Rich people rule!

[ksen]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/08/rich-people-rule/

A forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics by (my former colleague) Martin Gilens and (my sometime collaborator) Benjamin Page marks a notable step in that process. Drawing on the same extensive evidence employed by Gilens in his landmark book “Affluence and Influence,” Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process? This must be an overstatement of Gilens’s and Page’s findings, no?

Alas, no.

I think this relates back to the campaign contribution discussions we were having on the old site.

I'm pretty sure it's been taken for granted that it's true that wealthy people have a bigger impact on government policy but now the real research is starting to be done that proves this is true.

I guess the next step will be, as a society, to decide if this is a problem that needs solving and if it is what can be done to solve it.

Personally I do think it's a problem but right now I don't have any ideas on how to fix it.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Are you questioning our betters?

 

[ksen]

I might be.

 

[arkirk]

You don't have to read that book to find that out. Well duh!

If you have ever been a party to an environmental dispute with a strip mine, a rail dump company, a nuclear mining company or chemical company, you quickly find out that the money of your opponent allows them to hold on through interminable hearings and proceedings while civic action groups have a hard time holding together over time. It is the army of lobbyists and lawyers that can stay on station because of their financing that keeps pushing the envelope and steam rolling civic action groups. Sometimes they lose anyway, but we all lose great amounts of precious time fighting these battles. Some of them must be fought however if we have any respect for the society that is to follow us.

 

[Rilx]

Not only US but most European and Asian countries are nowadays oligarchies.

 

[arkirk]

Not only US but most European and Asian countries are nowadays oligarchies.

I agree, we are not the lone evil in the world. National leadership in most countries is determined by oligarchs. This has converted the U.N. into a lukewarm supporter of human rights and a "democracy" of narcissistic self promoting demagogues, slow to do anything to help the poor and starving in the face of their own internal conflict. I have a tape of a speech Krishnamurti gave back in the '60's at the U.N. chiding them for patting themselves on the back for surviving to the state of conflict at that time. Too bad he is dead today or he could give that same speech today.