This article is two months old by the way.
Another link from !@[email protected] focusing more on American politics but this one is much older. "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
We’ve had proof since 2015 when Princeton published a study showing that "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
That’s why we call it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
This disturbing and important article is quoted in the news article above. The ‘news’ aspect of this one is that it is (but seems to be to a lesser extent) also partly true for european countries.
Yeah I remember reading that article. I just wanted to find a more recent one to remind people of this.
The size of the difference isn’t enormous – the average share of households who support policy that happens was 57.1% for rich households and 53.7% among low-income ones (the middle class… is in the middle). But what is staggering is how consistent it is across countries and decades.
The effect is clearly less pronounced than it is in the US, however it seems likely that it’s for fairly innocuous reasons.
Europe’s politicians are less wealthy than their US counterparts, and they aren’t generally rich by any wild stretch of the imagination, but they are wealthy enough to often be out of touch with “life on the ground” for a lot of average Europeans. This leads to policy decisions that reflect the positions of people who aren’t worried about where their next meal comes from, and their disconnect from that situation booms loudly. Anyway, that’s what I would be expecting is happening.
That makes sense. I wonder what a good solution to that would be though?
the study has been ongoing for 38 years, not sure a few months old post would be that inaccurate (aka it’s ok! ;) )
