Topic: Is inequality and money hijacking the American Democracy? - page 2. (Read 2854 times)

I am not accusing him of anything. Those exact words came right out of his own mouth. I would link the video but I saw it quite a while ago and can not seem to find it again.

Accusing Chomsky of being a tool of the elite, and so of inequality, it's like accusing Gramsci (who, as a communist, as far as I know, was the first to elaborate on the "cultural block": a cultural instrument used by capitalists to control ideologically the population and block the "transition to socialism/communism") or Althusser (another communist, who wrote about the ideological State apparatus that had the same goal) of the same.

Isn't that something like thinking that they are/were just puppets, executing a secret planned conspiracy to promote a few changes in order to grant that everything stays the same?

It's like saying that the universal vote was still an instrument of inequality, just a small change to appease the masses, in order to allow that economic inequality kept unchanged, forgetting that universal vote changed a lot, with progressive taxation and social support for the poor.

Of course, the Democrats are also responsible for policies that provoked major inequality. They kept more or less most of the Reagan and Bush senior reforms favourable to the rich.

The Glass–Steagall Act, that tamed banks since the Great depression, was applied on a limited way and ended being repealed on 1999 under Clinton Administration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Glass-Steagall_Act) and therefore he has major responsibility on the current Great Recession. On many countries, GDP is still below the real values of 2008.

The Democrats are mostly cynical. But many Republicans don't even try to disguise where they stand.

Noam Chomsky is a SELF ADMITTED tool of the elite. He is an expert in linguistics. Nothing else. I put him one or two notches above Michael Moore or John Stewart as far as credibility. He is just a quasi academic tool bag. BTW RE: the op. If you think Republicans are the only elite causing inequality I think you need to stop getting your news from television and open a couple books. The two party system is just two sides of the same elitist corrupt coin. Divide and conquer.

Of course, on the OP, I forgot to mention the major defender that huge economic inequalities have serious consequences on Democracy: Noam Chomsky.

His Requiem for the American Dream is worth watching, even by people that disagree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTMqEn8HSow

Like many Democracies, the American Political System has some strong and weak aspects:

1) Real freedom of expression and of political activity (except if you are communist, as a heritage of the sad McCarthy period, and recent repression on matters of State secrets).

2) Great system of direct choice of the presidential candidates of the major parties.

3) Strong and independent judicial system and some positive aspects of the trial by jury, even if the practice of electing people with responsibilities on the judicial system can have some weak aspects.


1) Major economic inequality.

2) As stated on the OP, this inequality is having political consequences on the quality of the American Democracy.

3) Weak social protection of poor people (for instance, health protection of the poor, even after the Obama reformations, is still incomplete).

4) A social culture of violence and, in reaction, massive penal repression, including abusive use of the death penalty (I wouldn't like to live in a country where the State only needs a good pretext to kill me). The USA has almost 1% of its population jailed. That is crazy compared with Europeans numbers.

5) Still some problems of racial discrimination, even if the USA is still far to be the worst Democracy with this problem.

6) Some periods of abusive external policy, recently, especially under republican administrations. But in the past, the democrats weren't better. Of course, any country in the world, probably including the Europeans, would do the same or even worst if they had the power the USA has. Power has always ruined the legitimacy of every external policy.

you dont know anything about american democracy.. it is best of all so called democracy all over the world but i agree a point that something must be done for the wrong parts of it..

The ruling of the Federal Supreme Court on unlimited political donations to parties is a major problem. Maybe now with Scalia gone and a new less conservative judge on his place the Supreme will elaborate on this rule.

The so-called "everything goes" in the name of freedom usually means that the powerful will oppress the weak under the benevolent watch of the State.

yes .. this is the true definiton of american democracy.. congrats..

The main problem is indeed the way parties obtain its financial resources.

In some countries the money comes mainly from the state budget. Each party receives money in proportion to the number of votes it gets and there are mandatory limits for the amounts each can spend in the electoral campaign.

But paying parties with tax money doesn't look very sound.

But there should be mandatory limits on the electoral expenses and on each donation. Probably, corporations shouldn't be allow to donate to parties, since they have no political rights. The only explanation for a corporation to pay money to a party is getting political leverage and that is close to corruption.

I'm skeptical that capitalism consumes democracy.  Money in itself is a 'vote'. The problem is not enough freedom. Let me explain:

Free trade gives people the ability to improve their lives. Modern life does not have free trade because the money gets stuck in the institutions and governments forbid free trade (economic boycott, slow bank transfers, corruption at al). This is why bitcoin will gives us a breath of freedom for a while (as Satoshi said).

Free trade is the thing that gives the average person the incentive to excel. It is the hope of finding riches that pushes people to dig all the wonderful technology out of nature that nature has within itself. It is the further marketing of those technologies that lets us all enjoy new things with more leisure time.

To a large extend yes. Politicians can be bought or seduced and corporations have been hijacking our democracy for a while.

I think that in modern democracy and political system is impossible to separate political campaign from money support.
Money is everything now and can buy influence in media, brainwash people with strong and expensive propaganda, create events which helps politicians etc.
Politic really become dirty job in modern time but it seems it's to late to change it now.
If you have enough money you can buy all of them so it seems there are no real independent politicians in western world.
To sad reality.

Yes that is sadly correct too. It wasn't my intention to deny it.
I just wanted to point out there exist measures in other nations that help reduce the power of "big money".

As far as I know parties in Germany are also accepting corporate and private donations. Until they doing that nobody can guarantee their independence. Lobbies in Germany just as strong as everywhere else.

Imho that is only partly correct. There are measures you can take to avoid this massive lobbying.
For example the german voting system: the different parties are getting tax money for their campaigns depending on how much votes they get. There is free time on tv and other stuff.

I think this problem isn't limited to the republicans. The same thing applies to the democrats as well, with a different political agenda. Actually you find the same issues in all western type representative democracies without a single exception. Without making party finance and donations 100% transparent (what is more or less impossible) you have no chance to deal with these issues. This is how plutocracy/oligarchy working. 

Capitalism consumes democracy as fire consumes oxygen. We will all suffocate if we fail to revolt / recreate / transcend the neofeudal structural genocide in which we live.

In the OP, I assumed that inequality in the USA (and the way it increased since the 80s) is a general accepted fact.

But one can read a few interesting articles on it:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/

http://time.com/3855971/us-economic-inequality/

http://fortune.com/2015/06/11/income-inequality/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States

Even if with some exceptions (like Ben Carson or Trump, but they are outsiders), GOP candidates received much more money from super PACs or big donations (so, from wealthy individuals) than democrats

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/16/the-massive-difference-in-how-democrats-and-republicans-raise-money/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016-campaign-money-race.html?_r=0 (example, J. Bush vs H. Clinton or Bernie Sanders)