which group of people would you say understand economics better?

I was going to vote for the first group because it has Adam Smith, but they I saw that it had Ayn Rand, and since I don't have the mindset of a selfish teenager, I voted against her.

I voted for the first one since the second had Karl Marx. >_>

Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx are the "big three" in economics.

Ben Bernanke?

Marx, Engels, and John Maynard Keynes were buffoons who have caused untold damage to the world.

Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher. I am not very familiar with Leroux.

The rest were actual economists who made real contributions to our understanding of economic theory. Your grouping of them seems arbitrary.

How did they cause untold damage to the world?

By perpetuating economic fallacies which various governments used as justification for their horrible policies. JM Keynes is probably the man with the singe most influence on the economic policies of today's world and his entire General Theory was debunked line-by-line by a man named Henry Hazlitt in his "Failure of the New Economics" decades ago. Keynesian economics is pure bunk.

Marx and Engels were both shredded by Ludwig von Mises over 75 years ago in his masterpiece, "Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis". Marxism isn't even economics, it's a self-contradictory social theory that can only result in misery when implemented.

I don't like either group.....

"We have proceeded from the presuppositions of political economy"-Karl Marx. In other words, he began by analyzing classical economics, not by simply coming up with his own theory as so many believe. He actually spent a great deal of time in the British Museum reading the original texts of people like Ricardo and Smith. In fact, it's more of a fallacy to group Ricardo and Smith together with Hayek and Friedman against Marx and Engels. Marx, Ricardo, and Smith all derived their economic theories from the labor theory of value, whereas neo-classical economics dismisses it outright.

Lawl, Austrian school.

I prefer neither groups.

My dear fellow, that would be the rich.

Why the **** is Ayn Rand on the first list? I mean, disregarding the various disagreements between the other people in the list, she wasn't even an economist, and clearly her books demonstrate that economics as a study wasn't of interest to her whatsoever. Like, otherwise, the first list is pretty handily better.

There are a lot of great economists listed there, and then there's Ayn Rand.

I would say the top but then you put Ayn Rand in it. Because of that I think the second has a slight edge.

List is odd

The first group excluding Ayn Rand has contributed far more to the field of economics than the bottom list, which is half made out of communists and is therefore disqualified.

Not quite sure why Ayn Rand is listed.

That's probably the point.

Marx, easily.

lot of subjective babble there, commander.

not a single quote from your Austrian idols; just "man a is better than man b"

John Stuart Mill grouped with Karl Marx? :?

What is this some sort of learning thread? I'm out!

Then you guys must of hated economics class in school.

Ayn Rand

A more interesting question would be the same question with the choice of answers:

A. The Rich

B. The Middleclass

C. The Poor

I would suspect that it would be group A. Econs majors earn significantly higher wages than the general population and their income growth rates over the course of their career life are relatively fast compared to those of other majors. So you'd have a disproportionately large number of economists in the upper class.

@Barbariser: Financial well-being has nothing to do with understanding something. If anything, it just means they're more adept at gaming the system to their benefit at the expense of others which has been proven thanks to the 2008 crash that we've never managed to crawl out from yet. I expect another crash considering virtually nothing is being done to prevent it from happening again.

I don't understand how this is even remotely a refutation of what I said.

ayn rand LOL

The day OT voted Ayn Rand as having a better understanding of something than someone else... I think this place is finally ready.