DID YOU KNOW That The United States and Your Local Government Now Function As An Oligarchy?

“The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.

The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite…

Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organisations: ‘When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.’”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html

Just in case you have any doubt you can probably visit your latest City Council decision and see this effect in action in your town for yourself. Here in my local city, Redwood City, CA, the City Council recently held a public hearing in regards to the maximum allowable development guidelines in place.

The staff recommendation was to allow the staff to be flexible and depending on applications from developers convert existing residential and retail space to office space. There were at least nine speakers against and two industry speakers in favor; but the council voted five in favor and only one against (one council member had to recuse herself because of her conflicts of interest.) This at a time when local newspaper headlines are reporting on the fact that the lack of local housing in general and affordable housing in particular is what will probably hold the local jobs market back.

Some of the residents who spoke against the staff recommended option mentioned concerns such as that the City Council members were putting “developer’s desires ahead of the needs of residents”, that there was a “development explosion” in town and that “four fifths of jobs were non-residents.” However rather than listen, when it was time for the council members to discuss the issue some of them proceeded to berate the local electorate by reminding the attendees that a prior development project that was also initially not popular ended up being very popular exhibiting the kind of hubris that assumes that because they were right once they would always be right. The council members also strongly encouraged citizens to attend and participate in the discussions. And in fact several of the council members felt that the disconnect with the public was a communications problem. In other words the City staff hadn’t communicated enough with the residents for the residents to fully understand the benefits.

The reality however is that residents who begin to participate soon realize that they are merely actors in a play that already has an anticipated ending which does not include their opinions. More communication is really short hand for not enough brainwashing. Please participate is short hand for then we can say we invited your comments. But what is the point of commenting in an oligarchy?

As the professors from Princeton and Northwestern concluded in the United States elected government officials no longer represent the majority of their constituents but instead the local elite which in my town as one council member noted meant the Facebook and high tech employees who live in town and not the thousands who toil at restaurants and retail establishments for minimum wage.