8 September 2018 Currents
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Sean Illing: So we know that people who are aware and appreciative of government’ s role in their lives through social benefits are least likely to participate in politics, and those who use social benefits but show no cognizance of government’ s role in providing them are much more likely to vote. What accounts for this? Suzanne Mettler: The people who participate the most in politics, usually people with more education and more resources, rely on plenty of social benefits from government, but these benefits are often hidden in the tax code or are disguised in other ways, they don’ t think of government as having done much for them personally.
Suzanne Mettler: As a political scientist, I would have thought that people’ s personal experiences might interfere. If the government helped you afford college or health care or prevented your grandmother from falling into poverty when she was a citizen, you would think that would overcome the messages people are getting from the special interests.
But I’ ve found that those personal experiences don’ t matter much, unless somebody is connecting the dots,
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