A small percentage of voters speak

“Democracies frequently adopt and maintain policies harmful for most people,” Professor Caplan notes. There are various explanations for this — the power of special interests, public ignorance of details, and so on. But Mr. Caplan argues that those accounts fall short.

“This book develops an alternative story of how democracy fails,” he writes. “The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational — and vote accordingly.”

I agree with Kristof suggestion of teaching economics and statistics in high school. Maybe more people will be able getting a true reading on the data throw at them.