How Voter Shortsightedness Skews Elections

sciencehabit writes "'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?' Ronald Reagan's famous question in the U.S. presidential election of 1980 is generally a good yardstick for picking a candidate, or at least for judging a leader's economic policies. But few voters follow it. Instead, they are swayed by economic swings in the months leading up to the election, often ignoring the larger trends. Why are we so shortsighted? A psychological study of voting behavior suggests an answer and points to a simple fix. ... Healy and Lenz challenged their subjects to evaluate hypothetical governments based on slightly varying information. For example, some received information expressed as yearly income while others received the same information expressed as a yearly growth rate. The same information in a plot of steadily increasing average personal income over 3 years—$32,400, $33,100, $33,800—can also be expressed as a steadily decreasing rate of growth—3%, 2.3%, 2.1%. That did the trick. Just changing the units of the data was enough to cure voter fickleness. When economic trends were expressed as yearly income rather than rates of change, the subjects made accurate judgments. But if the same information was expressed as a change over time—the bias reappeared."

Comments

Most voters are stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 10

Re:Most voters are stupid

[Mr. Slippery]

The American population is essentially either taking welfare or working for the Gubment.

That's the Fox News view of the world, sure. In actual reality, American workers are more productive, yet thanks to conservative economic policies have been losing income (measured in constant dollars) since the Reagan era. The number of people employed by the federal government is lower than it was in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. The number state or local government employees per capita grew a little from 1980 to 2008, almost entirely because of more teachers being hired, but declined from 2008 to 2011.

So, in reality, Americans are working more productively, getting paid less, and fewer of them are working for the government.

But keep the American voter ignorant and angry, and they'll re-elect you, even as you fsck them over.

Not quite that

[damn_registrars]

It's not

are you better off now than you were 4 years ago

that drives my selection. The matter for me is closer to

• which candidate on the ballot will harm you the least

Re:Not quite that

[khasim]

And bringing it back to TFA, people (in general) are bad at using math to figure out which option is (least damaging / most advantageous) for them.

Re:Not quite that

[ackthpt]

It's not

are you better off now than you were 4 years ago

that drives my selection. The matter for me is closer to

• which candidate on the ballot will harm you the least

Pretty much sums up my voting. I look for whomever I figure is most qualified - this doesn't mean is qualified , but that hedges toward someone who might actually have some idea what the F they are doing, rather than being an utter tool and electing candidates based upon Hot Button (sucker) issues, like guns, abortion, creeping socialism, etc.

Re:Not quite that

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The data they provided is not enough to decide most advantageous. For that, you need TWO numbers in the graph- average cost of living and average wages. Either one alone isn't enough- both political parties know that, so both political parties concentrate on only one number.

Rate of growth kind of tries to measure average cost of living, but the relationship to wages and actual cost of living is too complex for the average voter.

Re:Not quite that

[ackthpt]

One thing which increases inefficiency in the system is wild swings from one extreme to the the other. A path of moderation gets more lasting things done.

Re:Not quite that

[AlphaWolf_HK]

In the end you're still voting for a candidate that will harm you. Further, the more people who vote for them the more their office is legitimized.

This current president is a huge joke, but he's very much legitimate because people voted for him, even if they don't like him.

Honestly I'm not even bothering with the elections anymore. It's pretty much just a new form of strange entertainment, similar to most people's interest in the sex offender registries.

I think a more meaningful ballot is probably the one that comes around now and then where you vote for whether or not the Trix rabbit can finally have some of his much sought after kids cereal. At least in that ballot, people actually are honest with themselves about their voting choice.

Re:Not quite that

[allaunjsiIverfox2]

In the US, there is no choice.

You have choices, and some of them are third parties. You (and people like you) just choose to make your own prophecies become a reality. Even if they don't win, it's better than voting for evil, and it can send a message to the main parties.

Thanks for voting for the candidates that continue to infringe upon our rights, though. I'm sure things will change for the better.

Re:Not quite that

[Rockoon]

He hasn't enacted a single "liberal" action or policy that didn't have corporate backing.

..because "corporate backing" rules out "liberal," right?

Oh, no it doesn't. You have conflated your hate of corporations with your hate of conservatives. Consider that whole ACA thing. While we call it "Obamacare" it was spearheaded by Pelosi and Reid, not Obama. So now you are basically claiming that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the entire Democrat majorities of both House and Senate when the ACA was passed were "top 5 conservative."

Clearly you have dived into the depths of complete partisan ridiculousness.

Things like the ACA aka "Obamacare" is exactly what the NOT CONSERVATIVES do when they have an iron grip on Capital Hill.

Re:Not quite that

[damn_registrars]

In the US, there is no choice.

You have choices, and some of them are third parties. You (and people like you) just choose to make your own prophecies become a reality

We have had presidents from only two parties for more than 150 years. One thing they have done an exquisite job of over those years is preventing anyone from any other party from being able to make a credible run at the white house.

However, even more significant is the fact that both parties have tacked hard to the right over the past several decades. Our current president comes from what is allegedly the "liberal" party yet he is further to the right than any president before him. Meanwhile the republicans are out in outer effin' space with their hard-right ideology. While this should make an opportunity for someone from the center or (gasp!) the left to rise to power, it really just leaves the lower economic classes with a choice of how badly they want to be screwed.

For me, the choice is pretty easy. The republicans want me to lose my job and then work at something else for pennies a day while they get rich. The democrats at best will allow me to continue in my chosen line of work, with no real hope for a meaningful chance at career advancement. A vote for a third party is a vote taken away from the democrats, which only improves my chance of ending up unemployed.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like what the democratic party has become. I just prefer it over the punishment the republicans have in mind for me.

Re:Not quite that

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Our current president is the most conservative president our country has ever had

Okay, I'm about as liberal as it gets, and I have to say this is a ridiculous statement. He's not even more conservative than his predecessor, to say nothing of serious conservatives like the unholy trinity of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan.

Re:Not quite that

[M. Baranczak]

Any economist making a chart like that would factor in inflation, which is basically the same thing as you're talking about. But the bigger problem is: "average earnings" is a meaningless number, since you're not dealing with a homogenous group. If Bill Gates gets a 50% pay raise, and 100 janitors get a 50% pay cut, then the average national income will rise. Understanding these things takes only basic math skills, but a lot of voters lack these skills, and the journalists can't be bothered to explain.

Re:Not quite that

[allaunjsiIverfox2]

Really? What lesson do they learn when they lose votes but retain power?

They're still fighting with the other party, and both 'sides' have third parties that align with their ideologies. Figure it out yourself. In the past, it did make an impact, and certainly more so than continuing to vote for evil every single time.

That is a rather immature (and pitifully black-and-white) description then you describe someone else as

It's not immature; it's simply the truth. You're either evil yourself, or stupid.

Someone else is not automatically evil just because you disagree with something they do.

But they are evil/stupid when they're voting for people who give us things like unfettered border searches, the TSA, the NSA, stop-and-frisk, constitution-free zones, the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan, free speech zones, warrantless wiretapping of any kind, draconian copyright/patent laws, and all the other things the two parties use to infringe upon our rights.

People who vote for evil don't have to be evil, I suppose; they could just be complete morons. Well, which one are you?

That kind of mentality has brought us to - and some times beyond - the brink of war on more than one occasion.

Criticizing people for their voting choices != wanting war. Nice try.

Re:Not quite that

[pagedout]

Why would we want them to get lasting things done? About the only thing that makes those that want to govern tolerable is that they are generally too stupid to get anything done. Nobody who wants to govern should ever be intrusted with any real power. The more they argue about worthless things they less they are able to hurt us.

Re:Not quite that

[ackthpt]

Why would we want them to get lasting things done? About the only thing that makes those that want to govern tolerable is that they are generally too stupid to get anything done. Nobody who wants to govern should ever be intrusted with any real power. The more they argue about worthless things they less they are able to hurt us.

It's amazing how many things we still have and depend upon from FDR's administration. I drive over some of the bridges built then on a regular basis. Parks, too, would be largely left barren if the next president was other than FDR and came in, scouring the legacy.

But these battles in the past couple decades are absurd - build some legislation, tear it out, build some legislation, gut it. Geez. How about both sides working to the betterment rather than this sort of garbage.

Re:Not quite that

[dryeo]

From the outside looking in the ACA looks pretty conservative. Forcing people to deal with corporations is the opposite of socialism and it is so funny to hear American conservatives going on about how it is socialist.
Its got the usual right wing authoritarian thing going of forcing you to give your money to big business. The left wing authoritarian thing would have been the government running it.
Remember that the it started out by being proposed by a right wing think tank and championed by Romney who is even more right wing then Obama.
Of course ideally would be non-authoritarian healthcare where right wing would be lots of competing small businesses and the left wing being lots of competing co-ops or at least local government.

Re:Not quite that

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I'm not a conservative so I don't speak for them, but I don't think conservatives are in favor of government sponsored monopolies or oligopolies, which is what this is. They sure made a lot of noise about how much they didn't want the ACA, that much is without a doubt.

As a libertarian, I believe pretty firmly that government sponsored monopolies are inherently bad, and I'm pretty sure that conservatives share the same view.

I can observe that, for example, Hollywood completely owns the democratic party. This is partly why copyright terms are now effectively unlimited (we just keep extending them every 20 years and there isn't any indication that this will stop) and likewise Obama completely bypassed the senate when he signed ACTA (which violates the constitution, by the way, the senate is supposed to ratify a treaty, not the president, rather the president either signs or vetoes it. When you read the letters that Hollywood unions and lobby groups signed to Obama, you can pretty clearly see why he rushed to ratify it by himself.)

Re:Not quite that

[Mr. Slippery]

..because "corporate backing" rules out "liberal," right?

Yes, pretty much. "Liberal" is supposed to imply at least a bit of leftism, and leftism mean policies that benefit ordinary working people instead of the aristocrats who control capital. Anything that benefits well-to-do stockholders at the expense of working people is a right-wing policy.

Things like the ACA aka "Obamacare" is exactly what the NOT CONSERVATIVES do when they have an iron grip on Capital Hill.

The ACA is modeled on "RomneyCare" and the idea of exchanges was pushed by the Heritage Foundation for years -- as early as 1989, in fact. It's fundamentally a right-wing plan that continues to fatten the wallets of insurance company stockholders and executives, does little to restrain corporations so massive that their profits -- not revenue, but profits -- are larger than some state budgets, maintains the fiction that a market approach is appropriate for health care, and does fskc-all to reign in the medical industry's practice of grossly overcharging people.

In short...

[ackthpt]

People are stupid and are unqualified to vote.

The downside of this, is if people didn't have the vote then very, very evil people would take control.

So think of it this way, we get some dumb leaders; we get some idiotic leaders; we get some bad legislation and we get some self defeating legislation, BUT we can turn around and push it out and replace it with something else.

Under an evil dictator we're stuck until the dictator dooms us with one of the classic blunders -- getting involved in a land war in Asia.

Re:In short...

[fnj]

if people didn't have the vote then very, very evil people would take control

People have the vote in most places, and very, very evil people have taken control widely anyway.

Before the objection, let me add this. I take this to mean, not that the vote does not matter, but that the vote alone is not enough. A good constitution (e.g., US) is a safeguard, but only if it is observed. The evil people who have seized control are in open defiance of the constitution (they are nothing if not reasonably clever in terms of preservation of their own power). That could be fought if the people themselves really believed in, and cared about, the constitution, but not enough of them do.

In the long run, the presumption is that a sufficiently energized minority of patriots championing liberty and right will rise up periodically against tyranny and refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants (and, concomitantly and sadly, of patriots).

What is needed is a correctional force that kicks in before things get to that stage. Theoretically the supreme court has much that as one of its functions, but since it has been coopted by the evil power structure, that is not working. I guess a >200 year run for the design set up in 1787 isn't all that bad. The first 100 years was on the whole exemplary; the second 100 years less so; likely the third 100 years will be the breakdown.

Only for swing voters

[ZahrGnosis]

Most voters stick with long-standing ideals that they think will work long-term -- most people will poll to the same party over and over. Only a small percentage of people that are willing to break with their party could be influenced this way (unless their party was doing something particularly silly near a vote). Swing voters matter, of course, but this article generalizes something that is not generally true.

Re:Only for swing voters

[steveg]

You're saying they flow very slowly?

Obligatory Pynchon

[srussia]

"'If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."

One of the flaws of democracy...

[nman64]

None of us is as dumb as all of us.

Re:Simple - A person can be smart, people are dumb

[JoshuaZ]

But that's exactly what this sort of thing shows is not the case! The data about cognitive biases is robust. This one is a variation of the framing effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology) and the data shows that even smart people as individuals don't do well on such tests. We are all as individuals subject to cognitive biases. What's even worse is that knowing about cognitive biases can even be counterproductive http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ because we are much more prone to see them in other people than in ourselves even though we're all subject to them.

Blame their sources for information!

[RocketRabbit]

The voters make decisions based on the information they are fed. Not the information they *GATHER* by and large, because that is an active process. Most people seem to tune in to the media outlets that favor their political leanings, which are driven by the corporate and special interests that own these media empires. Whether your corporation is Fox, MSNBC, or American Public Media, people are really being spoon-fed an official line that serves somebody else's self-interest, packaged in a way that makes them feel like this media empire puts its own self-interest below that of its audience.

Part of the problem is that news is a form of entertainment, and in the USA at least, news outlets are legally allowed to deliberately lie to you. Journalists are hypnotists, plain and simple, and if they do tell the truth it is because it happens to align with their employers' interests that day.

If people were given the tools to understand this game during their formative years, they might be more willing to take the time to independently research the issues they care about, but even this is a stretch. After a long day at the office, most folks want to just sort of zonk out and, tired and often filled with alcohol, the news is turned on and they absorb the day's "news" without a single functioning critical thought neuron in action.

If I were naive I would suggest some legislative fix to this but knowing how the legislative process works, and its typical results, this would almost inevitably lead to a much worse scenario than that which is being played out right now.

Re:Simple - A person can be smart, people are dumb

[Assmasher]

You're presuming that people usually vote and/or act as individuals. I would argue that they do not. There's clearly a herd mentality, especially when it comes to voting. Why else would so many people develop an 'us versus them' attitude instead of 'me versus them.'

Lie, Damned Lies, and Statistics...

[trims]

The fact that a large majority of voters make judgments on what happens in the immediate past (i.e. 3-4 months) prior to an election, rather than the entire term of office (2, 4, or 6 years for various US Congress/Presidents) is well documented, so no surprise here.

Much of that has to do with the difficulty virtually all people have distilling a complex, hugely multivariant problem, into easily understood metrics and views. That's not going to change, because even a super genius is going to only be able to accurately remember a half-dozen major points, while there may be as many as several DOZEN relevant metrics/issues that you probably can consider important.

The proposed solution in the paper is yet another form of a simplification and lie, NOT a real solution. The simple answer is that I see no indication that the claimed "yearly growth" rate is any more accurate than the absolute income. Do the grow rates take into account inflation? (I see no indication they do) What about changes in the job market over those years? What about overall economic indicators? I.e. if the average income managed to grow ANY over the period 2007-2009 (in the middle of the most severe recession in 80 years), then that a huge accomplishment vs say merely keeping up with inflation in 2003. The authors are merely substituting one questionably useful statistic with another (of the same dubious relevance).

Never trust someone selling you a simple numerical answer to a complex problem. Politicians and Statisticians are both extremely adept at contriving lots of meaning from simple numbers. There's a reason this post is titled the way it is.

-Erik

Flawed Question

[Tempest_2084]

I always thought the question "'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" was flawed. In my case the answer is Yes, I am better off than I was four years ago but it has nothing to do with the current president. In my case it was a lot of hard work, an advanced degree (which I paid for myself), and a lovely new wife that got me ahead over the last four years. We could have elected Donald Trump, Don King, or Kang and Kodos and I would more than likely be in the exact same position I am now.

Re:Flawed Question

[rasmusbr]

I always thought the question "'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" was flawed. In my case the answer is Yes, I am better off than I was four years ago but it has nothing to do with the current president. In my case it was a lot of hard work, an advanced degree (which I paid for myself), and a lovely new wife that got me ahead over the last four years. We could have elected Donald Trump, Don King, or Kang and Kodos and I would more than likely be in the exact same position I am now.

Statistically speaking that doesn't matter, because there are outliers both ways who are listening.

The problem is that if Reagan had been fair he would have said "Many of you are better off now than when I entered office mainly because that was early in this boom cycle, a cycle that I have little to no control over."

Scientific political decision-making America-style

[PopeRatzo]

I always vote for the candidate who has the nicest smile and mentions God the most.

dont blame the voters

[globaljustin]

the researchers themselves dont...from the abstract:

Voters, we find, actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth. However, since that characteristic is not readily available to them, voters inadvertently substitute election-year performance

blame the candidates and the news media...both are obviously not doing their jobs.

candidates, because...holy crap they're supposed to be *running* for office. they can't blame others for everything...they are responsible for how they present their case.

news media...obviously idiots. If you want to call people stupid, call ***NEWS PRODUCERS*** stupid fucking idiots. You can thrown in the TV company executives in there too. They have *no idea* what they are doing in regards to the 4th Estate & informing the populace.

I have to fault SoulSkill & all nerds here as well. Its a cop out to say "all people are idiots" as a solution or explanation to every problem. It's reductive and unworthy of our industry. Blaming the user by default *hurts our industry* because it alienates us from the users, and from our own work.

Systems need correction. Blaming the people the system is designed to serve when a feedback loop occurs is illogical!

Re:dont blame the voters

[Jane Q. Public]

"Don't blame people for their own shortsightedness and stupidity? I think I'll do just that."

Well, wait, though. If you are going to do that, at least blame them for the correct stupidity, rather than the wrong one.

It's difficult for many people to "do their own research" if the news is blathering untruths and misleadings all the time. People don't expect the news to lie... and it does, often enough that we should be concerned as a country.

So yes, people SHOULD do their own research. But 2 things are required before they will do that: (1) they must first be aware that what they were told (or misled to believe) is wrong, and (2) the correct information must be available.

I assert that condition (1) has all too often not been met.

Re:dont blame the voters

[sexconker]

dont blame the voters

Don't blame people for their own shortsightedness and stupidity? I think I'll do just that. They should be doing their own research to begin with.

You should be doing your on research as well. Looking things up online doesn't count. You're just reading someone else's research, or a reductive article based on yet another person's research. Until you're going out there and counting the pennies yourself, you're not really baking your own apple pie from scratch.

99.9999% of people have no choice but to be shortsighted and stupid when all the information presented to them is shortsighted, and stupid (spun, manipulated, or outright wrong). Saying they should have done their own research is about as salient a point as my telling you you should have grown your own trees for lumber after you bought a cord of wood that turned out to be rotted out.

Re:dont blame the voters

[Rockoon]

They should be doing their own research to begin with.

It is rational to put no effort in voting decisions on a national level because the effort and time required to be informed is much larger than the realized value of your vote. You are one of millions in all but some house races, and then there is that whole electoral college diminishing the value of your vote further.

What happened yesterday in House or Senate? How did it go? Open a newspaper, turn on the evening news, or cast your eyes on a cable news network, and its a rare day that they report on whats really going on in government. Its all "he said" and "she said", reporting only on whats spoon fed them in press releases and other coordinated information campaigns.

Record both FOX news and MSNBC for (the same) 24 hours and revue the news content. While the channels disagree in an opinionated way, they still report on the exact same set of stories. How can it be that they differ so little as to which stories to cover in a country and world as large as ours yet still be doing their job as a "press?" Clearly they arent what one traditionally thinks of as "press" in the phrase "free press."

Now, because there is no traditional free press left, it is a considerable effort to be an informed voter. Far more effort than being an informed voter is worth, so yes we can blame the fucking reporters for creating a voter tragedy of the commons.

Re:dont blame the voters

[allaunjsiIverfox2]

You should be doing your on research as well.

Everyone should. At the very least, they need to be looking at all available sources of information and comparing the data. If people just blindly believe everything, they're just stupid.

Saying they should have done their own research is about as salient a point

It's simply the correct answer. People have a choice, and they choose to remain ignorant, thereby proving that they're idiots.

Re:dont blame the voters

[stoborrobots]

It is irrational to remain ignorant if you care about principles.

Actually, as was pointed out, it's irrational to care about principles. Rationality dictates that your principles are actually worth far less than they cost.

At least do 5 minutes of fucking research.

And therein lies the rub - where? That 5 minutes of research has to be done somewhere... TV? Internet? Radio? Newspapers? The library?

If you go to Google, (or Bing), thanks to the filter bubble which knows that you lean Right, it sends you to Fox, where your 5 minutes of research tells you that the Right is all right. It knows that I lean Left, so it sends me to CNN which tells me that the Right is full of Tea Party derpers.

So how do I, an average voter, know where I should be doing my "5 minutes of fucking research"?

Re:dont blame the voters

[Smauler]

Calling people stupid does not solve the problem, which is that "stupid" people as you call them get to decide who runs the country.

I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here..

Re:dont blame the voters

[Opportunist]

The politicians lie, the media lie. The hallmark of democracy is that they tell different lies.

So watch out, for one of the first sign of a dictatorship coming is when their lies sync up.

Re:dont blame the voters

[Opportunist]

What choice do they have? There is no source of information that the average person can access that doesn't already blend information with opinion.

Re:dont blame the voters

[ultranova]

There is no source of information that the average person can access that doesn't already blend information with opinion.

There is no source of information that wouldn't be biased, since information is interpreted data and the process of interpretation is dependent on the interpreter and their model of the world. The best you can hope for is that the interpreter shares the model with the eventual recipient, so the message is intelligible.

The concepts relating to and methdods to deal with information are muddled and inefficient currently because these are only the first few decades of the Information Age. I suspect a better way to transfer information from viewpoint to viewpoint - and to deal with the probably inevitable losses of the process - will be to us what the concept of entropy was to Industrial Age. Damn I wish I'd studied more math :(...

Re:dont blame the voters

[Lord Lemur]

They pay people to research important things for them, lawyers on how to exploit the lay, accountants on how to cheat the state, PR folks on determine how the public will react to something. That 1% is an Industry for determining and ofuscating the truth.

Alexander Fraser Tytler Misquotation

[Poisonous Drool]

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Re:Are you earning more since Reagan was elected?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Most of the GINI coefficient increase since Reagan happened during the Clinton years - when the tech boom/information age started. Trickle down actually worked given the huge increase in median income experienced during the Reagan years. From 1981 to 1989 median income went from ~$45K to ~$50.5K, a solid 10% increase over 8 years. It's increased up to ~$52K since then, a paltry 3% over 25 years.

That's not it...

[Kjella]

The world is complex and ever changing, nobody can with any real confidence say what four years with the "other guy" would have been like even in retrospect. Across electrions it's almost hopeless, each president starts under completely different circumstances and the global economy, technology and science, it all changes rapidly.

It's mostly a belief in whether this administration did better or worse than the alternative(s?) and more often than not on ideology about what the "right thing" is. Could the financial recession been handled better? Would it been handled worse? Could it have been avoided in the first place? Those who lean towards left say there should have been more regulation because it's a failure of the free market. Those who lean right say the regulation and bailouts was the problem because they didn't let the free market work. Nobody can prove the other side wrong, it'd be so much easier if we ever got the true answers.

For example, it's easy to have money "right now" even for a country, just go deeper in debt. Taxes stay low, services stay high, none of those unpopular tax hikes or cutbacks. Until shit hits the fan to smaller or greater degrees, at least. All this really tells you is that you better have bread and circus the last months leading up to an election, somehow that wisdom seems ancient. You dump shit on future generations and future politicians that start with a shit economy, but as long as you can keep shoveling it in front of you it's better than dealing with it.

Re:Voters never really research people they vote f

[fnj]

when all you're given is a choice between Obama and Romney, what difference would it make?

That is a perverse and nonsensical suggestive / rhetorical question. From what anyone who was paying the slightest attention in 2008 knew, one was a statist extremist with zero management experience or talent and zero willingness to work with people having diverse political views, and the other an at least half hearted libertarian-conservative with well demonstrated management experience and talent, and demonstrated willingness to work with people having diverse political views.

The two alternatives may not encompass your, or anyone's ideals, but the choice most certainly makes a large difference.

An oversimplified line of thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

The question asked by Reagan represents a dangerously short-sighted mindset. For example, it is possible to temporarily boost economic activity by lowering taxes and interest rates and/or increasing spending, but this is not without its dangers. For example, much of the apparent prosperity of the Bush Jr. years was a result of a completely unsustainable real estate bubble. If you follow this through to its logical conclusion, you can see why budget deficits have been the rule with the economy lurching from one bubble to another.

Aside from this, Reagan and Thatcher were lucky in that the development of oilfields in the North Sea, Alaska and elsewhere helped bring about a large reduction in oil prices. This probably would have happened regardless of who was in office, but the economic boost from this made them look better than they would have otherwise.

Re:Are you earning more since Reagan was elected?

[crunchygranola]

Informative? Seriously?

LynnwoodRooster seems to have been betting that by stating a lie while providing a couple of links (that refute the lie) most people will assume that that the links actually support it.

If you follow the GINI link you will find that the both the pre-tax and after-tax GINI DID NOT INCREASE AT ALL during the Clinton years! The rise under Reagan went flat, then resumed its rise again under Bush.

Also actually look at that median HOUSEHOLD (not individual) curve LR links to. By the end of the Reagan-Bush era it was down to $48K (from 45.5K at the start), a far less impressive 5.5% over 12 years, and the whole reason for the rise was due to the second adult in the household going to work - since actual wages were flat.

Re:Why hasn't the /. beta project been canceled?

[Imrik]

Because if they didn't randomly send you there no one would use it.

Short-sighted and single issue voters

[oscrivellodds]

explain why our government is as non functional as it is. Politicians and their wealthy backers have been at the forefront of elevating stupidity and ignorance to virtues because stupid, ignorant people are easy to manipulate. Stupid, ignorant people focus on minor things that occur mainly in the short term (I am hungry- I eat, etc.) and on single issues for which politicians and the preachers who support them can use emotional appeals to to turn out the vote.

Re:Scientific political decision-making America-st

[PopeRatzo]

I used to vote based on the height of the candidate's hair, but now it's all about whether or not I would like to have a beer with the candidate.

For example, I wanted to have a beer with Mitt Romney's hair. Man has some beautiful hair. The kind of hair that you can believe in. Nice and straight. Not kinky or well, you know.... Mitt had American hair. Hair that knows how to sing "America the Beautiful" in the language that was born in America...English.

**still** dont blame the voters

[globaljustin]

People don't expect the news to lie

Then they're stupid.

Then where **do** they get their information?

Let's hear it. List it out. Explain an alternative.

I am open to what you have to say but I know that whatever you say will most likely have the government, a private corporation, and/or the 'news media' involved in how you obtain it in some way.

All 3 of those would get the standard trolling response on /. of, "...pssht...you trust X? your an idiot"

(X being govt, biz, or media)

So stop the nonstop counterpoint bullshit...save that for Nye/Ham...how would someone get reliable information, say, for Hurricane Sandy Relief efforts and if any corruption has turned up???

Hurricane Sandy accountability...how would i get that the 'non-idiot' way?

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[gIobaljustin]

Where should they get information? If you ask me, no one source is trustworthy; pretty much all of them will lie or tell half truths. I think it is therefore best to get your information from a combination of many sources and try to discern the truth on your own.

There are also websites dedicated to telling the public about politicians' voting records, among other things. Very useful, and certainly more so than listening to or watching any campaign promises or speeches.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[Opportunist]

Since it is virtually impossible to get unbiased news, do what I do: Listen to both sides. For example, concerning the Ukrainian protests, it's usually quite healthy to take a western news source and then compare it to reports from a Russian source. It's amazing how different the stories are.

In the end, in today's news, you're a bit like a judge sitting in a trial. You know that both sides somehow lie to you and it's your job to find out what really happened. Kinda sad that you're now supposed to do the job the reporter was originally tasked with.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[Opportunist]

That's not what I said.

Just like a judge can't make a fair (as in: impartial but right) judgement by simply meeting the two parties in middle ground (else I'll sue my neighbor for all he got and get half of his junk, a pretty sweet deal if I have no case at all), you can't simply mesh everything together and assume that the truth is by definition where the lies "cancel each other out".

But it gives you two point of view and then you, as an intelligent being with a halfway decent education (yes, I know, I expect a lot, but then again, I think someone who at least goes to the length of finding two conflicting sources has that intelligence in the first place or he would have been happy with a single source telling him "the truth") have to weigh them. You have to judge whose "story" is more credible, who you think tells you more of the truth, or maybe even all of it. Personally, I think the cases where one side told the unblemished truth and the other side nothing but propaganda lies are rather few.

But you're right, you can't simply dump them together and extract "the truth" out of it. You can only hope to learn it by doing the judging yourself, that's not an automated process. And yes, it will be biased.

But at least it will be your bias.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[Opportunist]

Erh... just noticed that got out a bit too strong. The problem I have with English is that there is no impersonal pronoun like "man" in German or "on" in French. Please read the "you" as an impersonal "you", not directed at you but used in the general, impersonal sense.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[denzacar]

The problem I have with English is that there is no impersonal pronoun like "man" in German or "on" in French.

One does not simply walk into Mordor.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[Lord Lemur]

They write better in our native tounge than we do in general , so you know.... there is that.

Re:**still** dont blame the voters

[bbsalem]

I'd say that increasingly everybody is lying to some extant. This has to do with fragmentation of all media and a lack of the means to hold the feet of the writer to the fire. This is why Internet web sites and social media like blogging, because blogging doesn't really allow for pointed dialogue between people who disagree, and it doesn't allow for conversations to split off and become different topics or threads.

Slashdot and Reddit do have these features, but most web sites and social media lack them, Even sites that claim to offer discussion or call themselves forums, and the blogs associated with traditional print media don't have the needed features. The USENET text-only newsgroups have the kind of tools that are needed, if some marketer or propagandist, same thing, makes an outlandish claim in a structured discussion that doesn't rely on textarea widgets alone, you can make a pointed reply, quote him, and hold his feet the the fire much more effectively than you can in any blog.

Google, who owns the USENET archive from 1985 to about 2004, knows the censoring power of blogs and that is why the way they have done Google Groups and Google+ reveals that they are evil. They do not want democratic processes to run on the Internet that entail debate and discussion and that is why the public discourse that involves people in thinking about the priorities in society is so poor. People were never taught how to think and discuss critically and the state of Internet media controlled by special interests is a major reason.

It is fairly easy to begin to undo this with NNTP sites that start off with small local heirarchies that begin small and grow. All that is needed is that they be set up as text only newsgroups and some decent web interface be writtien to do all the features of the old newsreader programs, even just redditt's software, but it is essential that the heirarchy be neutral, a topic heirarchy like the USENET but maybe not the one controlled by the commercial servers who get to charge so that they can allow for binary files. Don't allow binary files, illegal copies and porn; make it text only and for discussion and debate. The setting of topic by article topic and not allowing for topic drift is a big source of editorial control by website owners. Even here on Slashdot, topics don't get seen by anyone unless they are promoted to the headline. The USENET has a better more democratic approach by making the newsgroup hierarchy purely topical. I would like to see a resurrection of USENET style conversations separate from the NNTP commercial servers, like GIGAnews and with a far more powerful interface than Google Groups. Reddit has most of the pieces but lacks the neutral hierarchy; social media promotion doesn't really serve drawing people together who disagree and need to thrash out their differences. It is doing a huge disservice to democratic institutions by perpetuating the fragmentation.

big time false equivalence

[globaljustin]

I'm not sure I disagree overall, Rockoon, but this point is incorrect:

While the channels disagree in an opinionated way, they still report on the exact same set of stories.

Not at all true.

That's like comparing home-made preserves from your garden to those packets of jelly you get at the diner.

Like comparing a T-bone steak to a tofu-burger.

Like...

you get it...your problem is false equivalence. If you look at content, MSNBC and Fox News report on many stories that the other does not...in fact, they differ almost down the line **EXCEPT** on major national stories...even THEN...

ex: Bengazi Attack

That's just one example. The event has been covered drastically different and is a exemplar of how they differ predictably.

Also, Fox News is *not* a news channel. They do not do journalism. Fox News immitates journalism to sell advertismements, and markets itself to conservatives, so the fake news they purvey has a conservative slant...

but it's **fake journalism** with a slant...Fox News rarely reaches the standard of actual journalism

MSNBC has people like Rachel Maddow who actually report **news** in a professional journalistic presentation style & with the same rigor. Yes, it is somewhat slanted to a progressive (not 'left') standpoint...but it's actual journalism more often...much more often.

So both are slanted, one more than the other...and both report news....one much more often than the other.

bad comparison...Fox News shouldn't be mentioned in conversations about journalism!

Re:Are you earning more since Reagan was elected?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Taxes are not near all-time lows; please look at the per-capita Federal taxes, adjusted for inflation - you'll find today's collections are nearly twice that of 1950s and 1960s. Twice wouldn't be close to all-time lows.

As far as productivity, you are correct - it skyrocketed in the later 1980s and 1990s - precisely the time the GINI index started taking off. Why? Because it comes from a fundamental shift in what our economy does - it moved from manufacturing to information. Old money is slowly whittling away, new money is exploding in relatively few hands. Not because of anything evil, but because the early pioneers of the information age (Microsofts, Apples, Googles) are still getting going. Give it another 40 years and you'll see it settle down as those effects do, indeed, trickle down.