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Defining the State in 2016: America’s Financial Oligarchy | |
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< | -- By LaurenRoemke? - 23 Mar 2016 | >
> | -- By LaurenRoemke - 23 Mar 2016 | | | | |
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< | America’s state in 2016 most reflects a financial oligarchy. Even though Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread franchise, a few wealthy citizens and interest groups disproportionately control U.S. policymaking compared to median-income citizens (https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf). Over half the money given to presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign came from just 158 families (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=0), and in 2012, lobbyists and interest groups spent $6.7 billion to influence Congress (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/25/how-much-lobbying-is-there-in-washington-its-double-what-you-think/). As a result, people have lost faith in our political institutions; Americans’ trust in Congress declined from 42% in 1973 to just 7% in 2014 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/171710/public-faith-congress-falls-again-hits-historic-low.aspx). There is a widespread and accurate belief that our political institutions have lost all remnants of legitimacy and can no longer be used to effectuate change, as reflected by the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2008 and citizen rage in the 2016 election. In order to dismantle the oligarchic structure and create a participatory democracy, it will help to first understand the financial oligarchy’s origins and consequences. | >
> | America’s state in 2016 most reflects a financial oligarchy. Even though Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread franchise, a few wealthy citizens and interest groups disproportionately control U.S. policymaking compared to median-income citizens. Over half the money given to presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign came from just 158 families (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=0), and in 2012, lobbyists and interest groups spent $6.7 billion to influence Congress (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/25/how-much-lobbying-is-there-in-washington-its-double-what-you-think/). As a result, people have lost faith in our political institutions; Americans’ trust in Congress declined from 42% in 1973 to just 7% in 2014 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/171710/public-faith-congress-falls-again-hits-historic-low.aspx). There is a widespread and accurate belief that our political institutions have lost all remnants of legitimacy and can no longer be used to effectuate change, as reflected by the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2008 and citizen rage in the 2016 election. In order to dismantle the oligarchic structure and create a participatory democracy, it will help to first understand the financial oligarchy’s origins and consequences. | | | Origins of America’s Oligarchy | | |
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897)
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I suggested you make links. Here you just cluttered the text up with URLs, which makes it impossible for the reader to read the text easily. That's obviously not the way to write for the Web. The "link to world" icon at the top of the in-browser editing frame will show you how the wiki markup works. I did one example for you at the top of the essay.
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You did gain focus over the first draft, which was a significant
improvement. But an economic history of the postwar US, constituted
mostly of citations to Mother Jones and Vanity Fair, is not very
closely researched or reasoned yet, I think. It would be hard to
write about the subject of inequality's roots in this era without
mentioning Thomas Piketty, I think, given the overwhelming response
to his work, but you managed it. Somewhat to your disadvantage, I
think, both because he is rigorous in his research and doesn't rely
on Mother Jones for his facts, and also because he shows that the
growth of inequality has occurred in societies whose tax policies
bear no relation to those of the US.
This somewhat undermines the idea that lowering capital gains taxes,
or the 1986 reforms to eliminate capital gains treatment altogether,
or their abandonment to return to complexity in the successor
administration, are the source of the problem. If, indeed, the
concentration of wealth and power had been created by tax policy
alone, it would be hard to understand your subsequent claim that the
concentration cannot easily be addressed within the current political
system.
Do you really mean to assert that "The past four decades have
witnessed the rise of a two-tiered justice system that shields and
immunizes the elite from the consequences of their criminal acts, yet
subjects ordinary citizens to very harsh criminal sanctions"? Are we
to imagine that in 1960, or 1910, or 1850, or 1800, or 1450, that
wasn't true? Why would you present this most fundamental injustice
as a recent development; surely you know that's wrong.
This was, I think, a good first draft. The route to improvement is
more precision in argument, more reliance on reliable research and
less reliance on magazine journalism and Glenn Greenwald (if those
are not synonymous). Senator Sanders could do what he did on the
basis of sentiments, but you are writing on the basis of fact.
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