Harvard study: America is an oligarchy
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, June 2, 2024 12:59
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Cite?
Originally posted by Geezer:
Second, the folks at Princeton, Northwestern, and Harvard, when asked about the study's conclusion that America is an oligarchy, all responded, "Yes. And we like it that way."
Four of the 10 richest Americans have degrees from Ivy league schools (8 out of 4,500 colleges and universities in the U.S.). One from Princeton, one from Harvard, and two from Columbia. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg also went to Harvard, although they didn't get degrees. Seems like the Ivy League is pretty much the education of choice for oligarchs.
http://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=00544
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Northwestern, I expect, would like to get some grads on the list.
"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."
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Well OK. I see you don't mind putting words in the mouths of other people as well! You don't just do that with us here!
To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. - Thomas Paine The American Crisis
OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.
"You, who live in any kind of comfort or convenience, do not know how these people can survive these things, do you? They will endure because there is no immediate escape from endurance. Some will die, the rest must live."
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This morning Paul Krugman wrote about the study that started this thread:
Apr 21, 8:29 am
Class, Oligarchy, and the Limits of Cynicism
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/class-oligarchy-and-the-li
mits-of-cynicism/
A recent paper (pdf) by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so. Gilens and Page look at a number of issues over the past 30+ years where polling data let us identify public policy preferences, which can be compared with elite and interest-group preferences. And what they find is that politicians don’t seem to care very much about what the public thinks: when elite preferences and popular preferences are different, the elite almost always wins.
This is an important insight — and it gains special force these days, when the elite’s views not only favor the elite versus the rest (duh) but have also been systematically wrong, on issues from invading Iraq to giving deficits a higher priority than jobs.
But there is a danger here of going too far, and imagining that electoral politics is irrelevant. Why bother getting involved in campaigns, when the oligarchy rules whichever party is in power?
So it’s worth pointing out it does make a difference. Yes, Democrats pay a lot of attention to plutocrats, and even make a point of inviting Patrimonial Capitalism: The Next Generation to White House galas (I would have missed that, even though it’s in my own paper, but for Kathleen Geier. Thanks!). But it’s quite wrong to say that the parties’ behavior in office is the same. As Floyd Norris points out, Obama has in fact significantly raised taxes on very high incomes, largely through special surcharges included in the Affordable Care Act; and what the Act does with the extra revenue is expand Medicaid and provide subsidies on the exchanges, both means-tested programs whose beneficiaries tend to be mainly lower-income adults. The net effect will be significant losses for the super-elite — not crippling losses, to be sure, and hardly anything that will affect their elite status — and major gains to tens of millions of less fortunate Americans.
If you’re waiting for a revolution, or even a new New Deal, this may seem disappointing. But it matters a lot all the same.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Then Krugman is an idiot.
Both Republicans AND Democrats built the economic/ politcal monstrosity under which we now live:
Manufacturing jobs shipped off to Mexico (thank you Clinton) and China (thank you Bush)
The greatest disparity in wealth since even before the Great Depression (thank you, all Presidents since Reagan but especially GWB and Obama) leading to...
The collapse of the entire world's financial system which destroyed 40% of the worlds' wealth (thank you, Clinton for ending Glass-Steagall)
The complete control of ideas by large entities (thank you Clinton for DMCA)
Over the past 14 years, we've experience a historic transfer of wealth fror the American middle class to the very wealthy here and in China.
The inexorable transfer of "rights" from individuals to corporations. (thank you Supreme Court)
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It takes a very partisan economist to ignore all of those tectonic shifts... which BTW have not been reversed even the littlest bit, but continue on their inexorable way. The average American hemorrhaged wealth and rights upwards, and Democrats manage to scavenge a few crumbs from the process?
We don't need crumbs, we need to get control of this process and have our interests represented. Isn't that what the politicans are getting paid to do???
If they're not running the country FOR US, FIRE THEM. Kick them the fuck out.
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^ Total bs and utter nonsense.
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"If you’re waiting for a revolution, or even a new New Deal, this may seem disappointing."
Because crumbs matter.
To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. - Thomas Paine The American Crisis
OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.
"You, who live in any kind of comfort or convenience, do not know how these people can survive these things, do you? They will endure because there is no immediate escape from endurance. Some will die, the rest must live."
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And Krugman demonstrates WHY public opinion doesn't count: Because people become partisan, and lose sight of WHAT'S IMPORTANT. So when both political parties become co-opted, the audience is still engaged with show, which they mistake for a real choice.
It's very frustrating... the FF gave us a mechanism... imperfect and corruptable, but still there... by which we can non-violently force government to do our bidding. Because, yanno, who the fuck wants a revolution every sixty years? But partisanship has completely derailed the process.
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Bump, just because this is important, unlike Jongsstraw.
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A bigger question to me is: how do you get the 1% to turn over a chunk of their money, and not by mandate, but happily?
Why happily? Aren't they benefiting disproportionately from society? And doesn't society have the right to govern itself? And, uhm - how does this compare with European democracies?
If you threaten or tax you will get a fight, could get real ugly, could even get worse. So, how do we get them to agree to turning over some of their wealth willingly?
I've wondered for some time now just how much democracy we have. If people woke up from their stupor and started voting their own interests, and threatening the privilege of the wealthy and powerful - would we see the military come out? It would be an interesting experiment in this democracy. I'd like to see just how much power the vote ultimately has here.
OONJERAH - We are too dumb to live and smart enough to wipe ourselves out.
"You, who live in any kind of comfort or convenience, do not know how these people can survive these things, do you? They will endure because there is no immediate escape from endurance. Some will die, the rest must live."
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