what students really think

Bryan Caplan over at the Library of Economics and Liberty has some clever applications of Kahnemann's ideas to economic matters, as illustrated by the way non-economists and first-year undergrads (might) approach tricky economic questions (using a simple rule-of-thumb translation):

Target Question	Heuristic Question
Does the minimum wage help low-skill workers?	Would I be happy if employers gave low-skilled workers a raise?
What policies will make Americans richer?	What policies try to hurt people I don't like?
Do anti-firing laws help workers in the long-run?	Is it bad to be fired?
How much will Obamacare improve Americans' health per dollar spent?	How bad do I feel when I think about sick people without insurance?
What is the most efficient level of tax progressivity?	How much do I admire/envy the rich?

Needless to say, economists could argue at length about which substitutions students make when we confront them with challenging questions.  Better yet, we could try to empirically - even experimentally - triangulate their substitutions.  Whatever the specifics, though, substitution is a plausible explanation of not only the absurdity of many popular views about how the economy works, but people's certainty about these absurdities.