As the 1% grows more powerful, they speak their minds more boldly

Larry Kummer, Editor

12 years ago

Summary: We needn’t worry if we decline the burden of self-government. The 1% will govern us. Perhaps quite well, but certainly not in our interest, but for themselves. In fact they’re already doing so. Today we review some of the evidence. It’s all around us, if we dare look. Now they feel sufficiently secure to tell us.

To the right see an example of marketing in New America. It’s a twofer: selling security to the 1%.

Contents

Ascendant, the 1% grow bolder
They already rule
Showing us the New America
For More Information

(1) Ascendant, the 1% grow bolder

The Great Recession destroyed a significant fraction of the middle classes wealth, tilted the job market even more in favor of corporations over workers, and entrenched the 1%’s control of the government (as seen in the continuity of Bush Jr’s regulatory and economic policies by the Obama administration.

As a natural result, the 1% have grown bolder in public, with deranged exaggerations of efforts to regulate corporations and raise taxes.

Tom Perkins warns in the Wall Street Journal op-ed “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?“
Bud Konheim, CEO of luxury-goods corp Nicole Miller tells the 99% to stop whining.
Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman of Blackstone Group, described proposals to raise his taxes as “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
Robert Benmosche, CEO of bail-out beneficiary AIG, described public outrage over his bonuses as like the lynching of blacks in the South.
Charles Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, explains to the 99% that “You should thank God {for bank bailouts} … Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.”
Jack Welch, retired CEO of GE, warns about Occupy Wall Street: “the risks of this movement’s efforts to demonize business are frighteningly high.“

The for next step: they tell us that they run America, a New America, as in this conversation with Silicon Valley’s Marc Andreessen. We pick up with a reference to a new study showing that the 99% have little influence on public policy (see the next section for details).

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(2) They already rule

It’s astonishing that anyone needs evidence that the 1% runs America, but political scientists have produced numerous studies showing the obvious. Here’s the latest, and one of the best: “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens“, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Perspectives on Politics, Fall 2014 — Abstract:

Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics – which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of interest group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism – offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented.

A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

(3) Showing us the New America

The front page of our newspapers show the outlines of the New America. Polls of the wealthy tell us what to expect in the future. For example, see “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans“, Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright, Perspectives on Politics, March 2013.

It will be a Libertarian paradise for the rich, and back to the future for the rest of us (back to the Gilded Age if we’re lucky; back further if we’re unlucky).

Since the 1% owns our political apparatus (by default, since we’ve abdicated), they attend to its operations — and reap the benefits.

“Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans”, Page et al, *Perspectives in Politics*, March 2013

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Health care and child poverty are not their problems, and so rank low in their priorities. “Traditional values”, the obsession of social conservatives, mean little to them. The 1% don’t care about amusements and mating habits of the proles.

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The government should spend on things that benefit the 1%. Things that benefit the 99% are unimportant.

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Government exists to benefit the 1%. Quite naturally, since they own it.

“Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans”, Page et al, *Perspectives in Politics*

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Social mobility, the pride of America’s past, has no place in its future. De-funding public education for the poor is a good first step to that (as States have done for public colleges for a generation).

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“I’ve got mine” is their mantra. Regulations that restrain corporate power = bad. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations are people, too.