“Professors Archon Fung of HKS and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School say Trump’s brazen embrace of billionaire ruling partners could be an inflection point in America’s long slide toward rule by the wealthiest.”
“It’s one of the most important studies you’ve probably never heard of. Ten years ago, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University took an extraordinary data set and a small army of researchers and set out to determine whether America could still credibly call itself a democracy. As case studies, they used 1,800 policy proposals over 30 years, tracking how they made their way through the political system and whose interests were served by the outcomes. For small-d democrats, the results were devastating. Political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups. The influence of ordinary citizens, meanwhile, was at a ‘non-significant, near-zero level.’ America, they concluded, was not a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy.
“Fast forward to 2024 and a presidential campaign that saw record support by billionaires for both candidates, but most conspicuously for Republican candidate Donald Trump from Tesla and Starlink owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.”
Idea:
To blunt the influence of money in politics, what about taxing large political donations and those from people and organizations with high income or net worth? Small donations and those from ‘little guys’ could be exempt for such taxes.