An article posted on AlterNet yesterday asks a question that is on the mind of many: Why Is Taxing the Rich So Hard? The commonsense answer is that our leaders don't want to go against the interests and desires of the majority of those people most responsible for funding their campaigns!
As it turns out, there are times that the general scuttlebutt turns out to be wrong, but NOT in this particular case.
Take a look at almost ANY nonprofit organization, regardless of size. If the organization has one or a small handful of benefactors who provide a significant portion of the group's annual budget, their input will carry a lot more weight than Joe or Mary who contributes a $25 annual membership. IF the group tended to listen more or equally so to all the members like Joe or Marry, many of the major donors might well decide to donate their money elsewhere.
In a society in which wealth is grossly unequal, money buys influence and power. If you have great wealth, people will listen to you, even if they think you are the grandest prick of them all. If you lack great wealth, far fewer people will care about what you have to say, even if they think that you are the nicest, wisest or smartest person in the world.
In our society, that's just the way it is.
As it turns out, there are times that the general scuttlebutt turns out to be wrong, but NOT in this particular case.
In a recent study, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels found that senators outright ignored the views of their least advantaged constituents while catering to the preferences of the wealthy. Princeton’s Martin Gilens has also found that policy changes reflect the preferences of the most affluent, while the preferences of poor and middle-income Americans have almost no bearing.None of the results of this research should surprise anyone. This same general principle can be seen in everyday life.
Political scientists Lawrence Jacobs and Benjamin Page have found that the preferences of foreign policymakers correspond more to the preferences of executives of multinational companies than to the general public. Page and Jeffrey Winters estimate that the top 10 percent of income earners hold about 90 percent of materially based political power, and that “each member of the top 1 percent averaged more than 100 times the power of a member of the bottom 90 percent; about 200 times if the index is calculated in terms of the more politically relevant non-home wealth.” These numbers are staggering, and should be seriously troubling to anyone who thinks political equality worth defending. Indeed, by Page and Winter’s definition of oligarchy as “the extreme political inequalities that necessarily accompany extreme material inequalities,” it’s pretty hard to argue that the United States isn’t an oligarchic society...
Take a look at almost ANY nonprofit organization, regardless of size. If the organization has one or a small handful of benefactors who provide a significant portion of the group's annual budget, their input will carry a lot more weight than Joe or Mary who contributes a $25 annual membership. IF the group tended to listen more or equally so to all the members like Joe or Marry, many of the major donors might well decide to donate their money elsewhere.
In a society in which wealth is grossly unequal, money buys influence and power. If you have great wealth, people will listen to you, even if they think you are the grandest prick of them all. If you lack great wealth, far fewer people will care about what you have to say, even if they think that you are the nicest, wisest or smartest person in the world.
In our society, that's just the way it is.
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