The good democratic news is that public economic policy closely corresponds to public economic opinion. The bad news is that the public is economically ignorant, so public economic policy is terrible. Bryan Kaplain explains in a two part article on EconLib, “Mises and Bastiat on How Democracy Goes Wrong” (part I, part II).
“Over 80% of respondents in 1996 either ‘favored’ or ‘strongly favored’ cuts in government spending, a clear strike against Bastiat and Mises [who teach that the status quo will be popular]. But making the question slightly more specific reveals that the majority opposes spending cuts on all of the biggest components of the budget, from Social Security and health care to national defense. A majority does intermittently favor cuts in space exploration and welfare. But opposition even to the latter is tenuous; government-funded job training is more than twice as popular as dropping recipients from the rolls and expecting them to find low-skill jobs. The only category of spending that the public invariably wants to cut is foreign aid—which amounts to about 1% of the federal budget! Thus, if you carried out all of the cuts the public is willing to tolerate, the size of government would barely change... The most plausible reading of this data is that the public wants a free lunch.”
“The Bastiat-Mises view of democracy is often accused of being ‘pessimistic.’ This is not only irrelevant; it is false. If special interests are in the driver’s seat of democracy, then economic education is in vain. Even if every voter understood economics perfectly, inefficient policy would endure. The Bastiat-Mises view, in contrast, makes economic education the key to a better world.”
The moral of the story? Support the Mises Institute! Economic education is crucial.
