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New Study Proves U.S. Is Controlled By Rich And Powerful Elite
May 22, 2015 by Richard Zombeck (link here)
It’s not exactly breaking news that the United States is an Oligarchy and that Democracy in this country has gone the way of the dinosaur and the Dodo Bird. But when other countries are looking at us and pointing their fingers, the problem has gone beyond just being anecdotal.
Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, has been railing about it for years, warning of the dire consequences of an elite few pouring billions into our political process in order to sway legislation, regulation and inevitably profits their way.
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge. Reich writes extensively on his blog and also manages to find his way all over the internet. He even produced a film, “Inequality for All,” documenting how the wealthiest 1% siphoned trillions of dollars from hard working Americans. It’s not clear how many people have watched it, but it’s clear that those who did aren’t sufficiently outraged enough.
In another article, “The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich,” Reich points out that what despite many in Congress would have us believe, the rich really don’t work for their money.
It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others. In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them. The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich — is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.
Last month the BBC in England (that’s a different country) reported that Princeton University Prof. Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof. Benjamin I Page concluded a study showing that the “U.S. is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.”
The report was picked up by mostly Liberal media in the U.S. never really making it to an outlet as relatively substantial by comparison as the BBC. Here’s the extended interview with the authors of the study on the Daily Show talking about the 10 years of research.
You might think, “Big deal. Everyone knows that,” but in the case of this study, the two professors have actually, after extensive and exhaustive research, come up with data to prove this.
Gilens and Page reviewed answers to 1,770 survey questions on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level and then examined how often certain income levels and interest groups saw those policies come to light.
They found that policy changes supported by only one in five rich folks was adopted about 18% of the time, while changes with high support (four out five) were adopted about 45% of the time. One could assume that a policy raising the income for low wage workers might be one of those policy questions and lowering the taxes on people making more than $500,000 per year might be another.
The resulting consensus to the survey?
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
They then end with this:
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
This might be a great big “Duh” to most people, but prior to any data actual being collected all we had were theories and rhetoric – regardless of how accurate we thought they were or how painfully obvious we might have felt it was.
As Eric Zuess, of Counterpunch writes:
American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s ‘news’ media.) The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral’ ‘democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.
Maybe we, as Americans, just need to stop pretending that we have some sort of equal opportunity in this country and that, for at least the last few decades, we’ve been fooling ourselves. England has a House of Lords and House of Commoners right out there in the open and for all intents and purposes embraces their classist system. It’s only a matter of time before we allow it right out there in the open as if it’s the way it’s always been.
May 22, 2015 by Richard Zombeck (link here)
It’s not exactly breaking news that the United States is an Oligarchy and that Democracy in this country has gone the way of the dinosaur and the Dodo Bird. But when other countries are looking at us and pointing their fingers, the problem has gone beyond just being anecdotal.
Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, has been railing about it for years, warning of the dire consequences of an elite few pouring billions into our political process in order to sway legislation, regulation and inevitably profits their way.
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge. Reich writes extensively on his blog and also manages to find his way all over the internet. He even produced a film, “Inequality for All,” documenting how the wealthiest 1% siphoned trillions of dollars from hard working Americans. It’s not clear how many people have watched it, but it’s clear that those who did aren’t sufficiently outraged enough.
In another article, “The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich,” Reich points out that what despite many in Congress would have us believe, the rich really don’t work for their money.
It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others. In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them. The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich — is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.
Last month the BBC in England (that’s a different country) reported that Princeton University Prof. Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof. Benjamin I Page concluded a study showing that the “U.S. is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.”
The report was picked up by mostly Liberal media in the U.S. never really making it to an outlet as relatively substantial by comparison as the BBC. Here’s the extended interview with the authors of the study on the Daily Show talking about the 10 years of research.
You might think, “Big deal. Everyone knows that,” but in the case of this study, the two professors have actually, after extensive and exhaustive research, come up with data to prove this.
Gilens and Page reviewed answers to 1,770 survey questions on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level and then examined how often certain income levels and interest groups saw those policies come to light.
They found that policy changes supported by only one in five rich folks was adopted about 18% of the time, while changes with high support (four out five) were adopted about 45% of the time. One could assume that a policy raising the income for low wage workers might be one of those policy questions and lowering the taxes on people making more than $500,000 per year might be another.
The resulting consensus to the survey?
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
They then end with this:
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
This might be a great big “Duh” to most people, but prior to any data actual being collected all we had were theories and rhetoric – regardless of how accurate we thought they were or how painfully obvious we might have felt it was.
As Eric Zuess, of Counterpunch writes:
American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s ‘news’ media.) The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral’ ‘democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.
Maybe we, as Americans, just need to stop pretending that we have some sort of equal opportunity in this country and that, for at least the last few decades, we’ve been fooling ourselves. England has a House of Lords and House of Commoners right out there in the open and for all intents and purposes embraces their classist system. It’s only a matter of time before we allow it right out there in the open as if it’s the way it’s always been.
