“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Gilens & Page (2014)
Remember the two guys that did the study which proved America is a oligarchy? (Not that those of us paying attention really needed a study to verify that.)
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders later even asked Fed Head Janet Yellen during a hearing on Capitol Hill if she thought America was an oligarchy; even she couldn’t deny it.
Those two study authors, professors Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University, have now analyzed more than two decades of data to try and answer a new question: Does the U.S. government actually represent the people?
Short answer? Hell no.
Via Represent.us:
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
This video gives a quick rundown of their findings — it all boils down to one simple graph:
Congress literally does not care what the people think. Now you have a study with more than twenty years of data and a fancy graph to prove it.
Congress is bought and paid for by billionaires and big business interests. Those interests have been weaved into the national security narrative. What the people want? Well, that would only matter if we were living in a democracy or even a democratic republic as America once was supposed to be. We aren’t. If we ever really were, we haven’t been for a very long, long time.
Again, most of us didn’t need a study to tell us this… but, somehow, others in this country still believe their vote matters on a federal level.
Stop looking for these puppets to run things unless you just really like puppet shows.
