Word: defaulters
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...everyone is frightened by the prospect of the carnage which would go along with the economy "improving itself" without government intervention. If unemployment gets worse much faster and the government's plans for making the economy right are shattered soon, the free market movement will get its wish by default...
This is why default options pack such power. Most of us will save for retirement, run our computers in energy-efficient mode and be organ donors if we have to take action to say no - but not if we have to take action to say yes. Almost nobody signed up for a German utility's clean-energy plan until it became the default, and then 94% stuck with it. We're also much likelier to go to the doctor for preventive care like flu shots if the appointment is made for us. In a speech last year, Orszag even suggested...
...Administration hopes to harness our inertia with its automatic pension plan, a major step toward universal savings accounts, and by dramatically simplifying applications for federal tuition aid. Its push to computerize health-care records - another big-ticket stimulus item - could make generic drugs and cost-effective procedures our default treatments. And seniors who don't select health-care or drug plans could be automatically enrolled in low-cost options. "It would be nice if we all behaved like supercomputers, but that's not how we are," Orszag says...
Social norms help explain the attraction of opt-out 401(k)s as well: it's not just that we're too lazy to check a box but also that we assume the default is the accepted thing to do. Obama's push to weatherize millions of homes - another stimulus bonanza - will require new norms. In Oregon, a countywide program to upgrade windows and insulation at almost no cost to homeowners got a tepid response. But after an intense mobilization campaign - through citizen councils, churches and Girl Scouts who went door-to-door asking residents why they hadn't weatherized...
...Barack Obama reacting reflexively, without attempting to think creatively, about a serious policy question. He was, in fact, taking the traditional path of least resistance: an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts. In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. Such a person is assumed to be stoned all the time, unworthy of being taken seriously. Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk...