Why the increase in heated words is textbook economics.
You get what you pay for – and what Americans are paying for is anger, bitterness and recriminations.
Society is “carnage and chaos,” Donald Trump said in the runup to last night’s debate. Trump is a “great threat to this country,” Joe Biden countered. Trump’s fundraising messaging declares Biden “WANTS TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH.” (Caps original.) “Trump is gearing up for an all-out assault on our freedoms,” a Biden fundraising appeal replied.
It’s hardly just political bunkum where irate exaggeration rules. In academia, literary writing, the nonprofit world – see examples below – alarmism has driven the sweet voice of reason into hiding.
The situation commonly is depicted as horrible beyond words: though most things continue to get better for most people, a long-term trend except in a few places such as Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan. Today the average person’s material circumstances are better than at any point in history, while the average person’s risk of death by violence or act of nature is lower than at any point in history.
Yet our civic sphere is full of proclamations of coming doom. One reason is the click-based ecology of social media thrives on negativism. Anger and false claims are significantly more likely to generate engagement than calm, reasonable statements. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder finds a a rising “negativity bias” that inclines us toward extreme statements.
There’s another, stronger reason. You get what you pay for.
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