If democracy means government responsiveness to what majorities of citizens want, we present strong evidence that in recent years, the United States has not been very democratic at all. Our analysis of some 2,000 federal government policy decisions indicates that when you take account of what affluent Americans, corporations and organize…
If democracy means government responsiveness to what majorities of citizens want, we present strong evidence that in recent years, the United States has not been very democratic at all. Our analysis of some 2,000 federal government policy decisions indicates that when you take account of what affluent Americans, corporations and organized interest groups want, ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence at all. The wealthy, corporations and organized interest groups have substantial influence. But the estimated influence of the public is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Moreover, if you simply look at how often ordinary Americans get policy changes they want, you see that they are frequently thwarted. Even big majorities — 60 to 80 percent of Americans — get the policy changes they want only about 40 percent of the time. This has real consequences. Millions of Americans are denied government help with jobs, incomes, health care or retirement pensions. They do not get action against climate change or stricter regulation of the financial sector or a tax system that asks the wealthy to pay a fair share. On all these issues, wealthy Americans tend to want very different things than average Americans do. And the wealthy usually win.
That is a good point. It begs the question of why any self-respecting citizen who works for a paycheck would be on board with the GOP which does not even pay lip service to the concept that we are all in this together. The Democrats pay a great deal of lip service to this idea, but it is just that: lip service. And it seems that that is all it will ever be as long as Citizens United stands.
If democracy means government responsiveness to what majorities of citizens want, we present strong evidence that in recent years, the United States has not been very democratic at all. Our analysis of some 2,000 federal government policy decisions indicates that when you take account of what affluent Americans, corporations and organized interest groups want, ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence at all. The wealthy, corporations and organized interest groups have substantial influence. But the estimated influence of the public is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Moreover, if you simply look at how often ordinary Americans get policy changes they want, you see that they are frequently thwarted. Even big majorities — 60 to 80 percent of Americans — get the policy changes they want only about 40 percent of the time. This has real consequences. Millions of Americans are denied government help with jobs, incomes, health care or retirement pensions. They do not get action against climate change or stricter regulation of the financial sector or a tax system that asks the wealthy to pay a fair share. On all these issues, wealthy Americans tend to want very different things than average Americans do. And the wealthy usually win.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/23/democracy-in-america-an-interview-with-authors-ben-page-and-martin-gilens/
That is a good point. It begs the question of why any self-respecting citizen who works for a paycheck would be on board with the GOP which does not even pay lip service to the concept that we are all in this together. The Democrats pay a great deal of lip service to this idea, but it is just that: lip service. And it seems that that is all it will ever be as long as Citizens United stands.