Yesterday (November 6), someone told me that my
county supervisor, Jim “Luigi” Schmidt, voted against restoring some budget
cuts for human services because Tosans, unlike people in other districts, only
care about no new taxes.
I contacted Luigi, who clarified the misperception and his
position. People in his district, he said, will accept some tax increases for
good reasons—just not as many as the majority of supervisors were willing to
vote for. Thee percent is one thing. More than that is another. His moderate
position reflects this understanding of the will of his constituents.
He also told me that most of the
people he hears from are the no-tax-increasers, not people like me whose bottom
line is investing in people, services, and infrastructure to strengthen
communities for the long-run.
I’m not sure the supervisors who
voted to restore more cuts were voting at the behest of their constituents. A
number of them will be punished for doing “the right thing” for the county, as
well as for voting for pay increases for themselves.
Those who knew the risk and took it
anyway may be heroes, and they may be out of jobs.
In The
Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, author Bryan
Caplan says that it’s not special interests that keep us from developing good
economic policies. It’s the voters’ misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and
biases that lead us to elect (and re-elect) politicians who create the bad
policies we demand.
This raises so many questions.
- What kind of society do we want?
- Do most Tosans prefer no tax increases over anything
else?
- How rational and well-informed are our preferences? Do
they get us what we really want? How do we know? How do we decide what’s
most important when we have a menu of important things?
- When people see the same thing so differently, who is
right?
- What kind of voters are we?
