Plutocracy?
November 10, 2009
Politico reports that roughly 44% of Congress (237 people) are millionaires, with the Senate’s median reportable worth at $1.79 million and the House’s at $622,254—both down from 2007.
Does this mean something? Or, is it just a coincidence?
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It means they will tend to stick up for the interests of the people whose class they are in, and not for ordinary working people.
It means we as citizens have an obligation to be engaged in the political process and that we must be diligent in pressuring our representatives to make laws for the common good, rather that the good of the elites.
I’m not sure it means anything too pessimistic in and of itself. Party line seems to trump income more than class (I’m not saying it isn’t a factor, just not the biggest), and party line is usually dictated by a “base” that crosses different income levels.
Rather, I feel it is a sad statement on the election system in the United States.
adamv, I am certainly not married to it meaning something purely pessimistic or optimistic. The question is whether there is something to this whole plutocracy thing that get thrown around, especially since it is now the case empirically.
By the way, of the richest in Congress four out of the top five are Democrats.
This is the natural result of campaign finance reform.
This is normal.
(Not that I like it.)
But those able to achieve national elective office on their own exhibit, in doing so, a skill-set and a type of intelligence nearly identical to those used in the normal acquisition of wealth. And, those who lack that type of intelligence or that skill-set, but still achieve national elective office, do so with the assistance of (and thus beholden to) others who do possess that type of intelligence.
Not news.
Nor is it news that the Democrats are the party of the super-wealthy and the wealthy-by-inheritance. The generalizaton that these attributes are better fits for the Republicans is about fifty years out-of-date.
The more interesting question is, does this affect policy? Does being wealthy disconnect one from “the little people?” And, if so, does that necessarily lead to a particular set of policies?
To paraphrase a line from the late William F. Buckley, “The biggest bleeding heart in all of Great Britain is the Prince of Wales, but if that man has ever been inside of a normal grocery store, it was because he’d just received it, wrapped, under his Christmas tree.”
I think the more accurate (that is, predictive of attitudes and policy-positions) generalization is not the one based on income or net-worth, but the one based on one’s personal (or recent family) history of upward mobility.
A person who started from middle- or lower-class, founded a business, hired employees, and thereby became wealthy, is generally likely to take the “Daddy State,” not the “Mommy State,” approach to policy. (And he’ll regard the “Mommy State” approach as a condescending, and thus dignity-denying and dignity-undermining, attitude towards the poor.)
A person who inherited wealth and advantages, and who avoided the trap of conspicuous scandalous behavior, is most likely to express what earlier generations called “white guilt” or “white man’s burden” by approaching the needy in a “Mommy State” kind of way. (And he’ll regard the “Daddy State” approach as a brutal and heartless, and thus disregarding and dismissive, attitude towards the poor.)
In either case, however, wealthy people are more likely to have the skill set to achieve office, even without their wealth.
And once they achieve office, they’ll get wealthier, since the Federal government is able to bankrupt or grow individual businesses through unfavorable or favorable regulation, and since businesses must necessarily maintain, either as an act of self-preservation or as a realm of competition, “good relationships” with policy-makers.
Not news.
My question is, did they hold the wealth when elected or did these officials gain wealth while in office?
Also, is the cost of running a campaign limiting the process to those who have wealth?
My concern is that these officials, given their wealth and power, exempt themselves from laws and regulations imposed on those who do not hold wealth and power. If a member of Congress worked honestly and hard to gain wealth, and contributes positively to society, I do not see a problem. However, we do see instances of unethical behavior, tax evasion, and conflicts of interest as they expect us to abide by laws they do not follow.
This is entirely ordinary. We are a democratic republic, not a democracy. Every representative form of government, from clasical Rome to modern Sweden, tends to develop a governing class that is better educated and wealthier than the population it governs. The notion that we’d be better off governed by the broke and the uneducated is a romantic fantasy.
More interesting than the net worth of members of Congress is who votes for them. That’s where you can detect the influence of money and prestige.
The continuous historical examination of the various European parliaments from the Whigs on down does appear to demonstrate that wealth will act to protect wealth. One has but to consider the astonishingly corrupt French and Italian parliaments of the end of the 19th Century. The English ran a close second. And we had a congress “our only class of professional criminals” [Mark Twain].
Belloc had hopes for the U.S. because it had a “prince” [his technical term for the executive] who had power independent of the congress.
It must mean liberalism is an invalid political arrangement.
Partly it’s a function of representative democracy, I think. Partly, of campaign finance reform. It would be interesting to see when the mean and median incomes of members of Congress exceeded the mean and median incomes for the US as a whole by the least magnitude. My guess would be in the early gilded age or the 1960s, when Civil War and WWII vets would be prominent.
Why do many commentators seem to assume that I am implying that a plutocracy is inherently flawed, as a matter of principle?
It means that those people making our laws are not really aware of the experiences of most people they govern.
I have a friend, a physician who makes substantially more than I do. His parents paid for his college education. He’s a nice guy, but he has no clue what it means to have to stretch a dollar.
I have eight kids with the ninth on the way, my wife stays home with the kids. I just had to take out my savings, all $300, to buy groceries after unexpected expenses for my highschoolers. I’ve work in insurance, and it’s decent pay, but our economy is designed around two wage earners and two kids. I don’t think a Congress critter who can just go to a restaurant and buy a meal at the drop of a hat can really appreciate that just buying milk for the kids can require financial planning.
The people I provide insurance benefits to are generally working class in economically depressed areas. They want to work. They don’t generally want a handout. A handout gives them far less than the ability to work and get ahead in life will provide for them.
Does a millionaire who inherited his wealth know the importance of providing work for others? Maybe, maybe not. If that person ran a factory, had to meet payroll, and had the opportunity to listen to employees’ concerns, perhaps. But if someone inherited financial instruments far removed from the source of that money, I tend to think not.
I am sometimes amazed at what Congress wants a working class person to do. Sometimes, they are far removed from reality. When I was 19, I was paying out 1/3 of my paycheck in taxes making close to minimum wage, while eating on $5 per week after college tuition was paid for. I had a waitress when I was managing a restaurant who was a single mom with 2 kids. She got hosed in taxes. As a manager, I paid less in taxes than she did, after the child tax credit kicked in. We went over it, and the rules just didn’t make sense. If she made more money, she would have qualified for the child tax credit, and would have paid less in taxes. Go figure.
Our current system looks out for the middle class, who are more likely to vote. It cares little for the poor, who pay a disproportionate amount of their income in taxes. It also cares little for the entrepreneur who provides jobs. If he makes a good return providing jobs for other people, a large portion is taxed away. A person with “old money”, on the other hand, can hang onto that and live off of the return on that money, even though it is tied up in financial instruments and only indirectly involved in creating jobs for other people to support their families. Go figure.
Because, as everybody knows, a plutocracy (or oligarchy) is a perverted form of aristocracy.
Sam,
I didn’t assume you disapproved. Nor should anyone imply by my comment that I necessarily approve. It simply is, and no, it doesn’t by any means invalidate political liberalism. As I wrote, the notion that we could or should be governed by the broke and uneducated is a romantic fantasy.
wj: I still have a hard time seeing it as, in principle, objectionable.
Mark: The idea that is simply is, is the question for me. I wonder why this top-down structure has such a gold over our imagination and reality.
As for whether this is or is not “news” or “new,” I wonder why it matters for something to be newsworthy or new. Why is that important to mention?
Well, it’s certainly not a priori objectionable. But there are ample arguments and examples from Aristotle through Livy through Marx through Leo XIII that a plutocratic forms of government tend to exhibit a range of structural features that make them undesirable.
There was a time when the plutoctats felt called to public serve – from whom much is given, much is expected. But ever since the re-ascent of individualism, cemented under Reaganism, it has become more about accumulating wealth. Greed is good, indeed.
Ted Kennedy was a rich man, from an incredibly privileged background, but he devoted his careeer to helping the little man. George W. Bush on the other hand, who can match him with privilege and wealth, instead saw to the interests of his own circle.