Why are we so polarized? Why is democracy in such peril?

Confronting the longer-term erosion

Friends,

It’s too easy to accept the conventional view that the widening polarization of our society, and the decline of democracy, are due to the demagogue in the Oval Office.

That conventional view is way too simple. Follow the money. The underlying cause is the tsunami of legal bribes flowing from huge, wealthy corporations (and their oligarchic CEOs and major investors) into American politics.

That tsunami has grown dramatically over the last 40 years. It underlies the crisis of democracy. It is fueling polarization. Democracy and social cohesion are impossible to sustain when big money is dictating political outcomes.

Over the last four decades, corporate political spending has more than quadrupled, adjusted for inflation.

Labor unions no longer provide a counterweight. Forty years ago, union PACs contributed about as much as corporate PACs. In the 2024 election, corporations outspent labor by more than 3 to 1.

According to a landmark study published in 2014 by Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page, the preferences of the typical American have no influence at all on legislation emerging from Congress.

Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens. Their conclusion:

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Gilens and Page found that lawmakers listen mainly to the policy demands of big business and wealthy individuals — those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns and promote their views.

It’s far worse now. Gilens and Page’s data came from the period 1981 to 2002 — before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in the Citizens United case, before Super PACs, before “dark money,” and before the Wall Street bailout.

Decades before Trump, corporations were already getting a high return on the money they invested in politics. I know. I was there. I had a front-row seat.

Over the last 40 years, corporate tax rates have plunged. Regulatory protections for consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment have been defanged. Antitrust has become so ineffectual that many big corporations face little or no competition.

Corporations have fought off safety nets and public investments that are common in other advanced nations, such as universal health care and paid family leave. They’ve attacked labor laws — reducing the portion of private-sector workers belonging to a union from a 35 percent 40 years ago to just over 6 percent now.

They’ve collected hundreds of billions in federal subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees and sole-source contracts. Corporate welfare for Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, Big Ag, Wall Street, and the largest military contractors now dwarfs welfare for people.

The profits of big corporations have reached record highs, and the ratio of CEO pay in large companies to average workers has ballooned from 20-to-1 in the 1960s to nearly 300-to-1 now.

Most Americans, however, are going nowhere. The typical worker’s wage is only a bit higher today than it was 40 years ago when adjusted for inflation.

The biggest casualty has been public trust in democracy.

In 1964, only 29 percent of voters thought government was “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.” By 2013, 79 percent of Americans thought so.

A large portion of the American public has become so frustrated and cynical about democracy that they believe the blatant lies of a self-described strongman and support a political party that no longer stands for democracy.

Capitalism is compatible with democracy only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. But the absence of democracy doesn’t strengthen capitalism. It fuels despotism.

Ironically, the CEOs of many large American corporations are now finally confronting this reality. Despotism is bad for capitalism. Despots don’t respect property rights. They don’t honor the rule of law. They are arbitrary and unpredictable. All of this harms the owners of capital. Despotism also invites civil strife and conflict, which destabilize a society and an economy.

My message to every CEO in America: You need democracy, but you’re actively undermining it by polluting it with big money and throwing much of your support behind a tyrant whose arbitrary and capricious decisions are threatening your businesses. It’s time for you to join the pro-democracy movement.

This is not only about economics. Widening inequality and a weakening democracy take a toll on the moral well-being of the nation, on the implicit social contract that binds us together, on the trust and cohesion we need to accomplish anything worthwhile.

In one of his first interviews, on September 14, Pope Leo XIV — history’s first U.S.-born pope — talked about the causes of the deep polarization he sees in America and elsewhere:

“Very significant is the continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive. …Yesterday the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

Trump is not the cause of the growing cynicism about democracy and the deepening polarization of our society. He’s the consequence and culmination of decades of neglect. We could not have remained on the road we were on toward ever-widening inequality and ever-greater political corruption.

If there’s a silver lining to this darkening cloud, it is that Trump may finally force us to confront this long-term crisis.