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Our Unrepresentative Representation
syndalis
Getting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
Getting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
I started with posting this in the OWS thread, but since I think it is a much broader topic in scope than just the protest itself, and deserves discussion free from pepper-spray and "occupy" location issues, here's a thread.
http://www.artonissues.com/2011/12/our-unrepresentative-representation/
There is a lot of meat in that article, but the basic gist of it is that there are many problems that are fixable by our representatives by increasing regulations, increasing taxes on the people who earn significantly more than the rest of America, and closing down loopholes and other "low tax" vehicles that the wealthy use to not pay into the system. Direct some of these funds gained into programs that promote social and economic mobility. But one of, if not THE driving reason that such change will never happen is because:
1) Politicians are beholden to extremely wealthy entities that ensure their electoral victories through donations and other contributions, who would never assist a politician who supported such policy.
2) Politicians themselves are part of the problem.
Expecting our representatives (who do NOT represent a broad swatch of the American people financially) to vote against their own financial self-interest is folly.
So I guess the question is... is this fixable? At the rate of economic class disparity we have reached in the past decade where 100 people hold as much wealth as 50% of the rest of America, do we have time to allow the process of electing new Politicians to correct this problem. What guarantees do we have that whomever gets elected will not be exactly the same as the one who left (someone seeking the ability to legally "insider trade" with classified knowledge, grow their own wealth, and be a lap dog to corporate and lobby interests).
How do we fix this?
http://www.artonissues.com/2011/12/our-unrepresentative-representation/
The Occupy Wall Street movement has reason to protest. Special interest-driven deregulation policy was at the heart of the recent economic collapse. It has been the “99%” that has paid the price for this policy failure with lost employment, devalued housing prices, retirement accounts being cut in half, and increased levels of poverty while the wealthiest in America continued to do well. A valid question is why our elected representatives are not working together to put a stop to failed policy that has been so damaging to the majority of Americans. This article will examine the disproportionate number of the wealthy who hold elected office in Washington and the conflict of interest they face in setting policy versus their own financial interests as well as the special interests that finance their campaigns. And it will explore an incentive that politicians have to stay in office where they can act on non-public information to their own financial benefit. It examines the issue of whether our Congress has become ‘Our Unrepresentative Representation’.
There is a lot of meat in that article, but the basic gist of it is that there are many problems that are fixable by our representatives by increasing regulations, increasing taxes on the people who earn significantly more than the rest of America, and closing down loopholes and other "low tax" vehicles that the wealthy use to not pay into the system. Direct some of these funds gained into programs that promote social and economic mobility. But one of, if not THE driving reason that such change will never happen is because:
1) Politicians are beholden to extremely wealthy entities that ensure their electoral victories through donations and other contributions, who would never assist a politician who supported such policy.
2) Politicians themselves are part of the problem.
Expecting our representatives (who do NOT represent a broad swatch of the American people financially) to vote against their own financial self-interest is folly.
So I guess the question is... is this fixable? At the rate of economic class disparity we have reached in the past decade where 100 people hold as much wealth as 50% of the rest of America, do we have time to allow the process of electing new Politicians to correct this problem. What guarantees do we have that whomever gets elected will not be exactly the same as the one who left (someone seeking the ability to legally "insider trade" with classified knowledge, grow their own wealth, and be a lap dog to corporate and lobby interests).
How do we fix this?
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
syndalis on
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I think the only practical approach is to start pushing progressive politics at the local level and do it truly grass roots.
I just hope we have enough time left for it to work, because it took the Tea Party at least 40 years to get where they are.
I am simply pointing out that because so many of our representatives are straight-up millionaires, asking them to pass policy that will take a bigger chunk of their money away at the end of the year is not going to produce a good result.
When 80% of the country thinks millionaires and billionaires should be taxed more, and only a minority of representatives... there is a solid disconnect between the will of the people and those they put in office, and it is disconcerting.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
There are, in contrast, politicians who give their entire salary to charity, or wealthy individuals who strongly advocate for policies that would reduce their own wealth. Wealth itself does not inherently make a person opposed to more progressive taxation, for example. The real problem would be whatever is creating these values for the people in charge of a nation.
I'll bite, at least on the "elected" angle and not the "mandated" one: Yes, for mostly the same reasons as this. To the extent that the congresscritters vote to protect people like themselves, it would be better if that represented a lower average net worth, which would increase the number of people who benefit from it.
On the national level, I'd say the net worth of either candidate is well above the national average at least.
No, he's suggesting that you will get a better representation. The fact that it may not result in "better" policy is actually irrelevant.
The idea that, to represent me, a person must be similar to me, is a giant fallacy.
Not really, no. Unless you believe that altruism trumps the self in the majority of humanity. Gl with that.
It's also worth comparing their wealth to the average of people who actually vote.
Besides, I'm more worried about the less wealthy freshman reps who sometimes end up way in debt after spending a lot on their campaigns.
This will just bring us back to how fucked up campaign financing is.........
If 80% of the country wants something, a thing that everyone from lowly farmers to Nobel Prize winning economists think would benefit the country, a bill comes before the representative body that grants it, and less than 50% vote for it? There better be a damn good reason they are defying their own people.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
So you are saying its a bit like South Park's explanation of the 9/11 Conspiracy theories. There's just a percentage of people who are moronic enough to believe shit even when its not true. They will stick to ideology over facts, circumstances, etc.
You know that could also be a problem with our electoral system.
The current U.S.A. population is over 311 million people (312,815,336)
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
And our most recent accounting, A report by Capgemini for Merrill Lynch stated that as of 2007 there are approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who hold at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences.
Yes, there are some reports out there that skew as high as 16 million, but they are fluff pieces aimed at getting people to invest in specific industries and countries. The safe research puts us at 1, MAYBE 2 percent of our population.
The opportunities your dad had are not afforded to you. Benefits are more expensive, and companies are giving less of them. Pensions and retirement plans are disappearing or getting matched less and less. A significant percentage of people don't even have jobs so that these first two points are even a concern. And the "Middle Class" is by no means anywhere near the middle any more.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
For people of the age group that is currently in Congress, those things were afforded to them. They also had a 10-year run of stock market growth that was largely unprecedented in American history - I have a feeling that if you gathered the statistics for lawyers currently in their mid-50s and later (probably the most specific peer group that can be applied to Congress in general), you would find a very similar distribution of millionaires. While it may not be representative of the general population, it is representative of the people who tend to be elected to Congress.
This provides an interesting question
Do we pay politicians enough that they siren call of money no longer tempts them so easily
or do we pay them less and hope that financial hardship engenders an empathy for the middle class?
Given the obvious interests anyone wealthy or powerful would have in political office, I don't think low pay is a viable option for anyone even remotely important in government, and creating a system where compensation is largely based on making rich friends to help you once you leave office is already a problem low pay could make worse.
I suspect the problem is more cultural than anything else, Congress is very insulated. Mitt Romney's $10,000 gaffe demonstrates this well (as do other gaffes from any number of other politicians, that's just a recent example). For someone in Congress, a $10,000 bet is appropriate because you need that amount of money or more before it becomes psychologically relevant, but for an average citizen the idea of a $10,000 bet is insane.
These people live in a world where $10,000 is not a large amount of money, and I suspect that culture does more harm than any fealty a politician has to their own pocketbook.
Entrenched power at the moment is resulting in bad representation and needs to be overthrown... and the only possible way that's going to happen with a long, steady climb from the bottom.
But the less crazy thing to focus on is the fact that our overly complex tax code makes it such that even the smallest and most unnoticed decisions of politicians can be extremely important to the finances of the wealthy and of businesses. And overly complex methods that attempt to correct for this only increase the amount of money and investment that those wealthy and businesses are going to put towards it. Politicans need to lose their ability to insert a small seemingly meaningless phrase into a 100,000-page bill that effectively nets a local coporation millions of dollars in tax savings. That is where the majority of their power comes from. The only solution I can see is a vast, firm simplification of taxation. This would instantly neuter the majority of corruption and money influence.
How much do Republicans hate taxes? THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS much
Okay actually they fucking LOVE them (on poor people)
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I think the per candidate restriction at the electorate level is about $25k NZ (about 19k USD?), noting of course others can spend on the behalf of candidates, parties, or causes. This is also regulated and capped.
That being said, the NZ PM is both the 17th richest elected leader in the world (apparently) as well as the 12th highest paid. So it clearly isn't all gravy
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Here is the first article I could find on it.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Not to mention that the IRS is so terrifying to many members of the middle class that they get little to no benefit from loopholes they're actually supposed to be able to take advantage of. They worry too much about being audited, but it's not financially viable to pay someone to do their taxes for them, or give them advice on how to minimize them.
Here's a solution for you: change the structure of congress. We stopped adding new congressmen based on population so it wouldn't get unwieldy in size, but those extra congressmen have simply been replaced in duty by large congressional staffs. Whereas if we actually had one congressman for every 60,000 citizens that's a small enough population size that those in more average income brackets could more likely be elected, and the congressmen would actually have some tie to the community they're from. 60,000 is not so great a number of people to represent, especially compared to the over 700,000 we have now.
--LeVar Burton
"The current practice ensures that every word spoken during legislative debates and every exchange between Members or with the Chair is broadcast live." - Speaker of the House John Boehner, denying C-SPAN's umpteenth request to add their own camera feed to the House.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
edit: of course, like I said this would require a change in how we structure congress. It would involve so many members it would require a more granular division of spheres than even the committee system we have now.
--LeVar Burton
Bolded the parts where you're messing up the statistics.
It's also a pretty narrow definition of millionaire households that you're using, which exclude consumer durables and primary residences. It's a fair rubric, but probably not what most people think of when they're thinking of millionaires in their mansions and sports cars.
Read about this, but wasn't aware that he cut the feed on top of just walking off. What a bag of damn cowards, and the media is playing into their narrative again. The story according to most news is that the house wants the extension for more than two months, which is a load of horse shit and anyone who actually knows the situations knows that, but they don't get their information from the most inappropriately named thing in this country the "news" seriously its almost become an oxy moron in america to have an "unbiased" news source.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I thought they did these things in quarters ... so the 2 month extension should really be a 3 month extension? Is that what they're fussing about?
Source? Now you're just guessing because it's "common sense".
They want it for an entire year and also to tack on some extra things for good measure.