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Comment by mapontosevenths | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder where you guys are headed.

You need to know only two facts about America to guess that:

* Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

* As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens.

Our future is to become a broken nation governed by middle-school student level thinking. The only way to build a better America is to build a better populace, and that would be contrary to the interests of the angry, spoiled, children who seem to hold all the power now.

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> * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens.

No, it's determined by the people who actually go out and vote.

Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low. It's beyond frustrating to work with large groups of young people who are seemingly always talking politics and angry about something political, then to watch as half of them either forget to vote or act like they're too apathetic to vote.

The craziest part was seeing this apathy play out in states with vote-by-mail systems that required as little effort as possible. I still don't get it.

In defence of young people, it's "determined" by the people who actually go out and vote the same way a child "determines" what's for dinner when asked "would you like broccoli or brussels sprouts?"

American democracy is broken. Not in an abstract, hand-wavy feelings way but a hard, numerical, mathematical way. A two party system results in no real choice. First past the post results in a two party system. America uses first past the post. Therefore, Amercian democracy gives voters no real choice.

Margins in recent elections have been thin enough that higher voter turnout among young generations could have easily changed the outcome.

Blaming broken democracy is just a cop out. Youth voter turnout for primary elections, where there are many candidates, is also low. More parties isn’t going to change anything.

You're missing the point. There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans. Both were bad and unappealing. Both are too dependent on the status quo to serve as vehicles for real change (so primaries are pointless too).

"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things. It allows you to vote for someone who truly represents you and your interests without "throwing away" your vote. That's impossible today.

Dems didn't really get primaries in 2024, so that certainly didn't help.

>"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things.

Indeed. But that's the one single thing D's and R's can agree on not doing. It'll need to be done state by state to get any real leverage.

Well we are getting some "real change" now, so I guess the monkey's paw works.

> There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans

This is the civic illiteracy a higher comment refers to. Beyond the primaries, there are numerous down-ballot initiatives that don't tend to cleanly sort along party lines.

There was a real choice in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Trumps opponent was every single time very different to him.

Democrats continue to offer up horrible candidates, and their idiotic primary system confirms those horrible candidates every 4 years. A slice of cheese could have beaten Trump, but somehow the DNC managed to offer up the most boring, milquetoast, unlikable, uncharismatic, centrist candidates they could find and beat him once out of three times. They're just kicking own-goals over and over, and they're not learning which direction to run down the field.

Biden was not centrist he was left. He was a good president I do not understand why Americans complain as if the choice between the two was so hard.

His policies were tempered, image-wise and often in substance, by his affinity for Joe Manchin alongside his disdain for Bernie Sanders. Balanced alongside the middle eastern foreign policy, he comes across as centrist despite the BBB.

Look up the build back better act that Biden proposed and tell me if you think that was centrist. It originally proposed extending the child tax credit (basically basic income for people with kids).

The Inflation Reduction Act, the negotiated paired down version was still the biggest climate bill in history.

He also attempted to cancel 10 to 20k each of student debt, a progressive priority. That was blocked by the Supreme court.

The list goes on.

If the electorate had given Biden a bigger majority in Congress he would have passed much more progressive legislation.

The self reinforcing prophecy of “somebody else’s job”.

It’s the job of politicians to pander to us, the good voter. Since they didn’t offer us something good, we didn’t vote, and that results in this current situation.

Politics is not my job, being aware of how politics works is not my job. My job is just to let them know they aren’t good enough. It’s because they aren’t good enough, that we landed up in this situation.

I remember watching a clip from Jimmy Kimmel on YouTube where they asked people on the street in LA whether they planned to vote in the 2024 presidential election. The twist was that they were doing this one day AFTER the election. It was so disappointing to see that many young people had no idea that the election was over and yet they said they planned to vote. One guy even asked who was running.

I would envy the person who can live in the US and be unaware a presidential election was yesterday...

Like, they start running ads 18 months ahead of it... How do you miss all of those ads

Presidential ads run in swing states. Not in California, whose delegates are a foregone conclusion.

Californians are hassled for political donations, not votes.

There are more of them in swing states.

But the internet is full of them for quite some time, I would expect them to see some of those

This is likely because for many young people the only source of news is social media. And they are unlikely to be targeted to see the political ads.

Interestingly, occasionally I see political ads on Willow.tv which I use to watch Cricket. And most of these ads have Noem threatening to deport people ("if you are here illegally, we are coming after you..."). I am a US citizen.

on top of that, you need to register as a voter in many places and that process ends months before the actual ballots come. These aren't things they teach in most schools (nor their parents, apparently).

Yeah totally bonkers. In general, most people severely underestimate how long the government agencies take to process something.

There were millions of voters who refused to vote for Harris because of the Gaza situation -- oh, the irony.

https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

That's half the problem. Democrats aren't offering much.

This is utterly delusional. I can’t comprehend of whatever mind virus made it so far into the American political discourse for this BS to still be parroted in 2026. I am blessed to be born in and to reside in a country with a comparatively much better-functioning government and voting system. You better believe that if I were American I’d be voting for the dems in a heartbeat. I’d be endlessly annoyed about it, especially compared to the vastly more palatable options where I live, but there’d be zero doubt about my decision. The culture of not voting is the biggest unforced self-own the American public has inflicted upon itself. You all get what you deserve with that one.

I think it’s reasonable not to vote for a candidate that supports genocide.

Maybe that’s not a line for you but surely you have a line that cannot be crossed somewhere

Neither candidate was ever going to push back against Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

While it was very disappointing the Democrats weren't exerting significant pressure against Israel, and Kamala gave no indication she'd act any different, it was delusional to believe Trump was going to be any different. He was very clear that he supported Israel as well, and he went as far as to claim he'd support Netanyahu even more strongly than Biden. Sure, he sabre-rattled a bit about wanting the war in Gaza to end before he took office, but he also indicated he'd support residual IDF actions (i.e., continued killings of Palestinians) within Gaza afterward.

There was never a candidate who was going to push back against Israel, no matter how much you or I would have liked for there to have been one.

AIPAC has a terrifyingly strong grip on American politics.

The only way to address this and other similar problems is through campaign finance reform, which the incumbents will never allow. It doesn't mean we shouldn't stop pushing the issue though.

What do you think would be "much"?

Because even just the boring sanity of Biden Harris was leagues better than what we all saw coming in 2024. (Putting aside that whole constitutional amendment about insurrections.)

Maybe they could promise to make the rent lower. Or to make abortion legal. Or to stop bombing 2 million brown children in the Middle East. Or literally anything people actually want, instead of running on the singular platform or "obviously they'll vote for us because we're not the Republicans". People are getting really tired of the latter. Notice every time a candidate comes out who actually promises things people want he wins by a landslide?

They actually have offered policies along this line but their messaging is weak at best.

It also competes with an opponent (the GOP) that is more than willing to outright lie to sway voters. This isn't to say that the DNC is beyond reproach but we're way past "both sides" at this point.

>Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low.

in the grand scheme of history, it's not odd. Voter turnout correlates decently with age. It's an anamoly when they do get out and vote, like in 2008.

That's partially an effect of

1. not having compulsory voting

2. needing to actively register in order to be viable to vote, as opposed to simply being delivered a ballot like many other countries

3. the decades of "no politics at the table" policies to help expose the civic duties to the youth. And since it's not a flashy topic to talk about, they won't really bring it up themselves, or simply have non-informed views.

4. careful strategies to try and disenfranchise voters who may otherwise oppose a party. This is what "both sides are the same" does in a system without #1.

Not to mention the proliferation of social targeted media ads changing the landscape and active loopholes used to try and de-register voters. These all hit youth the most to vote a certain way (or not at all).

Hoping this might help you find a way to reach to the young people you have to work with: I remember my young self being primarily concerned with being right about the world rather while also believing nothing I could do at my level could matter. Maybe it's just me but something about small incremental betterment was uncredibly unsexy to me. I would rationalize voting as "participating in the system" that was rigged anyways.

Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos

It was determined by voters. Pretty sure that's over now too.

It's not too late. But it will be too late as soon as too many people think it's too late.

And those young people are manipulated by the older part of population.

> Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low

I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.

In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.

Now to show my political biases:

In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.

So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.

[0] https://rimgo.privacyredirect.com/ZUiVLyz

> Young people put in effort showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.

It is certainly wise to give up after one failed effort. Never try again. /s

Oh I agree and I vote. More people need to vote. But I understand why people feel little motivation to.

Maybe ask the young people if they actually wanted to vote for the options they had, before jumping to them being apathetic or hypocritical. And yes, I know the adult-in-the-rooms will be quick to point out that its simply rational and responsible to hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil, and the kids should know that, etc etc. But while it may be a good prescription to people, it doesn't actually address the problem. Maybe we should, but still, if you just want to scold people into voting for you, then you probably don't have a good platform and you probably don't deserve the support you do get.

The fact is, it would of been already incredibly hard for someone to be enthusiastic voting for Dems last presidential election; frankly even without even considering the utter and pointed moral failure with Gaza.

You want young people to vote, you can try to tut-tut them to vote for literally whoever, or you can, you know, listen to what they are saying, what they feel passionate about, and try even just a little bit to address it or, heck, put it on the platform. Its supposed to be a political party, something that unites people under some shared vision.

You want every single young person in the US to vote? Just say: free healthcare.

I mean, they tried that in the primaries and young people still stayed home. If they actually came out in force for Bernie like you said they would, he would have won every primary. Young people simply don't vote because of a lot of different reasons. Probably some of the reasons are immaturity and a lack of belief that they have agency, which is understandable given how society works in the US. You have basically zero rights until you turn 18, at which point you are magically able to vote! Do you believe you have the ability to affect the world at that point? Of course not.

"Put up candidates that don't suck" in this context is basically "put up candidates who will cater to young voters at the expense of literally every other constituency", which is exactly the reason Bernie lost in 2016, and lost even harder in 2020. You can't focus only on one group of people, even if that's the only way to drive their turnout. It's just a losing game, clearly not one worth playing with a group of people who don't yet understand that other people exist, with other priorities.

I guess I just didn't realize that was the settled reason why Bernie lost!

I just think even granting this framing, what is the point or the lesson here? Is the idea that Clinton in 2016 was more well-rounded, had broader appeal as a candidate and young people were too immature to realize this?

The lesson is that making your sole priority driving youth turnout is a losing strategy, for reasons that are not that confusing. The Bernie lamenters would do well to learn lessons from his failures, rather than blaming everyone else.

Sure, but what does this mean? Like ok we know not to solely cater to the youth vote, great. That wouldn't imply to me then that the correct thing to do instead is alienate or anger that same vote, right? Shouldn't we see nominees that cater to all of them, or a lot of them at least? Or, what's wrong with wanting that?

We do not need to start from the point of view that each given interest or group is totally opposed, that we are locked in some zero-sum death spiral where "the youth vote" shares absolutely no overlap with anybody else. Politics is possible at all because we believe in something else. You could decompose everything down into a list of people to blame with stuff like this, but it won't tell you what to actually do!

That's the thing - we already know that each given interest group has common interests. That's how you build coalitions, by finding those common interests and tamping down on the differences. The problem with the youth vote that we know, is that if we cater to anyone other than them, or god forbid have any opinion they disagree with, they get disillusioned or even outright hostile (very much to their own detriment), for reasons I speculated on above.

So it's better to treat them as a totally unreliable voting bloc that is nice to have, but in no way should be treated special. They are fickle, impossible to corral, and make particularly awful coalition partners.

Bernie, for one, would have done well to use their energy to launch, as he did, but then switch to broadening his coalition, rather than doubling down on catering to their every whim and attempted browbeating. That rigidity and tunnel vision is what sunk him, and is what would have led to total electoral collapse if he had somehow made it to the nomination.

Ok well then I guess there really is no hope here for this. I guess it's just a shame it's such a helpless case with the kids here!

But really, if you have a democracy where there seems to be one uncompromising bloc that no one can really satisfy, that too is democracy in action in a way! Or rather, it maybe says something about the state and the parties that this is the case with regard to the youth. Given all of history, we can't just say in general "kids are intrinsically uncompromising, short term idealists fundamentally incompatible with democracy." Right?

    > Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

I don't know what to think when I see these quotes. Are you writing a local newspaper opinion piece about the "decline of America"? How is it meaningful to this discussion? It's like a poison blowdart shot from behind the stage curtain that kills the messenger.

By the way, I Googled for the equivalent stat about Canada: "48-49% having skills below a high school level". I'm not here to bad mouth the Canadian education system, but I think you will find fairly similar stats in most highly developed nations.

I've been reading this topic for years. It is very common with a certain party that the other side votes against their interest, or is too dumb to vote (literacy).

You can also see it in race voting, where people will say a certain race is voting against their interest just to vote for someone with the same skin color.

It's actually a talking point that actively pushes people away from their cause.

Does this type of voting happen? Sure, but not enough to push elections. IMO it's people who are confused on why others don't think the same way as they do and try to justify why anyway they can, usually through derogatory remarks.

datsci_est_2015 explains it better than I would just a few comments down, but this isn't what I mean. I mean that people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in and are CONSTANTLY taken advantage of.

Bad thinkers make bad decisions, and are vulnerable to being manipulated in ways that good thinkers aren't. Try getting a mortgage or a car loan when you can't read complete paragraphs. Try investing your retirement properly. Try doing just about anything that modern adults are required to do. You're definitely going to pay a "stupid tax" throughout your entire adult life if you lack the ability to read critically.

People bemoan the death of journalism, but it's not the journalists fault. Did you know that USA Today was intentionally invented to be an alternative news source for people who couldn't read well? At the time it was bemoaned as the end of western civilization. Now it requires more of it's reader than the places people actually get their news from (Tik-Tok and Bathroom wall graffiti presumably).

FWIW - One side is objectively worse than the other, but it's not by a wide margin (a few basis points if I remember correctly) and it's probably just because one side lives in states that love to take the education budget and blow it on "more important" things.

> people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in

It is always funny to me that the people making this argument are usually also the people who would view a voting literacy test as abhorrent (not you, necessarily). To me, if we're assuming a large amount of people are too stupid to understand information or know what is good, then it follows that we oughtn't let them decide the direction of the country.

I am genuinely in favor of a brief standardized test in the voting booth, but I think most aren't, especially those who are the most vocal about voter illiteracy/ignorance/stupidity. Follow through with your beliefs, readers. Pick one: are they too stupid to vote, or aren't they? If they are, support a literacy test. If they aren't, stop the ugly rhetoric.

The problem with a test is whoever writes/grades the test can ensure people they don't like fail. Elections are often close enough that they only need to fail a few borderline (and pass on their sides) to control an election.

as such I'm forced to oppose all tests even though the idea isn't bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

The problem (like with voter ID laws in the US) is that it's a very slippery slope to voter suppression, and in the US we have a very creative history when it comes to voter suppression. You'd have poll workers who would present incredibly hard passages to read to voters based on a personal judgement call (read: black voters).

I (not OP) agree that dumb people voting is a problem but the alternative is to have arbitrary suppression of votes, which IMO is worse.

I don't know why objections to voting tests usually pretend we're in 1850. We have standardized tests, already, nationwide. It's a solvable problem. We wouldn't contingent a vote on a random poll worker's choice of passage to read.

A solvable problem, but someone chooses and implements the solution. Now imagine that person is from a party that you disagree with, and is highly motivated to find a way to tilt the playing field.

>We have standardized tests, already, nationwide.

And voting is legislated by individual states, that would theoretically implement their own standards though this may be intervened upon by the federal government). Heck, even standardized testing for students is done at a state level. The SATs/ACTs are privately administered. What example of a nationwide standardized test for literacy do you have?

Ironic misuse of apostrophe's.

This talking point never contains international comparison nor historical comparison. Most people using it do not even know what "sixth grade level" actually is. They just know it means "a little".

Who cares how they're doing it in Albania? It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it.*

I DO know exactly what sixth grade level is. It means they can read simple paragraphs, but not critically. These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.

You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.

* To clarify - Reading levels in the United States have been declining at an alarming rate for a long time. They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since. You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato. Imagine applying those standards to a modern politician.

> Who cares how they're doing it in Albania?

It would be interesting comparison, actually. As interesting as French, Germany or whatever.

> It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it. [...] They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since.

I checked out tests and it is not true. Reading scores in 2022 were still higher then those in 1992. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

So, yeah, this would be an interesting historical comparison. It was worst most of the time.

> These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.

You are confusing two different things here. First off, highly educated people are in fact vulnerable to scammers ... frequently because of their own confidence.

> You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.

But issue in modern world are not people just dont make good decisions. It is people who make immoral decisions. Vance have good reading skills, but he is still a fascist.

> You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato.

This is not an example of mass of people using critical thinking and acting rationally. This is an example of blown up reaction ala Twitter mob latching on something trivial and making a big deal out of it. This is example of what happen when soundbite wins over substance.

I think it’s also important to talk about what it means to “read at a 6th grade level” when this is mentioned, because a lot of people (myself included) might assume that just means they could finish and understand a book intended for 6th graders.

But there’s actually meaningful criteria that sheds some light on the critical thinking capabilities of people who can or can’t read at certain levels, especially as it pertains to propaganda. Below a certain level, people are not well-educated enough to critically assess a text against the motivations of its authors (somewhere around 9th grade). Americans are prone to conspiratorial thinking so you might think that that’s alright because they’re often skeptical of any text, but it just seems like it causes them to dig even deeper into the propaganda that’s targeted to them.

It’s kind of like learning that some people don’t have an inner monologue, or that they aren’t capable of imagining shapes or objects abstractly in their mind. Except it’s a lot more serious as it deals with critical thinking directly: these people don’t understand that what they’re reading was written for a purpose.

This isn't accidental. Religious indoctrination literally teaches generations to make special loopholes in critical thinking and healthy skepticism to maintain their faith. And it has paid off in easy to manipulate masses for centuries.

The more religious people I know are some of the best critical thinkers. Especially those types who enroll their kids in the 'classical' education model. With the decline of religion in the USA, I don't think this is a very coherent scapegoat.

Religion isn't the only factor, nor did I claim it was.

But it's the only one I've seen convince PhDs to believe self contradictory "scriptures", cherry picked "evidence", appeals to authority, parrot useless platitudes, indoctrinate their kids, dismiss injustices, other people even for the most trivial differences in doctrine, and consistently vote against their own interests.

Why is literacy so important? Wasn’t literacy lower in the US at other points in time?

The Lippmann school of democracy sort of predisposed that people were too stupid and that through journalists would emerge a reasonable set of choices. For the most part that matches the way politics worked in the USA and most democracies until recently. Unfortunately the internet disrupted things such that suddenly everyone needs to actually be democratically adept in at least some form more akin to the Dewey school of thought.

The combination of literacy and the algorithmic propaganda machine is a pretty big stumbling block.

Interesting comment. I haven't heard this problem phrased this way nor have I heard of these schools, do you have a recommendation for learning more about this?

See perhaps:

> At the turn of the 20th century, a crucial debate emerged between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey over the viability of democracy in an increasingly complex world. Lippmann critiqued democracy’s reliance on public opinion, arguing that citizens construct simplified “pseudo-environments” shaped by media and stereotypes, rendering them ill-equipped to make informed decisions on vast global issues. He warned that modern democracies are driven more by emotionally charged reactions than by accurate understanding, and that media, language, and time constraints further distort reality. Dewey responded not by dismissing Lippmann’s concerns, but by reframing democracy as more than a political system—it was, to him, an ethical ideal and a form of social cooperation. Viewing society as an interconnected organism, Dewey believed individuals flourish only through participation and education. He saw democracy as a continuous process of mutual growth, where every person contributes uniquely, and where the antidote to authoritarianism lies in cultivating thoughtful, empowered citizens—not in retreating from democratic ideals, but in deepening them.

* https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/dewey-lippman

Also maybe from The Atlantic (from 1919), "The Basic Problem of Democracy" by Walter Lippman:

https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...

Adapt! (Barbara Stiegler)

She puts it all together relatively succinctly if dense. You can just read Dewey too if you want to be closer to the source. He's a bit more interesting because it is more of the road not taken out of the progressive era.

Cool, thanks for the rec!

Truthfully I’m not familiar with any of this. I’m just curious how we managed a functioning democracy through the 1800s when literacy was certainly lower. And, how other democratic nations with similar literacy rates are doing.

Standards for "functioning democracy" were much lower then.

Most people were ineligible to vote in the 18th and 19th centuries. [1] Not even 20% of the US population voted in presidential elections until the 20th century. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Vote_for_President_a...

> Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

I thought this was a joke. Like, holy shit I regret looking this up and finding out it's not BS

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/

In what language? 78% of Americans have English as their first language.

I don't think that's right - it looks like the stat is that 78% of Americans speak *only* English at home.

I'm not American, but anecdotally, a supermajority (like 80-90%) of people I know who speak multiple languages at home speak English at native fluency. (e.g. in my semi-extended family - parents/siblings/nibblings/partner/parents-in-law, there are 9 of us, and only 2 are more comfortable in French than English, but none of us would qualify as speaking *only* English at home.)

Also, look into how the statistic is gathered vs other countries.

There is no exact definition on this statistic and how to measure. There is also reporting biases. Single person vs household for example.

I don't care what language they read, just that they're capable of reading (and thinking) like adults.

> It's so simple: everyone is stupider than me. These are facts dontcha know. The science is on my side.

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