The Myth of the Rational Voter

I started writing this review of the first edition of Bryan Caplan's book and never finished it.

The late comedian Jerry Clower used to tell a story about an old man who attended a small rural church. The man didn't attend as often as he should have, but he heard that the church was going to vote on buying a chandelier and that concerned him greatly. He went that Sunday, and the pastor said he and the deacons recommended the church buy a chandelier and asked if anyone had any comments before they voted.
The old man stood up and addressed the church, telling them it was a bad idea.
"First of all, ain't nobody here knows how to play one of those things. Second, if we are going to spend that much money, we really ought to do something about the lights."
That story reflects the reality of democracy.
Studies have shown many American voters to be badly uninformed or misinformed, not only about the issues of the day, but about the basic structure of their government, an ignorance revealed by numerous surveys and polls.
"About half of all Americans do not know that each state has two senators, and three quarters do not know the length of their terms," writes George Mason university economist Bryan Caplan.
Caplan's new book "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies" lays out just how uninformed many voters are.
Just a couple of examples: Over half cannot name their congressman, and an even lower percentage cannot name his or her party affiliation.
But don't feel bad. We are no more ignorant than our ancestors. Since the birth of polling decades ago, surveys have shown voters have a low level of knowledge about political issues.
And "international comparisons reveal Americans' overall political knowledge to be no more than moderately below average," Caplan notes.
Using polling data, Caplan shows that a large number of voters suffer from four biases that lead them in the wrong direction on policy matters.
They have an antimarket bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits of a free market.
They also have an anti-foreign bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits or over estimate the costs of dealing economically with foreigners.
The fear about Japanese investment in the United States is a perfect example of this. Caplan notes that during the period when polls showed the greatest concern about Japanese companies buying up America, British investment in the United States by at least 50 percent every year, and there was no outcry over the Brits buying everything.
Voters also suffer from a make-work bias, a tendency to overestimate the costs of job losses.
The fourth and final bias is a pessimistic bias, a tendency to overestimate the severity of current economic problems and underestimate the future performance of the economy.
"This pessimistic bias is a general-interest prop to political demagoguery of all kinds. It creates a presumption that matters, left uncontrolled, are spiraling to destruction, and that something has to be done, no matter how costly or ultimately counterproductive to wealth or freedom. This mind-set plays a role in almost every modern political controversy, from downsizing to immigration to global warming," Caplan wrote in an article for Reason magazine.
Again, none of these four biases are unique to 21st-century American. In all times and in all places, a significant number of people have distrusted foreigners and, believed the world was going to hell even in the times of greatest peace and prosperity.
If voters views on economic matters are so out of skew with reality, how can we get them, and the people they elect, to make the write decisions?
In an ideal world, having read Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" and Julian Simon's "The Ultimate Resource" would be a requirement for voting.
But we don't live in that world.
Caplan notes that better-educated voters tend to be more knowledgeable about economic matters. He also notes that until 1949, Great Britain allowed graduates of its top universities and business owners to vote multiple times.
"Since more educated voters think more like economists, there is much to be said for such weighting schemes. I leave it to the reader to decide whether 1948 Britain counts as a democracy," he writes.
Perhaps a less controversial proposal is one he says was suggested by psychologist Steven Pinker. That calls for schools to change their curricula to help students uncover and overcome their biases. In this plan, statistics, economics and evolutionary biology would have a much larger place, while other subjects would be cut.
It certainly couldn't hurt.