Rational Ignorance: Exposing a flaw in Tiebout's Set of Assumptions

After reading both Tiebout and Johnson, I discovered a contradiction in the foundations of their arguments. One of the first assumptions that Tiebout mentions in his paper is that citizens have perfect knowledge of the revenue-expenditure patterns of all polities. If we combine this with his other assumptions, we follow Tiebout as he contends that a person will take her knowledge of the spending patterns of each polity and simply move to the one that gives her the most utility. Thus, for Tiebout, it is rational for a person to be informed about the revenue-expenditure patterns of her community and the other communities around her, because she stands to gain from moving to the community that has a spending pattern that she likes best. Although Johnson builds his argument toward a conclusion unrelated to Tiebout's, he also touches on the question of political knowledge, and gives an opposite answer. To Johnson, it is not rational for a citizen to be knowledgeable of political issues, which certainly include (but are not limited to) community revenue-expenditure patterns. To Johnson, this rational ignorance stems from the fact that each community member has a less-than-miniscule chance of affecting revenue-expenditure patterns and other political issues her community must decide on. So which is it: is it rational for a citizen to be uninformed about her community’s political issues, specifically revenue-expenditure patterns, or not?

This article (see 5th and 6th paragraphs) that summarizes polls of California voters suggests that very few of them know much about the revenue-expenditure patterns of their state. When pollsters gave voters a list of California's four largest spending categories and asked them to identify which one was the largest of the four, only 22% were able to choose the right answer (public schools). Responders were clearly ignorant, at least with respect to this question, considering they would have performed better if they had randomly guessed. A different question on the poll revealed that only 9% of Californian voters surveyed knew both the largest source of revenue and the largest spending category of their state.** If Tiebout is right, then why do so few people know about the revenue and expenditures of their state? It could be because only a small minority of those polled choose to act rationally and learn their state's spending patterns. This explanation isn't all that satisfying, though, because it suggests that our society is one full of irrational people and that the homoeconomicus is a rare breed. Assuming that most people of a community do in fact act rationally, the only other explanation is that Tiebout's assumptions are too bold and do not capture reality. My prediction is that people don’t take the time to learn about the revenue-expenditure patterns of their communities not only because they have a miniscule chance of affecting them (as Johnson suggests) but also because they are much less mobile than Tiebout is willing to acknowledge and often do fall victim to job constraints and other causes of imperfect mobility. If it is the case that people cannot easily move into communities that employ preferable revenue-expenditure patterns, then it is irrational for people to waste time researching those patterns, and thus Johnson’s idea of rational ignorance reigns supreme over Tiebout’s ideas of incentivized learning and acting.   

**I am aware that the poll results demonstrate how much citizens know about their state, a much larger political entity than those that Tiebout shaped his argument around. I'm assuming that city-centered polls wouldn't vary drastically from this Californian one, but if they do, then I owe Tiebout more credit than I am giving him.