The other day I wrote about Rockford state senator Dave
Syverson’s proposal to ensure that Illinois lawmakers know
more about the economic effects of their decisions by requiring newly elected
legislators, aldermen and county board members to take an eight-hour community
college-level economics course every two years.
This course would be prepared by business advocacy
organizations. Asked why, Syverson told his hometown paper, “Everyone
on the other side is already pushing pro-government economics.” No, they’re not.
There is no government economics, no business economics — just economics.
Syverson is right in a way. Local officials in particular
are pushing pro-government economic policies. I complained about one such
policy back in 2012 in “Fiscalizing
land use policy: Good for the City of Springfield, yes, but for the city?”
The surrender of urban planning
responsibilities to private developers is general across the state, largely
because city councils are desperate to attract retailing and the sale tax
revenues cities need to pay their bills.
Me, I’d like to see journalists better educated on economics
too, along with the history of Illinois politics and government. There is as
yet no single work that might serve as a primer; the work of Jim Nowlan and Co.
at the U of I’s Institute of Government
and Public Affairs comes closest.
Of course, a voting public that cannot grasp the concept of
simple interest will be prey to every huckster of miracle cures that comes
along. The challenge of educating an ignorant public about such matters is
hardly new. Bernard Shaw in 1928 wrote The
Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, intended to in part to correct the caricatured version of socialism then being peddled by the popular press on behalf of the monied interests. His tract remains worth reading today, the old issues having become new again.
That tradition is carried on in
Britain with books such as this year’s It’s the Economy, Stupid:
Economics for Voters by Vicky Pryce, Andy Ross and Peter Urwin. Alas, I
know of no such handbook written for today’s U.S. voters.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2015.
