… You probably won’t be surprised to hear that voters are poorly informed about the deficit. But you may be surprised by just how misinformed. …
Am I saying that voters are stupid? Not at all. People have lives, jobs, children to raise. They’re not going to sit down with Congressional Budget Office reports. Instead, they rely on what they hear from authority figures. The problem is that much of what they hear is misleading if not outright false.
The outright falsehoods, you won’t be surprised to learn, tend to be politically motivated. [cont.]
Paul Krugman, New York Times