- how many poor folk have the communication skills, education, finances and connections to get elected to the US Congress?
- I kind of think most people in Congress are middle aged or older. Which to me means they should have a significant net worth. (ie approaching retirement)
- Then there is the fact that inflation over decades makes more millionaires as time passes.
MSN Congress is Majority Millionaire
Open Secrets: Millionaires Club
Thoughts?
16 comments:
That's no surprise. For many years, it was well known that 9 of the 10 richest Senators were Democrats. And yet Republicans give far more to charity, percentage-wise. Democrats prefer helping the poor with Other People's Money.
My first reaction was who cares, my mother is a millionaire. Then I decided to ask google if congress is responsive to the needs of the poor. The answer is no, the senate is much more responsive to the rich.
‘Oligarchic tendencies’: Study finds only the wealthy get represented in the Senate
also, I learned that laptops are much more efficient then ipads in creating comments with hyper links.
Too bad there was no detail in the link.
I am wondering what "unresponsive" to the poor means...
If soneone doesn't believe in lifting money from Peter and giving it to Paul, is that being "responsive" to the wealthy and "unresponsive" to the poor?
I believe it was the Senate and House that recently allowed taxes to go up on the rich... While keeping taxes low and credits in place for the poor. I wonder how that was rated in the study.
Or the massive wealth transfer device call ObamaCare...
I would love to know more.
Here is another link that has more examples re Millionaires run our government. Here’s why that matters.
I guess I disagree that it is the size of the bank account that makes a person more capitalistic or socialistic. (G2A Continuum
"Pollsters have known for decades that Americans from different classes have different views about economic issues, that working-class Americans tend to be more progressive and that the wealthy tend to want government to play a smaller role in economic affairs."
I think it has more to do with ones view regarding property rights and who does "America's Wealth" really belong to. (ie personal property vs societal property)
Even when I was a poor college student I was against government mandated wealth transfer. I had been raised such that working hard and learning were the way to make money. I had no thoughts of how I could get the government to give me some of Peter's money.
It's funny how you trust your ideology influenced general impressions more than the information provided by a political scientist who has done enough research to write a book on the subject.
"Of course, class isn’t everything in our legislatures. The differences between lawmakers from different social classes are smaller once we account for other variables, like their parties and the views of their constituents. But even after controlling for these factors using a variety of statistical techniques, there are still significant differences between politicians from different classes. Legislators’ hands are often tied by party leaders, voters, interest groups and so on. But sometimes lawmakers base their choices on their own opinions about the issues before them, and in those instances, it matters whether we’re governed by former investment bankers or former blue-collar workers."
The author seems to be saying that middle class hard working people would vote for more government mandated wealth transfer progressive concepts than wealthy people.
Do you really believe that is true?
Remember that people who write books want to sell books, and almost all research is biased to some degree.
So do wealthier people vote more capitalistic and less socialistic because they are wealthier?
Or are they wealthier and more highly educated because they believe in capitalism and hard work?
I am very interested in the correlation vs causation of this data and argument.
Here in Minnesota, a recent study found that the vast majority of DFL campaign money came from just a few very rich individuals, while Republicans depend on a large number of small donors (but not enough). And if you look at very wealthy people, they tend to be liberal, like the Kennedys and Kerrys, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They feel guilty about all their wealth and think that OTHER wealthy people should be coerced into "sharing," yet given the opportunity to do so themselves, they don't. Kerry avoided the voluntary tax in Mass., Gates and Buffett donated the vast majority of their wealth to a Foundation to avoid taxes. Mark Dayton's trust fund is in South Dakota, tax free.
So, the notion that a Congress run by millionaires serve only millionaires is simply, factually wrong. It is as wrong as the notion that all women think alike, and that "women's issues" can only be solved by representatives who are female. It's offensive. I don't think that Eleanor Holmes Norton and Condoleeza Rice, both black women, are exactly equal in their values and viewpoints.
The only way that rich Senators is a relevant point is to examine what they demand of other rich people compared with what they demand of themselves-- i.e. the rampant hypocrisy of rich Leftists.
I wish he would give more examples of how they would vote differently. NYT Post
He definitely thinks it is important that we change it.
I wonder if companies will start hiring more upper level managers with no college education?
It seems to me that is what he thinks America should do. Now I don't necessarily disagree with him. I think it is just half baked so far.
I have to agree that limiting the number of lawyers in political office would be a good start.
Here is a blog post by Robert Reich, with his policy ideas to address our sluggish economy and the resulting growing income inequality. I am sure you will see these policies as more income redistribution, but even after reading your blog for a couple of years I just never see the political world through your wealth transfer lens. These ideas, which would be more supported by working class congress people than millionaires, just seem right or fair to me.
Today’s Lousy Jobs Report and the Scourge of Inequality
You are right, Reich's comments are definitely towards the Socialist end of the continuum.
I am not sure they would be supported by more working class people. Many working class people I know believe strongly in personal property rights, and are against welfare / free loading.
So tell me more about why you think it is right and fair to take a higher percentage of money from Bill Gates than yourself...
Or to have people pay payroll taxes on their whole income and only give them benefits corresponding to a fraction of their income.
How do you rationalize wanting to let many people get a free ride while others pay the bill?
Begins and Ends
In summary, since my extended family and I worked hard, saved and invested over generations instead of squandering our time, money, etc. Thereby accumulating a significant family net worth. Which continues to generate significant investment income.
We should pay higher rates to support folks who may have chosen a less conservative lifestyle.
What lifestyle would this incent in the typical American?
I really don't feel like arguing with you, so I will provide another link and you can attack Reich's point of view some more.
The Year of the Great Redistribution
So as part of the small minority doing well in the current form of our capitalist economy you probably have no problem with the redistribution of wealth upward.
also, I really don't get why a proposal to raise the minimum wage seems to make you so angry.
Higher minimum wages do not make me angry, they make me confused.
People who want to raise the minimum wages want to make it more expensive to conduct business and hire employees in America.
While at the same time they are complaining about unemployment being too high, arguing that we should not deport illegal aliens and shopping for the lowest price foreign made goods.
If people want wages to go up, deport the illegal aliens, stop bringing in "low knowledge / low skill" legal immigrants, and start buying American Made products.
Arbitrarily raising wages via law will just increase all of our costs, make automation / off shoring easier to cost justify, drive more consumers to buy foreign goods, etc.
It sounds good, but the consequences are not so good.
Mr. Reich is a very smart man, but his ideology makes him blind to the very real consequences of his proposals. For example, the idea that raising the minimum wage actually helps is quickly belied by the reductio ad absurdum argument of, "why not $100 per hour?" We could all be rich! And when proponents say that $100 per hour is simply absurd, the natural question is" why?" Because any argument that can be advanced against $100 per hour applies just as well to $50, $20, $10 or even $5 per hour, just to a lesser degree. If $100 per hour is bad, then anything beyond what is being paid today is bad for the same reason, generally that it will cost jobs. It simply must. Given a choice between a job paying $7.50 per hour and no job at all…
Extending unemployment benefits simply takes money out of the economy and reduces the incentive for people to become employed. We have had numerous extensions of the benefits and the economy has not improved. It is simply backwards from sensible policy. Grow the economy and unemployment solves itself.
"Repairing the nation's crumbling infrastructure" has already been tried and we found that "those shovel ready jobs were not shovel ready." Not only that, it is that much more money taken out of the economy that would otherwise be put into private investment and consumption that grew the economy rather than simply shuffling existing money around.
Expanding Medicaid to the "near poor" is again backwards. Medicaid should be converted to a premium support program and turned back to the states on its way to being abolished, because government-run healthcare simply does not work and does more harm than good.
Finally, putting punitive taxes on "the rich" and on investments is a sure way to kill any economic recovery or growth. Period. A smart economist like Mr. Reich should know this.
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