Rational Voters

Interesting New Yorker article on voting, or rather a book review of an economist's view of American voters. Not surprisingly he says voters should be required to take econ courses.

Of course voting would be an irrational exercise even if everyone had economics expertise and every vote mattered in the statistical sense. The reviewer points out that "many policy decisions don’t have an optimal answer. They involve values that are deeply contested: when life begins, whether liberty is more important than equality, how racial integration is best achieved (and what would count as genuine integration)."

The point I would add to the reviewer's counterpoints to the book is that the desirability of more productivity is easier in the abstract to dismiss. In real life it has huge consequences less to the middle class and rich so much as to the poor. The better off can afford to be more sanguine about sacrificing a point here or two of GNP while not recognizing the onerous effects on the poor, who suffer economic downturns more harshly than anyone else. (But here I skate on very thin ice; good economic growth also tends to obsolete the cheaper products that would be very helpful to the poor, such as small, fuel efficient cars and affordable housing.)

Update: Terrence Berres quotes Arthur Lupia. I agree that a voter can fail to name the Chief Justice and that certainly doesn't make him a "bad voter". You can use "voter shortcuts". The only problem is sometimes those shortcuts are based on bad information, like not being aware that there's a link between taxation and economic growth. It's one thing to decide to sacrifice the latter, it's another to think there's a free lunch.