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