Both right and left have standard stories explaining how selfish voters often prevent the government from adopting good policies. The right-wing story – made famous by Mitt Romney’s much-derided “47 percent” speech last year – is that voters become dependent on government transfer programs and then support those programs despite the harm they cause to […]
Archive | Democracy and Political Ignorance
Sports Stadium Corporate Welfare Continues in Detroit
By Ilya Somin on July 26, 2013 3:38 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Choice, Sports and Games
Despite the having filed for bankruptcy, Detroit is going ahead with plans to spend over $400 million in public funds on a new hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings [HT: Josh Blackman]: Detroit’s financial crisis hasn’t derailed the city’s plans to spend more than $400 million in Michigan taxpayer funds on a new hockey […]
Political Ignorance in Congress
By Ilya Somin on July 17, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
David Boaz has an interesting post discussing Jonathan Martin’s Wall Street Journal review of veteran Washington Post journalist Robert Kaiser’s recent book Act of Congress. Martin explains how Kaiser shows that most members of Congress are ignorant about much of the important legislation they vote on: Congress is dominated by intellectual lightweights who are chiefly […]
Political Ignorance in Britain
By Ilya Somin on July 10, 2013 11:10 am in Democracy, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute has an interesting post analyzing recent survey data on widespread political ignorance in Britain [HT: Nigel Ashford]: The public is ignorant about politics and lacks even the basic facts that it would need to make sound judgments about political issues. A new poll by Ipsos-MORI shows just how […]
Public Ignorance about Obamacare Revisited
By Ilya Somin on June 21, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Health Care, Insurance Exchanges, Obama, Political Ignorance
The recent Kaiser poll on health care linked by co-blogger Jonathan Adler reveals more evidence of public ignorance about Obamacare. Most notably, 45% of respondents say they have heard “nothing” about the health care reform law’s insurance exchanges, and 34% say they have heard “only a little.” This despite the fact that the exchanges are […]
The Ongoing Saga of the Private Property Rights Protection Act
By Ilya Somin on June 17, 2013 1:10 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Private Property Rights Protection Act, which would prevent local governments that engage in Kelo-style economic development takings from receiving federal economic development funds. As I explained in a post last year (which explains the bill in more detail), this legislation has been kicking around Congress since 2005. […]
Political Ignorance and Partisan Bias Go Down When Survey Respondents Are Rewarded for Correct Answers
By Ilya Somin on June 5, 2013 6:24 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Many studies show that there is widespread political ignorance, with large percentages of the public ignorant of fairly basic facts. In addition, voters’ perception of the facts is often heavily influenced by partisan bias. For example, Republicans overestimate the rates of inflation and unemployment when there is a Democratic president, while Democrats have the opposite […]
Public Ignorance About How Government Policy Works
By Ilya Somin on June 4, 2013 7:02 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Growth of Government, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
NPR reports on an interesting recent article by psychologist Phil Fernbach and his coauthors, which finds that public ignorance about the details of policy has an important impact on voters’ political views: Should the United States impose unilateral sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program? Should we raise the retirement age for Social Security? Should […]
Penalties for Underperforming Politicians
By Ilya Somin on May 29, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Politics, Public Choice
Law professor Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) has an interesting column in USA Today advocating that we increase penalties for politicians who do a poor job in office: As scandals explode across Washington… one thing that I’ve noticed is that the people involved don’t seem to suffer much…. Government officials are happy making and executing plans […]