
‘What Do You Think Is the Most Important Problem Facing This Country Today?’ - chis
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/27/us/politics/most-important-problem-gallup-polling-question.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
======
veidr
Seems to me that it is none of the things in that diagram, and there is a sort
of supraproblem above all of those, which is the ongoing and increasing
societal rejection of knowledge and facts.

It's not just anti-intellectualism, it is more like "anti-realityism", in
which simple things aren't knowable, in which facts and opinions aren't
different.

We've gone from corporate propaganda like "global warming isn't real", which
is a lie but an understandable one, to this incomprehensible new state of
"What is the murder rate? How high is unemployment? What is the purity of the
drinking water? THESE THINGS ARE NOT KNOWABLE!!! ANY VALUE MAY BE ADVOCATED!!"

And literally not one problem on that list can be solved in such an
environment...

~~~
nilkn
What I've noticed is that folks are taking a pretty healthy mistrust of the
establishment and turning it into the opposite extreme without realizing what
they're doing. Instead of maintaining skepticism towards both the
establishment and anti-establishment (of which Trump was a part), they do two
things:

(1) elevate their moderate mistrust of the establishment into total,
exhaustive mistrust (i.e., they assume everything from the establishment is a
lie with a malicious motive).

(2) place total, exhaustive trust into the anti-establishment (i.e., Trump is
perfect, every cabinet pick is perfect, every EO is perfect, everything Spicer
says is completely true, everything Trump says is completely true, etc.).

It's this extreme warping of trust which causes people to be so incredibly
susceptible to genuine fake news.

When you combine (1) and (2), you end up with conspiracy theories and lots of
people who sincerely believe them with no evidence. The idea that Clinton
is/was running pedophilia and child sex trafficking rings out of pizza shops
is a great example.

~~~
csallen
I've seen the same. There's a stunning lack of nuance in public thought.
Thinking in degrees is difficult, so things get reduced to good vs evil, black
vs white, all or nothing. Even amongst friends I respect, I have a hard time
getting people to do the hard work of looking past high level simplifications
and enumerating specific costs and benefits of any decision or proposal.

~~~
Melk
I know it's not popular to say but I blame the Internet. When people start
getting their news from social media and the so often heard "I go straight to
the comments because that's where the article is always corrected" then
authority flies out of the window. It has caused a distrust in science and the
media and the government.

The last generation had news pundits and we have social media stars.
Journalism used to have a self-regulated code of ethics but that's gone now. I
don't know what the solution is other than to regulate news on the Internet.

~~~
x0x0
There's blame to go around. First, certain people, predominantly conservative,
realized they could monetize stupidity. That saying outrageous lies would
create great wealth for them, and they gleefully jumped in. Look how wealthy
Rush Limbaugh became, or how Michael Flynn, an advisor to the president, was
involved in pushing Pizzagate, a theory that Hillary Clinton was running a
child sex ring from a pizza shop [0]. This man was briefly our national
security advisor.

    
    
       Six days before the election, for instance, Mr. Flynn posted on Twitter a 
       fake news story that claimed the police and prosecutors in New York had 
       found evidence linking Mrs. Clinton and much of her senior campaign staff to 
       pedophilia, money laundering, perjury and other felonies.
       

I also blame the institutions themselves.

The Catholic church turns out to have been, if not an organized rape group,
then certainly one that openly tolerated such. The church went to
extraordinary lengths to (1) preserve access to victims for priests, and (2)
hide from culpability. See eg hiding records and witnesses in Rome, or a
priest in WI who raped _200 deaf students_ [1] while Cardinal Ratzinger -- who
became Pope -- personally shielded him from consequences. An excerpt from [1]:

    
    
       Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was 
       sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to 
       criminal or civil authorities.
    

Or remember when George Bush promised there were WMD in Iraq, and fired Larry
Lindsey for saying the costs of the Iraq war might reach $100B [2], and fired
General Shinseki for correctly estimating how many troops would be required
[3]? Right before we proceeded to kill a half million Iraqis and 5k+ Americans
for what?

Remember when we were assured by all and sundry that there certainly was no
real-estate bubble circa 2007? That real estate was an investment that only
went up?

Remember Katrina, when George Bush decided to hang out and watch 1800
Americans die on our own soil, while his pet horse judge mismanaged the
federal disaster relief agency?

Or Enron, or Bernie Madoff, or law school is a good investment, or ...

Our institutions themselves have given us myriad reasons to distrust them.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/-michael-
flyn...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/-michael-flynn-trump-
fake-news-clinton.html?_r=0)

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-
prie...](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-priest-
molests-200-d/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey)

[3] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/mills-truth-teller-
ira...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/opinion/mills-truth-teller-iraq/)

~~~
veidr
I upvoted you because it's disheartening, especially in the context of this
thread, to see your mini-rant downvoted when it's mostly just a bunch of
easily-verifiable facts that may make some people uncomfortable.

One quibble: are those people really "conservative"? Even if so, is that the
attribute that is most relevant to this discussion?

Flynn is a perfect example: he's ostensibly "conservative" but he's also a
pretty twisted combination of a gullible rube, a liar, and a batshit-crazy
whack job.

I don't quite have a word for that combinational trait, but I think that's the
key attribute.

There are quite a few people who self-identify as "conservative" but don't
fall into this additional category of truth-impervious objective-reality-
deniers.

~~~
x0x0
I assume you believe Republicans are conservative? Trump is a Republican, as
is Flynn. Senate Majority Leader McConnell: "[...] proceeding with [the
Republican] agenda which is exactly the same as the Trump agenda" [1].

I challenge you to find _anything_ similar to Pizzagate, or Obama is a gay
Kenyan, or denial of anthropogenic global warming, or similar that is widely
believed and publicly supported by Democrats elected to national office. I'll
admit some wackos on the left are vaccine truthers, but again: they do not
hold national elective office. It's really all conservatives, and there aren't
Democrats in national office speaking in glossolalia.

[1] [http://www.voanews.com/a/trump-budget-priorities-speech-
cong...](http://www.voanews.com/a/trump-budget-priorities-speech-
congress/3743095.html)

~~~
veidr
Yes, but most Republicans I actually know (granted, definitely not a
representative sample) were aghast that Trump won their party's nomination,
and didn't vote for him (thought most made it a protest vote of some kind, not
voting for Clinton either).

They are "conservative" but they assumed that Trump's continuous barrage of
easily-debunked lies and blatant disrespect for the intelligence of his
audience would prevent his victory.

Still, I will concede your point that the "conservative" population in the USA
seems to be more greatly affected by this kind of "reality rejection
syndrome". I don't think Trump really has any coherent political ideology; I
think he just chose to pwn the Republican party because they had the most
rubes susceptible to his brand of snake oil.

(I feel like that might just be because a big segment of that population is
_angrier_ than most people, but who knows.)

------
nostrademons
Interesting pattern in these:

In times when we're clearly in crisis (financial crisis of 2009, stagflation
in the 70s, Vietnam & the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, and WW2 in 1941),
the graph is dominated by a single issue that takes up greater than half the
plot. In times when things are basically humming along smoothly, everybody
complains about everything, and the poll reflects a huge variety of problems.

This would tend to suggest that objectively, we're actually in pretty good
times right now. This doesn't preclude us facing a crisis in the near future -
notice how "Keeping out of war" was a relatively small but noticeable box in
1935, but absolutely huge in 1941 - but it _is_ fairly likely that if a crisis
does occur, it'll come from a box that isn't a huge problem right now. It's
unlikely that "immigration" or "dissatisfaction with government" will be a
massive crisis in 2021, but we could easily see "unifying the country",
"environment", "unemployment", or "civil rights & race relations" become a
huge issue in the next election.

~~~
alphabettsy
I found an interesting distinction between the two candidates was this is a
disaster needing fixing versus things are pretty good and let's do better.
That seemed to be the gist of their messages.

I'd be interested to see the change from 2013-2016 for example.

------
rdtsc
There are multiple ways to look at this depending how you view people in your
country

People's opinions are manipulated by either media (i.e. corporations) or
government and they are told what to worry about. Just because economy seems
to be doing well in this poll, it could be because people are told it is doing
well. Now I haven't looked at any indicators, so maybe it is actually doing
well, but I am using it as an example here.

Unemployment could be an exception here. People do feel that personally, it is
a lot less abstract. So maybe that is closer to reality.

But even healthcare, so many think it is now "being fixed" so they stop
worrying about it.

During Bush's time we see worrying about a moral decline, It is likely not
because people were particularly immoral then but his rhetoric focused on
religious groups (Evangelicals) and he used them as a block pretty much to
vote for him.

Then guns. Look at that, in 2013 people were so worried about them. Why?
Almost just as worried as the "Lack of money". It is probably not because
people were shot left and right, but because the administration, the media,
and various gun groups (NRA) picked that as a talking between them.

So this is just as much about what is really wrong with the country vs what
people believe is wrong with the country and the two things don't have to be
the same. It also shows how easy it is to manipulate people and changing their
political agenda.

------
lkrubner
I am disappointed that "The Constitution" doesn't get mentioned by more
people. Clearly, the USA has a terrible Constitution and it needs a new one.
What might have seemed sensible 1787 certainly does not make sense in 2017.
And many of the items that people do list are merely symptoms of the sickness
of the Constitution. Among its many flaws, perhaps the most obvious is the
"Rotten Borough" problem of the less populated states. Britain faced this
problem in the early 1800s and resolved it with the reforms of 1832:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs)

I have a personal list of things I'd like to see in a new Constitution, but
what I personally want is not very important. What is important is that the
citizens of the USA realize what is the root cause of the many ills they
complain of: the Constitution.

~~~
erelde
In the same kind of issue (IMO): voting on weekdays.

I don't know if that's in the US constitution (I'm French), but really, who
thought that was a good idea.

It seems like a systemic issue easier to address than the whole constitution
and electoral college system.

~~~
taejo
> I don't know if that's in the US constitution (I'm French), but really, who
> thought that was a good idea.

FYI: it's not, but it's been set by statute since 1845.

------
rebootthesystem
Question: Why do you think Peter feels sick?

100 people surveyed. 80% of respondents think he has food poisoning.

Peter accepts this and endures several additional weeks of pain.

Peter finally goes to a hospital to get checked out.

He has colon cancer.

Peter dies three weeks later.

What people think has nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

That's what this article is about, what people think, not reality.

~~~
dredmorbius
Fair point, though what public perception polling _does_ tell you is _what the
public is thinking_.

That itself might reflect on a state of ignorance or knowledge, or on how well
your Weapons of Mass Distraction campaigns are working.

~~~
rebootthesystem
What the public is thinking is useful for politicians who need to choose which
lies to tell during a campaign in order to gather the most votes. Or for a
marketing person in need to alter their approach for maximum ROI. That's about
it.

If we switch to entrepreneurship for a moment, here's another case where
public opinion is of little use: The crowds don't know what they want next.
How many people wanted Instagram before it existed? Or Facebook? Amazon? eBay?
How many people know that it is critical we switch to streamlined digital
medical records?

People know and form opinions based on past events. As a mass they rarely know
where to go in order to solve real rather than imagined problems. This is
particularly true of uncomfortable long-term planning.

Take the situation we have in the US with Welfare and Social Security. By some
accounts these programs might implode in as little as 10 to 20 years. They are
the elephants in the room. The federal budget reveals this fact. Yet people
are focusing on nonsense every day.

The masses are not talking about this. The surveys indicate nobody thought
these issues were important for decades, even today. Yet, reality, if I were a
parent guiding my kids, is that this is one of the most important issues. One
requiring immediate attention. It is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of
mathematical certainty.

~~~
dredmorbius
While I agree that those are some of the uses, they're not _all_ of them.

Monitoring public opinion is also quite useful if your interest is in actually
_effectively delivering truthful infomration to the public._ It allows testing
and developing methods (or defenses, as necessary).

What's key is not confusing _what the public believes_ with _what is actually
true_.

The dynamics of _why_ the public believes what it does, for both extrinsic
(media, propaganda, manipulation) and intrinsic (educational levels, cognitive
limits, messaging complexity) is hugely useful to understand. Actually, if
you're looking for lower-level problems of governance, generally, I'd spend a
considerable amount of time in that corner.

------
danso
Seems like a lot of the problems for Feb. 2017 are a lot more varied and
existential ("Dissatisfaction with government", "Immigration") versus Feb.
2009, where "Economy in general" and "Unemployment" and other material
economic metrics are by far the main worries of America.

As ugly as politics have gotten today, at least the presiding concern for most
Americans isn't "can I afford my mortgage/rent next month?".

~~~
rdtsc
Quite the opposite, I would think. Not having employment, seeing economy going
down the drain is a lot more and immediately existential to people than not
liking the people in Washington, or disagreeing with how they tweet and so on.

One can argue that government is eventually to blame for employment anyway,
but is one step removed from "I might not be able to pay my bills in a month
or two".

In a way I am happy to see "Dissatisfaction with the government" be the top
worry pushing economy to the side.

------
wtf_is_up
It's amusing how much "Civil Rights and Race Relations" ballooned after Obama
took office.

~~~
danso
Make sense. For starters, the economy was in such a crisis that economic
concerns took priority over everything else when Obama entered office. Second,
his office made dealing with civil rights a priority, which meant that the
costs of prioritizing civil rights suddenly drew more attention than when it
was a backburner issue.

~~~
rdtsc
> his office made dealing with civil rights a priority, which meant that the
> costs of prioritizing civil rights suddenly drew more attention than when it
> was a backburner issue.

I've been wondering about that. What did he do specifically for the Black
community who pretty much voted as a block for him. Are they able to get
access to jobs, housing, education because of him. Do kids feels safer walking
home from school? I don't really now, I am not asking because I know it is
not, just curious if anyone has a better idea.

~~~
danso
Administrations may not necessarily make new laws/regulations, but they are
able to make priorities. For example, the Bush Administration had a bigger
focus on stopping illegal immigration and enforcing the Patriot Act:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/gonzales-lays-
out...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/gonzales-lays-out-his-
priorities-at-justice-dept.html?_r=0)

In contrast, the Obama administration was seen to have "rebuilt" the civil
rights arm of the Justice dept into its "crown jewel":
[http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-justice-department-
tru...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-justice-department-
trump-20161117-story.html)

One of the more well-known initiatives of the Justice Dept. under Obama's
administration is the police data initiative, something that was sparked after
officer-involved shootings (Ferguson, etc.) revealed that the FBI was doing a
shoddy job of tracking these incidents nationwide:

[https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/2016/0...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/2016/04/22/fact-sheet-white-house-police-data-initiative-highlights-
new-commitments)

A non-justice example: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's work in
looking at fairness in lending and housing:

\- [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-
us/newsroom/consumer-f...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-
us/newsroom/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-and-department-justice-
action-requires-bancorpsouth-pay-106-million-address-discriminatory-mortgage-
lending-practices/)

Incidentally, this initiative has led to one of the best government datasets:
9.2 GB of mortgage data: [https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-
research/hmda/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/hmda/)

------
jeffdavis
We form opinions far too fast and blithely assume that the only possible
viewpoints are those that occur to us after 30 seconds of thought (plus the
one or two viewpoints fed to us in the first article).

Once a person publicly expresses an opinion, it is very hard to change. We
just fight and rationalize from that point on, digging in deeper.

And no, we bay area NPR-listening NYT-reading folks are far from immune.

------
kapauldo
These all point to one basic problem, overconfidence. Half of our country has
replaced logic with confidence. Its roots, i speculate, are in mob
reinforcement (religion and tv and talk radio), and our sports and
entertainment centered yardstick for achievement. Any common person can now
stare into the eyes of a scientist and say they disagree and have a mob of
people cheer.

------
randcraw
It's remarkable that "global warming" didn't make the list given its potential
for $trillions in damages and vast loss of life if left unchecked. In terms of
severity, there is no second place.

~~~
thisnotmyacc
I think a question like this is so nebulous that people can answer it in a
multitude of ways, none more or less valid.

Global warming doesn't really affect the USA specifically and/or uniquely, so
maybe that biases the answer? Also, dying of smoking is less a worry when you
see a truck about to run you over. Maybe people preference immediate danger
over longer term danger?

The issue of "country" is an interesting one in the other direction as well.
If a state/city/county has 16% unemployment, but the country has low
unemployment, some people may think it is a country-wide issue, and preference
that. Ditto other issues that are state or local level issues.

In any case, I can see why almost any answer is valid, which kinda makes the
whole question an odd one.

------
rat87
President Trump and his administration, we can all debate till we are blue in
the face why he was elected but he was in a, what's a good word for a reverse
miracle? a disaster maybe?

His administration seems likely to kill constructive politics, increase
distrust & conspiracy theories and spread racism.

------
defen
How about dysgenic fertility?

> Meisenberg (2010) found that intelligence in the US was negatively related
> to the number of children, with age-controlled correlations of −.156, −.069,
> −.235 and −.028 for White females, White males, Black females and Black
> males. This effect was related mainly to the general intelligence factor and
> was caused in part by education and income, and to a lesser extent by the
> more "liberal" gender attitudes of those with higher intelligence. Without
> migration the average IQ of the US population will decline by about 0.8
> points per generation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence)

~~~
guelo
meh, that's probably swamped by the effects of reducing lead poisoning in
children. The younger generations today are probably the smartest in human
history with the added benefit of being the best educated and having access to
the best information.

~~~
defen
_Not_ poisoning ourselves with lead is great, but I'm not sure that the
younger generations today are the smartest in human history -
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470)

~~~
hexane360
I personally find those results really dubious. How accurate were the
measurements from the mid 19th century? And even then, the leverage on those
scatter plots is huge. (eg: [http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/one-
outlier.png](http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs199/lectures/one-outlier.png))

Additionally, because of a lack of a data, they used means instead of medians
on highly skewed data. A few individuals could have a much larger effect on
results this way.

Finally, just because we measure good correlations between IQ and RT in modern
times doesn't justify extrapolating these conclusions to the 19th century.

P.S. I find this a little dubious "The Victorian era was characterized by
great accomplishments. As great accomplishment is generally a product of high
intelligence. . ." Sure the 19th century had better innovation than came
before, but so did the 20th and 21st century. This doesn't have much impact on
the findings, but it still bugs me.

------
burgreblast
It's hard for me to interpret this outside the 2017 pressure chamber of
headlines/advertising. It's remarkable similar to a top of mind recall of
"what last 10 news articles have you seen published recently?"

There are many good and important issues that didn't make the list, and I
wonder if prompting or discussion would increase the breadth.

This seems to be the list of issues that many articles have been talking about
for the last month. Things we're supposed to care about, because, social
proof.

One can either believe news articles are crafted to deliver what we want to
hear (appeal to our beliefs) or that we are remarkably adept consumers,
champions and descerners of (unbiased!) truth.

9 out of 10 doctors agree!

------
Retra
Corruption. It's always been one of the greatest problems facing humanity, and
seemingly impossible to effectively combat.

------
passivepinetree
I can't believe that the environment isn't on a single one of these lists.

~~~
CalRobert
I agree with the sentiment, but it is there.

It's depressing, but my experience was that most people simply do. not. care.
about the environment, unless it's literally something they can see _in their
front yard_. Hot this year? Turn up the AC! Even when it _is_ in their front
yard, if they can't see it they don't care. Worrying about the health effects
of pesticides and then going for a jog and inhaling auto exhaust is
inconsistent, but not a rare behaviour.

~~~
passivepinetree
You're right; I missed that. IMHO it should be much bigger, but I'm not sure
there's a good way to raise awareness and start change.

------
Taylor_OD
It's interesting to see this. If you asked me Americas biggest problems it
would be that we spend an incredible amount of money in foreign wars, have
mass incarceration, a healthcare system that is difficult to use and
expensive, and that our education system is quickly falling being other
countries.

The further back you go in this list you see things that we just accept as
reality now.

------
uptownfunk
The flaw in this whole analysis is that we are looking at the problems in
relation to one another instead of in an absolute measure. I don't even think
the question is that relevant in this administration. Why? Because there a lot
of really big problems right now of really high magnitude. Race inequality,
income inequality, healthcare, global warming, etc these are all huge problems
and it is likely they will grow worse in magnitude, it's less relevant what
the most important problem is, the real observation is that there are big
problems and they ain't going away anytime soon.

What I mean to say is the boxes under the trump administration should be
really huge in certain areas compared to other administrations

------
lend000
CTRL-F "debt": 0 of 0 (on these HN comments)

That's a problem in and of itself.

And the only reference to "environment" was someone asking why environment
hadn't been mentioned, as of the time I started writing this.

~~~
chis
The national debt? My understanding was that most economists don't rate that
as a very significant issue. But I'd love to be linked to something proving me
wrong.

~~~
lend000
All kinds of debt, but government sponsored/owned debt in particular. It's a
significant problem in our country when the economists in power do not
consider (or pretend to not consider) the debt or the deficit trajectory, let
alone unfunded liabilities, to be the serious problem that they are. Something
has to give, whether it's a debilitating depression brought on by balancing
the spreadsheet or significant devaluation of the US dollar to fraudulently
meet obligations.

------
spoinkaroo
It's interesting to see the degree that opinions have changed in time, the
contrarian relationship between economic expectations and economic
performance, and other fear mongering issues that don't tangibly affect
people's quality of life. For the latter, these include National Security,
Terrorism, Immigration, Government Satisfaction, Budget, ... really most of
this stuff.

I wonder how the graph would look if the same question was posed to a set of
'experts'. Say a set of economists at top business schools, or really a
spattering of economists from reputable universities.

My suspicion is the issues would suddenly become much more consistent.
Especially with a focus on institutions, economic growth, tangible quality of
life metrics, and efficacy of government redistribution programs among others
'real' measures.

It's not to say that fears over government functioning, or the economy, or
morals are irrelevant - these factors shape how we perceive the world and
subsequently how we feel. This graph displays how resilient we are to these
emotionally charged 'issues'. The average poll respondent will likely continue
following the general sentiment from media, conversations, etc. Meanwhile,
tangible issues will continue to be acknowledged by a very small sliver of the
population.

These sorts of results make me cynical of voting in general. Our current
system with the electoral college, special interests, lobbying, advertisements
etc. is already a clusterfuck. Ignoring experts opinions and focusing on
emotionally charged issues is probably worse off for the country as a whole.

I, for one, am glad that voter preferences currently represent the preferences
of elites when it comes to contentious issues. (see Martin Giles' Affluence
and Influence). Our 'every person gets an equivalent vote regardless of
education for the minority that actually votes across varying demographics
with messed up electoral colleges and voting districts and advertising
influences' ... system seems inefficient to me. While a dystopian future of
'educated elites' controlling voting isn't the answer, neither is an
equivalent, electoral college based system. It encourages appealing to the
lowest common denominator, and a whole lot of people are unintentionally
voting against their own interests.

------
temporeka
My biggest concern is highschools. They mould the citizens of this country and
they are broken. Bullying is rampant and terrible and overall the conditions
in american highschools seem to produce more school shooters than any other
country. This is not a coincidence. But nothing ever changes because if youre
smart the bullies leave you alone. If youre a bit slow in any way you get
eaten alive. It has to change

------
known
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/daily-
chart-17) looks much better article

~~~
dredmorbius
Informationally, it's talking about something quite different. The NY Times
piece looks at _what specific issues_ are front-of-mind. The Economist,
whether or not things are "on track". And at a single point in time rather
than over 70 years, as with the Times.

------
kingmanaz
Dysgenic trends in demographics.

------
exabrial
Authoritarianism.

------
johnsmith21006
Trump

------
suprgeek
"Narcissistic Crazy person who might end civilization due to something he just
saw on Fox news or because someone dissed him on Twitter" seems to be missing
from the latest set of boxes.

