Study: The USA is an Oligarchy

I rail against the GOP effort to restore the Gilded Age and a new study would seem to confirm that the effort is having a great deal of success.  More frightening, with the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that there should be no limit to political bribes so long as they are paid while elected officials are candidates rather than while in office, the trend will likely intensify.  The study that I refer to is one done by researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University suggests that the United States' political system serves the wealthy and special interest organizations, not ordinary voters.  The Telegraph has a piece that looks at the researchers' findings.  Here are highlights:

The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.

The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." 

Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying oragnisations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised 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 favour policy change, they generally do not get it." 

The study comes in the wake of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial piece of legislation passed in The Supreme Court that abolished campaign contribution limits, and record low approval ratings for the US congress. 

Yes, individual voters can change election results but ultimately, polcy will likely be set by the rich and powerful.  Sometimes the interests of the rich and the average person overlap, but more often they do not.