Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich

[n2doc]

KEVIN DRUM draws our attention to an intriguing paper Martin Gilens, on the responsiveness of policy to preferences across income groups. Here are the key charts:



At left, we see that as people at the bottom of the income spectrum care more about an issue, the probability of action on that issue scarcely budges. At right we see that policy responds a little more to median preferences. But what's clear in both is that the rich are much more successful at getting their issues on the docket. That's not really that surprising, but why should it be the case? Mr Drum writes:

Gilens' guess is that "the most obvious source of influence over policy that distinguishes high-income Americans is money." This sounds like a pretty good guess to me.

Specifically, Mr Gilens looks at a range of potential causal and non-causal explanations of the connection, eliminates some that don't seem to correspond with available data, and concludes that the striking responsiveness of policy to the preferences of the rich is probably due to the one characteristic in which the rich are strikingly unique, namely, their richness.

more

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/02/political_economy

[eilen]

1. Thanks for posting those charts

I just posted an excerpt from that article in Mother Jones.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline?page=1#disqus_thread

[GeorgeGist]

2. There's only one way to cure cancer.