I recently posed this question to a friend who knows tons about immigration policy. His reply: A lot of conservatives just don't want refugees period, and REALLY don't want Brown Muslim ones. The US Refugee Program was historically treated as immune from immigration politics (Reagan and Bush championed it, it was a huge feather in the US cap during the Cold War to admit so many people fleeing communism), but Trump obliterated that and now it's intensely political.
I think it's likely a combination of three things: 1) voters often have specific reasons to prefer policies that might not be optimal overall, e.g., tariffs that protect their own jobs; 2) voters might not be super aware of all the negative effects of interventions, if these are tangential to their own jobs, etc; and 3) voters might not be fully rational, a la Caplan. Relative to Bryan, I would emphasize the first two. I am not saying all voters are fully rational all of the time. But I think the accurate description is a bit less harsh than Bryan's characteriziation.
Do you think this has anything to do with what Bryan Caplan calls the myth of the rational voter, where voters hold factually incorrect views (e.g. the supposed negative economic effects of immigration) even after being confronted with contrary evidence thanks to the backfire effect?
I think it's likely a combination of three things: 1) voters often have specific reasons to prefer policies that might not be optimal overall, e.g., tariffs that protect their own jobs; 2) voters might not be super aware of all the negative effects of interventions, if these are tangential to their own jobs, etc; and 3) voters might not be fully rational, a la Caplan. Relative to Bryan, I would emphasize the first two. I am not saying all voters are fully rational all of the time. But I think the accurate description is a bit less harsh than Bryan's characteriziation.
Do you think this has anything to do with what Bryan Caplan calls the myth of the rational voter, where voters hold factually incorrect views (e.g. the supposed negative economic effects of immigration) even after being confronted with contrary evidence thanks to the backfire effect?