[michaelkeenan]

I used to think this way. The thing that changed my mind was learning how much people think the USA spends on foreign aid[1]. On average, Americans think 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, but it is about 1 percent. People base policy preference on their mistaken impression. When informed of the correct amount, the number who think America spends too much on foreign aid changes from 61% to 30%.

Foreign aid is one persistently misunderstood issue that I know of, but I worry that there might be many similar issues.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/07/the-b...

[logfromblammo]

To be more precise[0]:

  2013 US Budget                 ~= $3 803 300 000 000
  +- International Affairs        = $   52 018 676 000 ( 1.37%)
     +- State Operations          = $   17 702 825 000 ( 0.47%)
        +- Int'l Orgs             = $    3 386 331 000 ( 0.09%)
     +- Foreign Operations        = $   33 810 927 000 ( 0.89%)
        +- Bilateral Assistance   = $   21 134 577 000 ( 0.56%)
        +- Int'l Security         = $    8 791 500 000 ( 0.23%)
        +- Multilat. Int'l Orgs   = $    2 875 204 000 ( 0.08%)
        +- Foreign Banks/Funds    = $    2 548 553 000 ( 0.07%)
        +- Direct Food Aid        = $    1 533 859 000 ( 0.04%) [1]
        +- US AID                 = $    1 450 806 000 ( 0.04%)
        +- Independent Agencies   = $    1 258 585 000 ( 0.03%)
  +- US Dept. of Defense         ~= $  672 900 000 000 (17.7 %)
  Total Military SA+FR+UK+DE+JP  ~= $  283 500 000 000
  2013 AAPL total expenditures   ~= $  136 000 000 000

What people think of as "foreign aid" may vary. The budget covers everything from bed nets to bullets. If you count only spending on operations that most directly assist poor foreigners, such as US AID, Peace Corps, and UNICEF, rather than just writing checks to foreign politicians, militaries, and bankers, it amounts to about $7-$10 billion, or 0.2%-0.3% of the budget.

And nothing in the US budget takes up more than 25% of it. The top 4 items are, in fact, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, military, and debt service (6.5%!). Even if you count all military spending as some sinister form of foreign aid, you can't get to 28%. The problem there is not just being uninformed. Someone must be actively spreading misinformation--lying to the public. That's a much bigger problem than simple ignorance, and trying to restrict turnout to only "informed" voters is not going to help when people believe they are informed after hearing enough lies.

[0] http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/224071.pdf [1] paid to US Dept. of Agriculture