Citizens’ Ambivalence about Political Involvement

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A review of Stealth Democracy:
Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work
(Authors: John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse)

It’s commonly assumed that greater political participation is desirable, but it appears that is not what many voters want. All that many of them want is to not be played for suckers by self-serving politicians and special interests.

I learned about this book in a 2016 Atlantic article by Jonathan Rauch. It’s not a new book , but I think it’s an important one. I’m not sure I can improve on Rauch’s summary, so:

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A Sense of Proportion about Inequality in the World

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A review of The Haves and the Have-Nots:
A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality
(Authors: Branko Milanovic)

The issue of inequality has been pushed to the forefront in recent years. Partly, perhaps, due to Thomas Piketty’s surprise 2013 bestseller, but more definitely due to the growing general awareness of statistics about wealth and stagnating wages.

It is such a horribly complex topic though. It’s not just finding agreement on the facts; it’s also about our societal goals, and the assumptions, and the scope of analysis. Hard to know where to start. Somewhat arbitrarily, here are a couple interesting, current points of reference:

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Systematic Voter Biases about Economics

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A review of The Myth of the Rational Voter:
Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
(Authors: Bryan Caplan)

In his critique of democracy, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan asserts that voters are worse than ignorant – they are irrational, and vote accordingly. His focus, unsurprisingly, is on economics:

The reason why I emphasize economics is that it is at the heart of most modern policy disputes. Regulation, taxes, subsidies—they all hinge on beliefs about how policy affects economic outcomes. The modal respondent in the National Election Studies ranks economic issues as “the most important problem” in most election years. In fact, if you classify “social welfare” issues like welfare, the environment, and health care as economic, then economic issues were “the most important problem” in every election year from 1972 to 2000. Biased beliefs about economics make democracy worse at what it does most.

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