When we need to make sense of, say, national health care reform—a vast apparatus too complex to be readily understood—our political leaders typically offer us two things: cherry-picked personal anecdotes and aggregate summary statistics. The anecdotes, of course, are rich and vivid, but they’re unrepresentative. Almost any piece of legislation, no matter how enlightened or misguided, will leave someone better off and someone worse off, so carefully selected stories don’t offer any perspective on broader patterns.
