Most ordinary Americans in 2016 don't have the same level of power and influence - which many people value in and of itself - as Rockefeller did in 1916.
The people who really control things in the US aren't politicians. That is way beneath the scions of multi-generational wealth. Even T* isn't in their club.
The challenge isn't that people don't want to engage; it's that the demands of daily life, such as working long hours to make ends meet, leave little room for the kind of sustained political involvement that wealthier individuals can afford. When we say that people delegate their power to figureheads, it might be more a reflection of an unequal system that doesn't effectively support widespread civic participation, rather than a choice made out of apathy.
The power resides in generational wealth not some commoners who got lucky. These people don't need to hold elected office because they can buy whatever they want, including manipulating government in their favor.
People don't need life-extending drugs to hold onto power or ways of doing things, that's what dynasties are for. And if in a democracy somebody like J.D. Rockefeller gets a voice that is too loud, then the democracy is flawed and we the citizens are ultimately at fault.
The ability to get the best jobs, go to the best schools, live where you want to live, retire while others cannot, and bend the government to your will are all forms of power. The last, in particular, is political power.
U.S. government policies reflect the desires of the wealthy and interest groups more than the average citizen, according to researchers at Princeton University and Northwestern University.
“[W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened,” write Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in an April 9 article posted on the Princeton website and scheduled for fall publication in the journal Perspectives on Politics.
“Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all,” the researchers write in the article titled, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.”
Affluent Americans, however, “have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy,” Gilens and Page write. Organized interest groups also “have a large, positive, highly significant impact upon public policy.”
This seems like a tautology, if they didn't have a greater say then they wouldn't qualify as 'rich and powerful' in the first place, but as average people.
I wonder about this - some have felt this under President $FOO but $FOO still had to concede to a loss or term limits. I feel like actual change of power is important, and the US still has this while a lot of the world is losing it
Power centralization is rarely predicated on reasons that include the benefit of common man. The US doesn't appear much different in that regard, either.
That a company is not doing what he wants doesn't make the company more powerful than the president of the United States, it merely means that he does not hold absolute power.
I am an American, and I don't feel like my will is being controlled... It is important to understand that everybody has a unique life situation and makes their own choices. Elon Musk hasn't been able to implant Neuralinks in our heads yet. I think the rebuke of Donald Trump in swing states like Georgia really shows that any attempt by an established group to clutch onto power is always going to be a gamble. It took the collective will of the people and real grassroots effort to overcome the obstacles elites put up there.
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