Man, it’s such a shame I didn’t get a chance to read this article until after the polls closed last night…
A man named Greg Mankiw wrote an article for Fortune magazine that ended up getting pulled, but he published it himself online. In it, he states,
Sometimes, the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home … If you really don’t know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision.
In response, Ezra Klein has a great rebuttal in the American Prospect:
This makes a superficial sort of sense if you assume a commonality of interests between educated and uneducated, poor and rich, black and white, etc. And, to some degree, there certainly is such a commonality. But not on everything. If you receive expansive health care benefits with very little cost-sharing from your employer, for instance, your immediate interests are different from a low-wage, uninsured worker. A system that advantages them will require greater buy-in from you. If you’re the owner of a profitable retail outlet with very low labor costs, you don’t want a sharp raise in the minimum wage. If you’re the low labor cost in question, you do.
So yeah… if you want the Cliff Notes, here it is: if you can vote, you should vote. Don’t trust others to make the right vote for you!
Actually, I think they’re both great arguments. IMHO, Mankiw is making a point that a lot of people are voting just for the sake of voting — they don’t do their homework before they go to the polls. For example, many still judge a candidate by his/her party affiliation and/or religious creed. Mankiw’s statement seems more like a burn to the apathetic or just plain stupid. “you shouldn’t count if you’re uninformed”. that seems more like a burn to me than anything else. haha. and in a way, humorous.
The rebuttal is great though. There could potentially be a lot of common ground between the two.
I could be wrong, but I’ll give them both the benefit of doubt since they have such established web blogs and articles. Gosh Dinh. You are such a political nut. I love it. =p