We may be ignorant, but we're rationally ignorant

Who could not have seen the hilarious Jimmy Kimmel video where interviewers would ask Americans on the street, "Which do you support more, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?" It turns out, shockingly enough, more Americans supported The Affordable Care Act than Obamacare. It also turns out, Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, are exactly the same! While most people would contend on facebook, twitter, and other social media that most Americans are just plain stupid or ignorant. I contend that Americans may be ignorant, true, but we are rationally ignorant. And there's a huge difference. 

So if a Californian wanted to take, let's say, a solid 2 hours to learn about ACA, which would probably take two hours to shift through lies, misleading facts, biased articles, etc, on the internet, he would be at a loss of a maximum of $55. But the odds of a vote deciding an election in California, according to doesmyvotecount.org, are 1/1.3 Trillion. Thus according to the expected marginal benefit of voting formula we went over in class, which for sake of space I will not write, the amount of expected marginal benefit is negligible.

Thus Americans are just in being rationally ignorant. But is there more at work?

Perhaps we are rationally ignorant because we should be. The reason I don't particularly care to delve too deeply into Obamacare is because the marginal costs of learning the high level knowledge of macroeconomics needed to make an educated decision on Obamacare would exceed many family monthly incomes! It's more efficient to use our time elsewhere to make income. We as Americans would prefer that left up to experts to determine, and act on our behalf.