We Americans take it for granted that we are a democracy. Some of us think we have a right and responsibility to spread out democracy to other countries.
Yet a couple of social scientists have determined that the United States is governed as if it were an oligarchy.
Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern looked at 1,779 issues on which Americans were polled from 1981 through 2002, and then how Congress acted on these issues.
They found that Congress followed the wishes of the top 10 percent of income earners most of the time, and the bottom 90 percent hardly ever.
That is the classic profile of government by oligarchy—government by a small group, usually of rich people.
The survey found that Americans who band together in interest groups, such as the American Association of Retired People or National Rifle Association, have more influence than numerous, but separate, individuals, but business groups have more influence than other groups.
How can this be? A rich person’s vote does not count any more than anybody else’s vote.
But rich people, especially corporate executives, have means of influencing policy that the rest of us lack. They are:
▪ Campaign contributions to influence elections.
▪ Second-career jobs for politicians and government employees
▪ Propaganda to influence opinion, both among the public and the elite.
In this post, I’ll deal with the first.
Phil Ebersole's Blog 