Well, without having read the whole article, it seems to me that the reason they’re getting this result is that we’re comparing bureaucrats to the general public.
The general public doesn’t know how much is actually spent. They vastly overestimate spending on foreign aid, for instance, and welfare. It’s plausible that bureaucrats prefer levels of spending that are roughly commensurate with actual operating costs, while ordinary citizens are just mis-estimating.
The fact that the public doesn’t know the actual budget explains several strange artifacts in polling. For instance, when you poll people, a large percentage think foreign aid should be cut, but when you ask them what percent of the budget it should be, it’s still higher than the actual percent! There’s a similar phenomenon with taxes: people tend to think they should be cut, but they also overestimate how high taxes are in the first place, so they sound like they’re calling for higher taxes.
It might be interesting to have two versions of a poll on government spending, one of which tells the participants the current spending levels before asking the questions, and compare the results.
Well, without having read the whole article, it seems to me that the reason they’re getting this result is that we’re comparing bureaucrats to the general public.
The general public doesn’t know how much is actually spent. They vastly overestimate spending on foreign aid, for instance, and welfare. It’s plausible that bureaucrats prefer levels of spending that are roughly commensurate with actual operating costs, while ordinary citizens are just mis-estimating.
The fact that the public doesn’t know the actual budget explains several strange artifacts in polling. For instance, when you poll people, a large percentage think foreign aid should be cut, but when you ask them what percent of the budget it should be, it’s still higher than the actual percent! There’s a similar phenomenon with taxes: people tend to think they should be cut, but they also overestimate how high taxes are in the first place, so they sound like they’re calling for higher taxes.
It might be interesting to have two versions of a poll on government spending, one of which tells the participants the current spending levels before asking the questions, and compare the results.