime rates in some way.

This is why it is very hard to test empirically whether or not punishment deters crime. We cannot establish a control nor can we find a testable mechanism from which to infer results.

Just because causation can be difficult to measure does not mean that we should jump to critiquing the theoretical underpinnings of its proponents or detractors and form a conclusion based on that. Moreover, if you can identify other factors that affect the crime rate, it's very easy to correct for those in underlying data. It might be hard to identify all factors that affect crime besides punishment, but that doesn't mean you can't get some of the big ones and then evaluate how much of the remaining variance in crime rate is explained by differences in punishment, or likelihood to be caught, as captured in your model.

So we really cannot say that it is a right-wing claim that is testable, it seems to be a matter of principal.

It's not. There have been lots and lots of studies on the correlation between punishment and crime. The elasticity of crime with respect to punishment is something on the order of -.10, for both felonies and misdemeanors, according to the body of literature that I've read about the subject.

[Dark Hellion]

Since MoO is much better read in this subject than me I will concede.

[K. A. Pital]

The size of state bureaucracy is something I know rapidly changed in the 1990s-2000s in Russia, with an inverse correlation: increasing state bureaucracy by number of state officials on payroll whilst at the same time increasing freedoms such as freedom of association and speech. I'll dig up the relevant figures and see what other nations have on that as well.

[Surlethe]

We ought to have some measure of "size of government". Number of officials in bureaucracy? Inlays as percentage of GDP?

[Edi]

We ought to have some measure of "size of government". Number of officials in bureaucracy? Inlays as percentage of GDP?

Government work outsourced to private contractors? In the US that is currently at nearly three quarters of government as per the article linked in this thread.

[Ariphaos]

Most small businesses and some larger ones are sole proprietorships, where the income of the business and the income of the owner are one and the same. Frequently most growth in the owner's income goes into growing the business. (While no doubt we've all heard of extravagant waste by some celebrities, often higher incomes gained by business founders correspond to personal consumption becoming a lesser fraction of the total; after all, nobody personally eats millions of dollars of food, for instance).

The matter is influenced by many forms of borrowing. Yet, fundamentally, the possible growth rate of a business is determined by its gain in revenue minus past expenses minus taxes, in other words by its aftertax profit, even if the motivation of the business owner was just as high either way. The business owner can't just count future new hirings of employees as a past expense to deduct from taxes for the past quarter, and, if he or she ends up with much more physical assets, those go into the calculation of taxable profit.

While all sorts of benefits are a royal pain being on the lower tier of the self employed, since business expenses are not counted against income, they are counted against -taxable- income, and the primary incentive is to grow your business, rather than giving yourself a pat on the back, and you can pay a lot less taxes than most people doing so. Which, I think, is just how it should be.

[Ted C]

Actually the point of "we don't negotiate with terrorists" is that if you don't give into their demands you make terrorism less rewarding and people stop doing it. As you can imagine this only really works for situations like terrorists who make demands while holding hostages.

Yeah, I always interpreted that policy as "we won't give them what they want", not "we won't communicate with them".

As I understand it, the US government paid ransoms to get hostages released for years, which supposedly increased the rate of hostage-taking incidents. I think with the Iran hostage crisis, they finally said they weren't going to reward terrorists for their actions any more, which lead to the "no negotiation" policy.

[Bellator]

"Abstinence-only sex education reduces teen sexual activity, thus reducing teen pregnancy": if this is true, we should expect to see reduced rates of teen sexual activity in areas which use abstinence-only sex education. One would also expect to see reduced rates of teen pregnancy.

Not 100% the same, but wasn't there a study in Britain that resulted in a dramatic increase in teenage pregnancies when they were being taught about safe sex and condom use? Quite surprising. I'll try to look up the details on that...

[Surlethe]

Some more right-wing beliefs:
"Free trade increases total wealth in both trading partners": If this is true, we should see a jumps in wealth whenever nations unilaterally or multilaterally move to lift trade restrictions. (N.B.: this is often accompanied by a belief that the wealth redistribution that accompanies free trade is a good thing as long as it increases total wealth, but that is a belief and not an empirically testable fact.)

"Free or loose restrictions on gun ownership lead to a decrease in crime": This is pretty straightforward - those areas with fewer restrictions on gun ownership should, all else equal, have less crime than areas with more restrictions. One might also test the oft-accompanying claim that "More guns lead to a safer society" by checking whether those areas with higher gun ownership rates have lower violent crime rates.

[Mayabird]

"Abstinence-only sex education reduces teen sexual activity, thus reducing teen pregnancy": if this is true, we should expect to see reduced rates of teen sexual activity in areas which use abstinence-only sex education. One would also expect to see reduced rates of teen pregnancy.

Not 100% the same, but wasn't there a study in Britain that resulted in a dramatic increase in teenage pregnancies when they were being taught about safe sex and condom use? Quite surprising. I'll try to look up the details on that...

The studies have been posted here before. Abstinence-only sex ed somehow increases teen sexual activity while greatly decreasing their use of contraception, since they don't just say, "Sex is bad," but actively put down all forms of contraception (did you know that sperm can swim right through condoms? Thus condoms don't work at all!) as part of their brainwashing scheme. So you see increased rates of teen pregnancy and STD transmission from abstinence-only sex ed as compared to places that don't totally suck actually teach their kids facts. It's been seen in country by country comparisons and comparisons between states in the U.S. and school districts.