andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1097 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: After quoting from a speech where a Republican presidential candidate praises the space program, Mark Palko writes : I [Palko] don’t know what the reaction of the crowd was (the reporting wasn’t that detailed) but I’d imagine it was friendly. You can usually get a warm response from a Republican crowd by coming out in favor of manned space exploration which is, when you think about, strange as hell. If you set out to genetically engineer a program that libertarians ought to object to, you’d probably come up with something like the manned space program. A massive government initiative, tremendously expensive, with no real role for individual initiative. Compared to infrastructure projects the benefits to business are limited. . . . There have been efforts in libertarian-leaning organs (The Wall Street Journal, Reason, John Tierney’s NYT columns) trying to argue that interplanetary exploration can be done on the cheap. These usually rely heavily on the blatant low-balling of Robert
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1 After quoting from a speech where a Republican presidential candidate praises the space program, Mark Palko writes : I [Palko] don’t know what the reaction of the crowd was (the reporting wasn’t that detailed) but I’d imagine it was friendly. [sent-1, score-0.574]
2 You can usually get a warm response from a Republican crowd by coming out in favor of manned space exploration which is, when you think about, strange as hell. [sent-2, score-0.869]
3 If you set out to genetically engineer a program that libertarians ought to object to, you’d probably come up with something like the manned space program. [sent-3, score-0.946]
4 There have been efforts in libertarian-leaning organs (The Wall Street Journal, Reason, John Tierney’s NYT columns) trying to argue that interplanetary exploration can be done on the cheap. [sent-9, score-0.155]
5 but even if we were to accept these numbers, it’s still difficult to reconcile this kind of government program with libertarian values. [sent-13, score-0.639]
6 Do conservative libertarian Republicans actually support the space program? [sent-15, score-0.884]
7 Is support for the space program stronger among this group than among liberals and Democrats? [sent-17, score-1.039]
8 Do you think the space program has brought enough benefits to this country to justify its costs, or don’t you think so? [sent-23, score-0.748]
9 60% of respondents think that funding for the space program should be increased or kept at the current level, and “58% of Americans say NASA is doing an excellent (13%) or good (45%) job. [sent-25, score-0.764]
10 ” Gallup reports that, paradoxically (but, unfortunately, unsurprisingly), “The high point in support for current or larger funding levels for NASA was 76% in January 1986, immediately after the space shuttle Challenger disaster. [sent-26, score-0.65]
11 ” The space program is more popular among younger people and among college graduates. [sent-27, score-1.023]
12 We use National Election Study data to examine the correlations among many different issues, including space exploration, in my paper with Delia . [sent-29, score-0.689]
13 The correlation between attitudes on “federal spending on space” with party identification or political ideology is about 0. [sent-30, score-0.476]
14 (Just to calibrate, attitudes toward defense spending question is correlated at about 0. [sent-32, score-0.187]
15 So, support for the space program does not seem particularly associated with conservative or Republican positions. [sent-35, score-0.873]
16 (It would require further analysis to examine correlation with economically libertarian attitudes but I expect that if someone did the work, he or she would find a low correlation there as well. [sent-36, score-0.63]
17 High-tech space exploration, like high-tech military, high-tech nuclear power, high-tech agriculture, and high-tech education, does seem popular among conservative libertarian writers (not just John Tierney, but he’s as good an example as any). [sent-38, score-1.092]
18 We are opposed to: government spending, Kennedy kids, seat-belt laws, being a pussy about nuclear power, busing our children anywhere other than Yale, trailer courts near our vacation homes, Gary Hart, all tiny Third World countries that don’t have banking secrecy laws, aerobics, the U. [sent-47, score-0.301]
19 And the space program has a strong military connection. [sent-56, score-0.94]
20 And this fits in with a libertarian attitude, to the extent that it is focused on the international expansion of capitalism, and to the extent that military contractors are seen as having the virtues attributed to private business. [sent-58, score-0.528]
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