It is staggering how little people know about the UK economy. I noticed this chart is part of the thread on Twitter yesterday:
The research appears to be entirely genuine. What is staggering is the scale of ignorance that it reveals. People are quite simply clueless as to what the government spends its money on.
Amongst the extraordinary perceptions of the public belief that 8% of government spending is on MPs salaries, when it is actually 0.01% and that just 11% is spent on pensions,
The implication is almost more worrying: they think 650 MPs get almost two-thirds of what all poensi0oners do, combined.
The overestimation of a great many other spends is also alarming. It's as if the government scare machine might be working on everything from aid, to debt to next zero.
The question is, how to address this?
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It’s more complicated than this simply being a product of the government scare machine.
Clearly the government does love to mislead people but if this was part of a strategy why would it encourage the view that MPs are overpaid? (Unless you want to go full conspiratorial and argue that the government plans to get rid of parliament and rule autocratically.)
It’s a disaster in the making because while people may not believe in Labour they really don’t like Tory MPs and the perception that they fiddle while the country burns leaves the door wide to an alternative.
Politicians tend to underestimate voters’ political memories. Fear of the Seventies played a significant part in undermining Labour in the last General Election. Antipathy to Tory corruption will be part of British politics for at least the next fifty years even if they all become choirboys and girls tomorrow. (Part of this is because many people form heuristics to deal with politics so this complicated and confusing matter can be reduced to a simple principle that people stick with for decades).
It also shows the power of the media. I imagine there are similar stats for people believing things wildly out of proportion to the facts for other popular news stories like how much we spend on asylum seekers or how many police officers are sex offenders.
We address it in future generations by teaching young people to think critically and understand the quality of the sources they read, the need for double-sourcing, the need to read views that counter what they believe.
In current generations it’s really hard because people have already developed entrenched news and can find corners of the internet where everyone thinks they’re right.
I see it as the Xfilesification of politics. In the X Files the show starts with the phrases “The truth is out there” and “The government is lying to you.” It builds a compelling yet false narrative through the shows that alien abduction is real and that the government is covering it up. We’re now in a world where almost all of us have some version of this belief – that the government is lying to us. Perhaps because it often is (eg GERS).
That makes politics so hard. How do we convince people that the government is not lying about the vaccine when we think it is lying about Christmas parties?
Personally I try to break it down into smaller problems but I have to say being a political activist in an age when no one trusts authority can get quite grim at times.
Probably the same people who over estimated MPs pay believed that we were paying for the EU and it would collapse without us. I did see those comments.
We also see ‘I’ m paying for these refugees’. They don’t ask how much the bombing cost that drive so any here.
this is a superb point!
The debit interest is interesting. Not quite in the crippling bracket. On benefits and pensions I’d be interested to see a breakdown to include benefits paid to working people and benefit paid to the unemployed. People might be surprised to see how much is paid to support those of low wages and how little (?) is actually spent on the unemployed. Its a pity that we don’t count (?) tax relief on pensions as spending. That my neatly be included in the pensions and benefits column.
I will see if I can do, but not for next two days
Guardian used to do a really interesting interactive graphic……….
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/dec/04/public-spending-uk-2011-12-interactive
10 years out of date but still instructive, I think.
They stopped publishing the underlying data this year
We aren’t educated in how the economy works and we similarly aren’t educated in our rights or how the law works. One might almost think we’re deliberately set up to be exploited.
For many years I’ve been sure that this has been deliberate government policy. What politician, especially our current shambolic cohort, wants a vibrant thinking well educated population when with abundant ignorance they can do exactly what they want?.
What we need is an institution with the principles ” Inform Educate and entertain”
We already have it, despite this government’s and it’s lying media accomplices efforts to wreck it.
The BBC. No wonder the right hate it so much.
Quite correct. When I retired from the Inland Revenue, I contacted all local secondary schools, offering to give their pupils a lecture on how tax works and how it would affect them.
‘Not in the Curriculum’ was the general answer. Whereas, in the United States, school-children are taught ‘Civics’, no education minister or his minions seems to consider any knowledge about ‘The System’ superfluous to requirements.
Civics is on the UK curriculum too…..
Unlike Maths and English which MUST be taught, Citizenship is a subject that SHOULD be taught. Obviously we don’t want them getting to know too much about the system?
I see the public have underestimated the spend on the NHS – by about £350m per week!
🙂
We need a rich benefactor or two with deep pockets!!
This is agnotology all over again isn’t it?
Like Stephanie Kelton’s book it needs to be addressed by telling the truth – which you are doing. But we can all play our part.
But there is lying at scale going on – have no illusions about that.
While I have no doubts about public ignorance, I have serious doubts about this research in particular. Why should anyone even have a view about such bizarre questions as what proportion of state expenditure is used on pensions and MPs salaries! Absolutely potty.
To be fair it even says Pensions & Benefits, not just Pensions.
The problem here is a lack of numeracy skills. Most people can’t come up with a reasonable estimate on an individual basis and even when they can they rarely want to extrapolate how much something is going to cost when you do it on a grander scale.
Pensions dominate
The ‘honest conversation’ that some MPs talk of with the British public is nothing about paying more NI for healthcare and highers taxes for services – it’s about explaining the facts of Government money creation and how tax levels are NOT related to the quality of services.
It’s about successive Governments breaking the promises of the post WWII era – that’s what it is about.