Where's the Outrage? Really.

By Arthur C. Brooks
Thursday, July 31, 2008

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

So lectures a popular bumper sticker in my university-dominated neighborhood. And according to an emerging journalistic narrative of this campaign season, ordinary Americans are indeed outraged -- at the Iraq war, at gas prices, and by the fact that their houses are not rising in value. As a July 4 Associated Press headline put it, "Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong.'"

One does not do well to question the legitimacy of this alleged anger. Former Texas senator and McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm learned this the hard way. Looking at data showing less economic trouble than he felt the gloomy headlines warranted, he said in an interview on July 9 that the U.S. was a "nation of whiners" and that we are merely in a "mental recession." Within a few days he stepped down from a McCain campaign increasingly worried about a possible backlash from supposedly enraged voters.

The controversy about Mr. Gramm's comments involved whether Americans have the right to be angry. The anger itself is simply assumed to exist. Ironically, this assumption is questionable, and is not supported by the data.

In May 2008, the Gallup Organization asked 1,200 American adults how many days in the past week they had felt "outraged." The average number of angry days was 1.17, and 54% of those surveyed said none. Only one in 20 reported being outraged every day. Despite the litany of horrors presented to us daily by campaigning politicians, most of us appear to be doing really quite well managing our anger.

Indeed, we are less angry today than a decade ago. Let's look back to the glory days of the 1990s, when -- according to the media narrative -- we enjoyed uninterrupted peace and prosperity. In 1996, the General Social Survey asked exactly the same "outrage" question of 1,500 adults. Then, only 38% had not been outraged at all in the past week. The average number of angry days was 1.5 per week, 29% higher than at present.

Virtually every group in the population is less angry in 2008 than in 1996 -- those making more and those making less than the average income; college-educated and noncollege-educated folks; men and women.

Only one major group in the population has gotten angrier: people who call themselves "very liberal." While conservatives, moderates and nonextreme liberals all have seen their average levels of outrage fall over the past 12 years, the number of angry days among our leftiest neighbors has risen 56% (to 2.28 from 1.46), and the percentage with no angry days in the past week has fallen to 31% from 37%. Today, very liberal people spend more than twice as much time feeling angry as do political moderates. One in seven is outraged seven days a week.

The reason they are so angry -- and getting angrier -- is probably obvious. This is the group that feels the depredations of the Bush administration with every waking breath.

Should you pity your extremely progressive friends -- after all, they're more miserable than you, aren't they? Maybe not. In fact, anger does not translate very well into lower levels of happiness. In fact, extreme liberals were more likely than moderates in 2008 to say they were "very happy" about their lives (28% to 25%). This is of a piece with a growing body of political research which finds that people on the extreme left (and extreme right) tend to be quite a bit happier than those with more moderate views.

A more interesting question than what afflicts extreme liberals today is why folks outside their ranks (including moderate liberals) are failing so miserably to muster up much rage in the current environment. One theory is that ordinary Americans have been lulled into a culture of complacency -- or in the fancier language of academics, they're suffering from "false consciousness."

Another possibility is that most Americans recognize that, while gas is expensive and our grocery money doesn't go as far as it did last year, we are still an enormously prosperous and fortunate nation.

In some countries, a depressed economic climate means mass unemployment, political instability and large-scale deprivation. In America this decade, we have reached the point at which even in a down economy, our unemployment rate does not reach 6% (lower than the rates in Canada and the European Union, let alone those in the developing world). Any unwanted unemployment is terrible; but it is worth remembering that this stability especially benefits the economically vulnerable.

Furthermore, no matter what the state of our economy, we can realistically count on uninterrupted provision of critical public services, high business start-up rates, the world's highest levels of charitable giving and volunteering, and countless other benefits that come from living in a successful nation.

We may well be unsatisfied with the current state of affairs. Some Americans are suffering, and cannot be faulted for seeking substantial political change in the coming election. But most of us are reasonable people, and can see the difference between correctable problems within a strong system of democratic capitalism and the kind of catastrophic failure that justifies real outrage.

For the nonoutraged majority, here's what the bumper sticker ought perhaps to say: "If you're not grateful to live in America, you're not paying attention."