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Getting Economists to Vote

The Freakonomics guys summed it up well:

"... voting exacts a cost -- in time, effort, lost productivity -- with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your 'civic duty.' As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, 'A rational individual should abstain from voting.'"
-excerpt from a New York Times article

This is unsettling, because many people consider the economic policies of candidates to be of the utmost importance. (According to the Chosun Ilbo article written on May 4th, 2017, polls revealed that economic growth policy was the most important factor of the 2017 Korean elections, at a rate of 28.5%. Policies regarding job creation came in second place, at 18.8%.) What to do, when the people who allegedly know the most about the economy take no part in shaping it?

Surely, this major problem is difficult to remove without hurting democracy. Perhaps, then, hurting democracy is the best way to solve this problem.

Political disagreements can be divided into two classes. The first class of disagreements regard the economy, and are best answered by the educated. These questions can often be answered objectively. They include:
  • How much should be devoted to R&D? Which companies, universities, startups, or research institutes deserve these funds?
  • What is the most efficient tax rate? Tariffs?
  • Is it fine to use price ceilings and price floors?
  • How many people should be employed by the government?
The other class of questions regard everything else. Questions like "Should drugs be legal?", "Should THAAD be deployed?", or even questions that have to do with dividing the economic pie and have no objective answer, such as "How much should the super rich get taxed?" all belong in this class of questions. These debates should be settled by majority rule.

But when dealing with questions about the economy, only the learned should get to vote. This would drastically reduce the number of potential voters, thus getting each economist's vote to count significantly more. Candidates, in turn, will focus more on societal and international issues, and simply follow the economic policies recommended by the majority of the degree holding community. Democracy gets hurt, but the economy will flourish.

Comments

  1. Hajong LeeMay 13, 2017 at 11:47 AM

    I went to vote but told everyone our votes will never count and the winner is always decided before any of our votes, special thanks to Freakonomics guys. Did you vote? ^^ You should've.

    ReplyDelete

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