Is the US an Oligarcy?

[ONW]

Regardless of your political leanings and knowing that we were all pretty much aware of this, seeing this trend quantified is eye opening.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favor) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favor) is adopted about 45% of the time."

"On the other hand: When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized 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 favor policy change, they generally do not get it."

http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/G...ens and Page 2014-Testing Theories 3-7-14.pdf

This is the paper published by the researchers.

 

[BobStackFan4Life]

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2008

Noam Chomsky On The Oligarchy
“The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party,” says Chomsky. On Europe and Obama: “The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.” As for American intellectuals, he says, Orwell had it right: intellectuals “not only do not disapprove of the crimes of their own state, but have the remarkable capacity not even to see them.”

 

[BobStackFan4Life]

 

[TownieDeac]

I thought you hated Chomsky, BSF?

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

I'm not going to disagree that the rich have more general impact than everyone else, but how do you explain Obamacare under this theory? You can't just KenPom it away as a statistical outlier when it is probably the most despised piece of legislation in American history by the class that is supposed to have the most control. If that ultimate control was actually there, Obamacare wouldn't be.

 

[TownieDeac]

I'm not going to disagree that the rich have more general impact than everyone else, but how do you explain Obamacare under this theory? You can't just KenPom it away as a statistical outlier when it is probably the most despised piece of legislation in American history by the class that is supposed to have the most control. If that ultimate control was actually there, Obamacare wouldn't be.

:tard:

 

[RJKarl]

The reason it is despised is 9-10 figure of disinformation and outright lies by the oligarchs and Faux News. The basis of this is if the public knew the truth Obama would go down as a POTUS who did something others in office couldn't get done.

Now that people are actually participating, the tide is changing. There is a small net positive feeling about it. https://www.facebook.com/CliniciansfortheUnderserved/posts/10202518615500025?stream_ref=10

The reality is the oligarchs and the old white people resent a black as POTUS. No other POTUS has ever been treated this way.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

For purposes of this discussion, it is irrelvant why people rightly or wrongly hated it, what is important is that the people supposedly in full control absolutely hated it. If those people truly ran the country then their hatred would have killed it, end of story. If you are in power, you don't just decide not to execute that power on the thing that pisses you off the most.

 

[RJKarl]

They would have opposed integration in the south through the early 70s if it was up to the people. That's not how government works.

 

[WakeandBake]

I'm not going to disagree that the rich have more general impact than everyone else, but how do you explain Obamacare under this theory? You can't just KenPom it away as a statistical outlier when it is probably the most despised piece of legislation in American history by the class that is supposed to have the most control. If that ultimate control was actually there, Obamacare wouldn't be.

I thought Democrats/liberals were elitist limo riding George Soros fellaters and that Obamacare was giant handjob for the insurance industry

 

[ImTheCaptain]

HOW MANY FUCKING THINGS AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT

 

[BobStackFan4Life]

I'm not going to disagree that the rich have more general impact than everyone else, but how do you explain Obamacare under this theory? You can't just KenPom it away as a statistical outlier when it is probably the most despised piece of legislation in American history by the class that is supposed to have the most control. If that ultimate control was actually there, Obamacare wouldn't be.

There was strong support for a public option (and this despite massive amounts of corporate propaganda telling people they did not want this). So what happened?

But neither that nor the public option's consistently strong appeal in public-opinion polls was enough to persuade Obama to get behind it.

Indeed, after months of watching Obama say generally that he supports the public option while doing little to see it implemented into law, backers of the idea were unsurprised it was left out of his final offer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/obama-health-care-plan-dr_n_471320.html
Most people wanted something akin to the kind of health care system we see in Germany and other advanced industrialized nations. What we got was something the insurance companies could get behind.

Remember, the primary architect of Obamacare was Liz Fowler - the insurance industry executive who temporarily took a government post to write the new law, and then quickly moved back into health care lobbying. She was ably assisted by an battalion of her fellow insurance industry cronies, who in 2009 deployed their army of lobbyists to shape the underlying health care legislation. She was also backed up by many other Obama administration officials who worked on the legislation and then immediately headed to the lucrative world of insurance-industry lobbying.

It all highlights what a recent J.P. Morgan report suggests: namely, that Wall Street sees the exchanges as opportunities for even more profiteering than ever. Why? Because, in the words of one giddy investor, the launch of Obamacare represents "the moment of the sun for the (insurance) industry.” That's especially the case with the Obama administration now waiving some of the relatively few high-profile consumer protections that progressive legislators managed to sneak into law.

If this taxpayer-funded gift to the insurance industry promised to extend better, more affordable health care to more consumers over the long-haul, then perhaps you could have honestly labeled Obamacare a piece of public-interest legislation - yes, an inefficient, overly expensive piece of public-interest legislation, but public-interest legislation nonetheless. But labeling it as such today is absurd. After all, insurers are already gaming the exchanges in ways that contradict President Obama's promises of better health care choices. Meanwhile, for many Americans, costs are expected to rise. In fact, at the very moment the industry is enjoying huge profits, it is openly promising to soon use its new leverage under Obamacare to jack up premiums.

True, many low-income Americans will initially benefit from subsidized coverage. But as Barron's details in an article appropriately headlined "How to Profit From Obamacare," the growing subsidies will not necessarily be used to provide health care over the long term. Instead, they may increasingly be used to pad the profit margins of the insurers contracted by Medicaid. And with Obamacare statutorily cementing insurers role as profit-taking middlemen between taxpayer subsidies and health care providers, the only way to permanently maintain health care services will be to submit to a now-institutionalized extortion scheme. Either Obamacare coughs up more taxpayer money to pay the insurers' ever-increasing levy, or more people lose their coverage and die for lack of any health insurance whatsoever.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/obamacare-ker-pow/

 

[94Deac]

It really speaks to the underlying rational for why so many of the 99% passionately and loudly defend the 1%. Howl, lap dog, howl.

 

[WakeandBake]

There was strong support for a public option (and this despite massive amounts of corporate propaganda telling people they did not want this). So what happened?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/obama-health-care-plan-dr_n_471320.html
Most people wanted something akin to the kind of health care system we see in Germany and other advanced industrialized nations. What we got was something the insurance companies could get behind.


https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/obamacare-ker-pow/

yes this, a giant handjob for the Insurance industry.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

yes this, a giant handjob for the Insurance industry.

Even accepting that to be true (which given CH's reports from the inside over the past year or so I would somewhat disagree with - if the insurance industry was out for massive profit, wouldn't they have implemented something that works significantly more efficiently than what we got?), it's not like the insurance industry is the rich and powerful segment of society discussed in the theory set forth in the article. Assuming some sort of inner circle of insurance execs conspired to ram through Obamacare (which again, I think is suspect) the remainder of the 1% has a helluva lot more pull than the insurance industry. You think the rest of the 1% is going to bend over for the insurance industry? Hell no.

 

[WakeandBake]

Even accepting that to be true (which given CH's reports from the inside over the past year or so I would somewhat disagree with - if the insurance industry was out for massive profit, wouldn't they have implemented something that works significantly more efficiently than what we got?), it's not like the insurance industry is the rich and powerful segment of society discussed in the theory set forth in the article. Assuming some sort of inner circle of insurance execs conspired to ram through Obamacare (which again, I think is suspect) the remainder of the 1% has a helluva lot more pull than the insurance industry. You think the rest of the 1% is going to bend over for the insurance industry? Hell no.

it's not? who runs the insurance companies in America? aren't they public for-profit corporations with billions, trillions, in profits?

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

Sure, but there are a lot more other corporations with billions in profits that have nothing to do with insurance and despise Obamacare.

 

[WakeandBake]

perhaps the health insurance lobby was just a little more powerful than them

 

[RJKarl]

Sure, but there are a lot more other corporations with billions in profits that have nothing to do with insurance and despise Obamacare.

I think companies like WalMart should haveto pay for the food stamps and Medicaid expenses the government spends subsidizing their employees. After all without the healthcare, food and other services, those people wouldn't be able work for WalMart without the government assistance.

 

[Deacon923]

Going back to the 2008 election, remember that EVERYONE wanted change in the health care system. It was a huge issue and McCain ran on it just as hard as Obama did. Business was aligned with poor people in wanting change, nobody was arguing that the status quo was good.

Once the legislation got started, the elites had far, far more influence over how the legislation came out than the mass of the people who barely understand it. Elites always win, the question is which elite wins which particular battle. I'm sure the insurance companies would rather pay lower taxes and not subsidize Exxon, but they lost that battle a long time ago (silly example but you get the point).

Also remember that at the time the Republicans (allegedly the party of business) were in total disarray and had no power. The elites were not going to work with them to put together some Republican alternative plan, they went where the power was and got the best deal they could out of the Democrats (which included eliminating the public option and cementing the insurance companies as permanent middlemen, as stated above).