The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
My New The Hill Article on How Trump and Harris Cater to Political Ignorance
Both propose awful economic policies that appeal to public ignorance.
Today, The Hill published my article entitled "Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are Preying on Political Ignorance." Here's an excerpt:
There are many differences between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. But one crucial similarity is that both have proposed terrible economic policies that have political appeal because of widespread voter ignorance.
Trump has proposed both large-scale tariff increases and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Harris' plans include price controls and rent controls. All would cause great harm if enacted, but candidates advocate them because much of the public doesn't understand the damage such policies bring with them.
Such misunderstandings are part of a broader problem of widespread voter ignorance about government and public policy….
Trump has proposed a 10 percent tariff on virtually all imported goods. This would predictably increase prices on a wide range of products, costing the average American family roughly $1,700 per year. The economic damage will increase if foreign governments retaliate against American exports, as they likely would. In addition, because many American industries rely on imported inputs, tariffs often destroy jobs and cause shortages…..
The harmful effects of tariffs are the subject of a broad cross-ideological consensus among economists. Yet tariffs often get support from voters if presented as a way to save American jobs….
Trump's mass deportation plans would cause similar harm. Undocumented immigrants are important contributors to many sectors of the economy. Mass deportation would predictably create disruption, increase prices and cause shortages. Deportations also destroy more American jobs than they create… Such effects would be exacerbated by Trump's plans to massively cut legal immigration, as well…
As with free trade, there is broad agreement among economists on the beneficial economic effects of immigration. But many voters don't understand that…
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has tried to assuage voter concerns about high prices by promising to impose price controls to prevent "price gouging" in grocery sales. She has also endorsed President Biden's plan to limit many housing rent increases to no more than 5 percent per year…
Price controls have a long history of causing shortages, including in the U.S. during the 1970s. When government artificially restricts prices, producers have less incentive to increase supplies in response to increasing demand. The same is true of rent control, which numerous studies consistently show exacerbates housing shortages.
Economists across the political spectrum agree here, too. Jason Furman, chair of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, notes that "[r]ent control has been about as disgraced as any economic policy." Nonetheless, polls indicate that both rent control and price controls more generally are often popular with voters. That is partly because a majority of the public wrongly believes that high prices are caused by "corporate greed…."
Extensive support for these terrible policies is part of a broader pattern of widespread political ignorance. Decades' worth of data show that most voters know very little about government and public policy. For example, surveys show only about one-third to a half of Americans can even name the three branches of government.
Political ignorance is perfectly rational for most voters. If your only reason for following politics is to be a better voter, that turns out to not be much of an incentive at all, because there is so little chance that your vote will actually make a difference to the outcome of an election (about 1 in 60 million in a presidential race)….
The danger of ignorance isn't just that it leads voters to choose the "wrong" candidate. It's that it incentivizes both parties to promote harmful policies that cater to ignorance. Not all bad policies are caused by ignorance, but voter ignorance does facilitate some terrible policies that a better-informed electorate would reject.
The last part of the article briefly describes some possible ways to mitigate the negative effects of public ignorance, a subject I address in much more detail in a recent academic paper on "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Solutions to the Problem of Political Ignorance," and in my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter.
I previously wrote about how public ignorance is impacting the 2024 election here.
