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Here's something I've always found to be interesting. I think there's a latent political prior model going on that often interferes with political discussion. Namely: What motivates the people in Congress, individually?
Here's what I feel like is a fairly exhaustive list:
Obviously some of these overlap or could both be true. A few approaches (rank them or something?) but I feel maybe the best is simply to answer the question, "What percentage of people currently in Congress (House and Senate) ran for Congress (most recent election) for this as one of the principal reasons?" Here's my take:
Of course a lot of these can overlap a bit, but that's fine. I'm talking about major reasons to run for office in any given election. (PS: should I have split help people into generally vs some specific group?)
Do you think these are about right? Too charitable? Too cynical? I bring this up because I was recently talking to a friend who his mental model had pegged something like 60% of people in Congress as in it for the money and power. Another friend thinks that 70% are pure partisans (ideological purists). Another thinks it's mostly special interests and corporations. You can see how these can subtly skew opinions about almost any given topic.
Of course, to me, I'm correct of course :)
No but actually, if we think about the process many go to first get involved in politics, there's only a few common paths. There's being an activist of some sort and then you (or supported by an org) run as a logical next step. There's being fed up of some specific status quo and starting to run for something on a local level and then you end up working your way up. There's being wealthy and/or having connections (famous sometimes) and jumping in to something directly. There's being a pure egomaniac and running just for that. And then there's some group of people where you're minding your own business and you get recruited into it. And that's actually most paths into politics. Seems to me that there are better ways to make money, and better ways to spend your time, so I think most people run because they actually want to. Congresspeople aren't aliens, they have similar motivations to you and I, at least I think. How many people that you've talked to who have idly talked about what they would do if they were in charge, have given a corrupt reason to do so?
Economics is split into two very different fields. Macroeconomics is the art of economic forecasting. Microeconomics is the study of incentives. In microeconomics, politicians are modelled as maximizing votes in the next election, to the best of their ability.
Winning the election by 1% invites challengers next election. Winning the election by 20% tells the other party that their time and money are probably better spent elsewhere, so you run against a penniless, unsupported sacrificial lamb and cruise to reelection without having to dip too deeply into your war chest.
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