Economic Elite Really Do Determine Policy, Study Says

[BlindTiresias]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/08/rich-people-rule/

"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."

Many people have intuitively known this for years but quantification always helps.

[Populist_Prole]

1. And yet, so many cling to the belief that inequality is just due to vicissitudes of capitalism

Some in our own party. Some here on DU even!

Point is, the transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top didn't just happen: It was made to happen. This would be regarded as conspiracy theory talk by free-market fundamentalists/libertarians.

[BlindTiresias]

2. Indeed

The elite or four sector model of power has historically been disregarded in favor of the Majoritarian Pluralism model, which we are now seeing was a grievous error and likely born out of the total aberration of middle of the previous century. This grimly joins with a new book by Thomas Piketty entitled "Capital in the 21st Century" which predicts that we are heading towards the kind of economy that existed before 1914 based on inherited wealth rather than wealth attained through skill sets.