Trust in Government

[Chris]

I started here: Partisan Hackery, Supreme Court Confirmations, and the Decline of Public Trust. It looks at current events as cause for falling trust in government. It concludes: "Nothing good comes when high-trust societies became low-trust societies. Americans aren't born cynical. We're made that way by the actions of elites such as Ed Whelan and officials such as Dianne Feinstein. And the trend toward cynicism won't end until they change their behavior."

It cites Trust in government: 1958-2015, the trend in trust in government.



Tried to find something up to date, and found Why Trust in Government is at All Time Lows, and Why That’s a Good Thing. Here the trend extends to Trump:



They see this as a positive because "...less confidence in government could mean individuals take control of their own lives, or at least depend on more competent private institutions."

But Why Libertarians Should Want *More* Trust in Government argues it's not, that, paradoxically, more trust is better.

...A lot of libertarians and other skeptics of government see this trend and believe that people are finally waking up to reality. But there are good reasons to be concerned about persistently low levels of trust and confidence in government.

Researchers routinely find that "people in countries with bad governments want more government intervention" in all aspects of their lives, even though they don't trust the government to be fair or effective. One 2010 study found that 82 percent of former East Germans and 92 percent of Russians--two famously "low-trust" populations--favored wage controls. Residents in Scandinavia and North America--which are "high trust" regions--were far more trusting of market forces.

So it turns out that government may be growing not in spite of our lack of confidence in it, but because of our lack of confidence in it. This self-defeating spiral will only get worse if the United States fails to stem its slide toward being a low-trust country.

The solution to this doesn't have to be nihilism or anarchy. Instead, we need a government that does fewer things but does them better....

[Common]

There was a time when I had faith in our family Dr that he could cure me of anything. There was a time I had faith that my friends would always be there all my life when I needed them. I believed and had faith and trust in alot of things during the course of my life.

I also had some faith in Govt at one time, that time has long passed