The chart is simple (maybe too simple) to understand.
The horizontal axis is your view on the economy, whether you're a left wing, right wing or centrist. In leveragedbuyout's words, right winger believes in "economic freedom (e.g. less government interference, corporations should be relatively free to pursue profits where they like)." I would add that they believe individuals/corporations should be free to pursue profits in anyway they want and for any reason they want. The extreme right (off the richter scale right) means you believe in absolute economic freedom. Government should never have any control or influence on your business conduct. Of course, hardly anyone is this extreme, for example, most right wingers would agree that corporations should never be allowed to pursue profits from child exploitation. Finally, I would add that a lot of right wingers believe that society, as a whole, would be better off with their idea of economic freedom (although some may not care about the rest of society).
Now on to the other side of the horizontal scale, Left wingers do not believe that society would be better off if there exist economic freedom like what right wingers want. They believe that government should have control and influence on what and how corporations and individuals pursue their profits. The more left you are, the more government regulations you want.
Of course, there are leftwing individuals who want heavy government regulation but don't care about their society (N Korean leaders being the prime case). Different left wingers have their own reason. Most are left wingers because they believe that there should be an objective reason why and how profits are pursued. It should only be pursued for the betterment of humanity, not for whatever reasons an individual or corporation want. Most left wingers also believe that there are a large segment of society who are unfortunate, for example some are not as intellectually gifted as others (e.g. not everyone can be as astute as Warren Buffet no matter how hard they work), not athletically gifted as some others (e. g. not everyone can be as good as Usain Bolt no matter how hard they train), and some are just purely unlucky to be born at the wrong place at the wrong time. Left wingers believe that this segment of society would be at a great disadvantage if there are too much economic freedom. Most disadvantaged people would never reach the level of prosperity that some others would reach, no matter how hard they work.
Furthermore, some left wingers question the moral nature of mankind and doubt that these better off segment of society would help the less fortunate segment. On the contrary, they argue most would exploit them. (Then the debate would be whether governments and leaders can be relied on to be "good" and help the disadvantaged or just let economic freedom flourish and let the results decide).
That's basically the horizontal axis. The vertical axis shows your view on how, and to what extent the government should have control on society. Extreme top means extreme Authoritarian and extreme bottom means extreme freedom from government interference and influence. But there are different types of government control and regulation. The scale regarding government control on the economic sector is already covered by the horizontal axis (left-right wing). There can also be government control/freedom in the education sector, media and entertainment sector, health sector, religious sector, cultural and moral sector, etc. The test was too simple because they grouped all this together to be represented by a single vertical axis.
what?
