Who Rules?
“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
In ‘democracy’ the views of average people are supposed to be decisive. Another theory suggests that mass-based interest groups such as AARP have the power. A third theory predicts that business groups such as the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America carry the day. A fourth theory holds that policy reflects the views of the economic elite.
In a 2014 study by Marin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern found that economic elites and narrow interest groups succeeded in in getting their favored policies adopted about half the time, and in stopping legislation legislation to which they were opposed nearly all the time.
Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of public citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all.
America Is Not a Democracy – Yascha Mounk
The court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, for example, gave wealthy Americans and even corporations the ability to spend almost unlimited amounts to support candidates and engineer legislative and regulatory outcomes that work in their favor.
Because most Americans’ health insurance is provided by their employers, workers’ wages are essentially paying for profits and high salaries in the medical industry. Every year, the US wastes a trillion dollars – about $8,000 per family – more than other rich countries on excessive health-care costs, and has worse health outcomes than nearly all of them. Any one of several European financing alternatives could recoup those funds, but adopting any of them would trigger the fierce resistance of those now profiting from the status quo.
Freedom to...
NOW we’re talking! 