In case you’re looking for data to back up that unpleasant suspicion you have that rich people have more say in the way America works than the poor and middle class do, two Princeton researchers have just completed a study which more or less proves it.
They studied over 1,800 policy initiatives between 1981 and 2002 and discovered
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” they write, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
He who has the gold makes the rules. For a while there this country tried to get away from that, but it’s been creeping backwards.