The Influence of the Affluent

A report from Demos is titled Stacked Deck:  How the Dominance of Politics by the Affluent and Business Undermines Economic Mobility in America.  It discusses how the rich have different priorities than the rest of us and how they have greater means for shaping policy.  Remedies include limiting money in politics, make it easier to vote, reduce economic inequality, and make corporations more responsive to the public interest.

Update (December 14):  Bill Moyers on the dangers of the unrestrained influence of wealth.

Update (April 5, 2014):  There's an interesting juxtaposition between a recent Supreme Court ruling removing the donation cap to candidates in an election cycle and Republican efforts to restrict voting in the name of non-existent voter fraud.  Jon Stewart made the point in "Donors Unchained".  It is astonishing--rich people are "free" to spend millions of dollars on as many candidates as they choose, but a poor person better have their damn voter ID or they're not even going to be allowed to vote.

Update (May 12, 2014):  Brad Friedman is hopeful that we've reach peak Republican "voter fraud" fraud.

Update (August 29, 2014):  Justin Levitt of the Loyola University Law School uncovers a voter fraud rate of approximately 0.0000031 percent over a fourteen year period.

Update (July 27, 2015):  Sean McElwee reports on research showing that the donor class is richer, whiter, and mostly male. Their disproportionate influence often works against the public interest. The solution is greater voter participation and public financing.

Update (July 17, 2020):  Matthew Rozsa describes a study by L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery.

[I]n the United States, people are conditioned to believe that we live in a meritocracy and to attribute success or failure primarily to one's talent and hard work. When members of the upper-middle or upper class are confronted with evidence that class privilege plays a major role in determining socioeconomic status, their self-regard is challenged. To maintain their sense of self-worth, they will exaggerate their own hardships or focus on the amount of work they do — even though class privilege does not preclude the reality of non-class related hardships and many people work very hard without achieving socioeconomic mobility.

Fortunately not all wealthy people are seek to justify their privilege.

A group of more than 80 self-described "millionaires for humanity" came together to urge governments across the globe to tax them and other ultra wealthy people to cover the immediate costs of the coronavirus pandemic and to build more equitable, just societies in the long term.

A letter is being circulated ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Governors meeting.

Today, we, the undersigned millionaires, ask our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently.