It's Official; Democracy is dead...

[elasg]

As if we weren't pretty sure of that already, this study out of Princeton University compares the political influence of the common voter (ie. you and me) with that of the wealthy - it's no contest.

Bye, bye, democracy, it was nice knowing you.

Comments

[evil_little_dog]

The study from 2002? Yeah, that made me very...disappointed.

[elasg]

I was talking about this paper (linked in the article) that will be published this fall, but democracy has been under threat for 50 years, as the numerous references throughout the piece from papers from the 50's, 60's and 70's show. I remember reading in high school about Eisenhower warning of allowing the military/industrial complex too much power - I think that was because he saw this sort of thing coming. I don't know which paper you are referring to from 2002, but Citizen's United and the McCutcheon decision are the recent events that are mobilizing me. I expect they will allow things to get so out of hand even those who never pay attention to politics will notice something's wrong. I hope so.

[evil_little_dog]

This is what I was referring to.

[elasg]

Yeah, that's the study - I presume you are you referring to the data set? I don't think it's less valid for using an older data set. I did some field work in the 80's that was never incorporated into any published paper until the early 2000's. It depends on when they can find someone willing to write the thing.

I like what the poster you linked to said - if they came to this conclusion from a dataset that ended in 2002, there'd be an even stronger correlation if they looked at more recent data. Things certainly haven't gotten 'fairer' in the past few years.

[matrixmann]

Democracy (in the US) perhaps is in danger since someone could gather a great amount of money on his sole name. And that has been since the railroads started to conquer America.