Princeton study concludes: the USA are an oligarchy

[NickUndercover]

http://www.princeton.edu/%7Emgilens/Gil ... 3-7-14.pdf

Cat's out of the bag boys



Discuss / Lament / "I've been saying this for years"

[ehbes]

Refer to sig

[OGLemon]

Now the question is, "how do we return the power to the people". or even if we can

[_ronzlo_]

They never had it in the first place. All smoke and mirrors.

Between this and Thomas Pikkety's book...

[OGLemon]

They never had it in the first place.

I thought about this after I submitted my post. I can't think of a time were there has been universal suffrage + no corruption of the system. Kind of why I don't believe that the state should exist.

[ehbes]

Yeah IMO this is just as groundbreaking as telling me water is wet

[mks]

I tried to view the pdf but the security certificate has been revoked. Very interesting.

[m8son666]

Fuck the people, the people are idiots.

[mks]

Here's a link that works. It's a 42 page paper.

https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gile ... 3-7-14.pdf

[_ronzlo_]

I tried to view the pdf but the security certificate has been revoked. Very interesting.

Study: American policy exclusively reflects desires of the rich; citizens' groups largely irrelevant

In Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens [PDF], a paper forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics by Princeton's Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, the authors analyze 1,779 over the past 20+ years and conclude that policy makers respond exclusively to the needs of people in the 90th wealth percentile to the exclusion of pretty much every one else. Mass-scale intervention from citizens' groups barely registers, while the desires of the richest ten percent of America dictate practically the entire national policy landscape.

In a summary in the Washington Post, Larry Bartels writes,

Alas, no. In their primary statistical analysis, the collective preferences of ordinary citizens had only a negligible estimated effect on policy outcomes, while the collective preferences of “economic elites” (roughly proxied by citizens at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) were 15 times as important. “Mass-based interest groups” mattered, too, but only about half as much as business interest groups — and the preferences of those public interest groups were only weakly correlated (.12) with the preferences of the public as measured in opinion surveys.

Gilens and Page frame their study as a test of four broad theories of American politics: “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy,” “Majoritarian Pluralism,” “Economic Elite Domination” and “Biased Pluralism.” “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy,” with its emphasis on public opinion, elections and representation, provides the theoretical backbone of most contemporary political science (including mine). The training of most graduate students (including mine) is primarily couched in that framework. But Gilens’s and Page’s work makes that look like a bad scientific bet, wishfully ignoring most of what actually drives American policy-making.

http://boingboing.net/2014/04/13/study- ... clusi.html

(via Metafilter)

[Genevieve]

Government power is a presupposition. So then, I don't understand what's wrong with the power being limited to the wealthy. Meaning, why is it acceptable to presuppose government authority, but not acceptable to limit access to the authority to the wealthy elites?

I am not posing this as an argument supporting oligarchies. Rather, I'm posting this to expose the flaw the idea of government authority. The idea that everyone should have equal voting rights is just as much a fairytale as the idea that only the wealthy should have a considerable influences on politics.

[kidshuffle]

Cool story bro princeton

[_ronzlo_]

Well, Princeton IS from New Jersey.
---

The idea of a professional politician (or soldier for that matter) is totally wrong IMO. Those are civic duties of merit and too important to be left to those who'd pursue them for profit.

[titchbit]

Now the question is, "how do we return the power to the people". or even if we can

Republican party moves to the center. That's the only way.

Not having a black president would help though. That was a big shock for the inbreds, pushed em further to the right.

[OGLemon]

The U.S. needs a real left-wing party to balance the two right wing ones we have now though.

[rickyarbino]

Now the question is, "how do we return the power to the people". or even if we can

Republican party moves to the center. That's the only way.

Not having a black president would help though. That was a big shock for the inbreds, pushed em further to the right.

It's sad that what you said is so true imo.

[jrkhnds]

The U.S. needs a real left-wing party to balance the two right wing ones we have now though.

as a guy who grew up in a european direct democracy, multi-party-system it always amazes me how "gop vs democrats" gets treated like a clash of cultures when in essence both of them are neoliberal conservatives. what amazes me even more is how 300million people seem to believe and put up with that bullshit.

[rickyarbino]

It's because most Americans are hard pressed on gay marriage, abortion, and paying less taxes.
They give them two sides for a very pointless set of discussions which ultimately keep them from stepping up, physically and intellectually, and addressing what's important.

[titchbit]

meh, there is a pretty large difference between them imo. most of the issues don't affect most of us directly, but there are lots of ppl out there where like, if the republican party were to expand medicare in their state, that would make a difference of life/death for a number of ppl. there will probably come a time where it affects you directly and then you'll see just how big the difference between the parties is.

although yes the democrats are waaaay more center than the republicans are.

what is similar about them is the lying and the bullshit. like right now the democrats are trying to make a thing of the war on women and the "77 cents on the dollar that men make" number that we all know is bullshit, but they don't really care that much about women, they just wanna be re-elected. in the same vein, the republicans don't really care much about reigning in spending - red states take waaaaay more tax money from the federal govt than blue states. if they were faced with the opportunity to truly cut the budget by some fantastical number, they wouldn't do it.

[rickyarbino]

meh, there is a pretty large difference between them imo. most of the issues don't affect most of us directly, but there are lots of ppl out there where like, if the republican party were to expand medicare in their state, that would make a difference of life/death for a number of ppl. there will probably come a time where it affects you directly and then you'll see just how big the difference between the parties is.

Don't get gassed man. America's a religion and the two parties oppose each other as respective representatives of heaven and hell.