Bryan Caplan’s “Idea Trap” as a key to understanding the election
In The Myth of the Rational Voter Caplan observed that two main factors make people think more like economists: education and income growth. Education is hard to change quickly, but income can. Based on this, he proposed that the following dynamic between ideas and economic conditions may be at work: (a) Virtuous cycle of growth: When income increases, people’s ideas about the economy are, for some reason, better, which, in turn, leads them to favor good policies, which, when adopted, lead to further…
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