White Paper #2

In America, having money means you have power. With money, you can pay off all that college debt, buy a fancy car along with a huge mansion, and live a very easy life. Money is also a great tool to bribe people to do what you ask them to do. Today the affluent can influence politicians to block policies that they do not favor. I believe America is no longer a well-working, but a corrupt democracy since the rich and large corporations have a larger influence on policies and politicians.

It is more common for the affluent to their way from policymakers. In the Washington Post it states, “When only the affluent strongly support a proposed policy change, that policy is adopted 46 percent of the time; when only the middle-class strongly support a policy, that policy is adopted only 24 percent of the time” (Critics argued with our analysis of U.S. political inequality. Here are 5 ways they’re wrong.). This statistics comes to show that the upper class are more likely to get the policy they support than are the middle class. In a democracy, all people should be represented equally since a democratic is run by the people. Only a small proportion of the population are affluent, meaning that roughly 46% of policy changes that occur only benefits a small population of citizens. Majority of the American people are not seeing the policy changes only they want to occur 76% of the time.

In addition, there is an advantage for candidates with financial support. Noam Chomsky, a political activist, states, “Obama won over McCain primarily because the financial institutions liked him better so they poured money into his campaign much more than McCain” with the polls agreeing that the advertising gave Obama the advantage (Chomsky). This fact proves to show that money means power. In a true democracy, candidates are given an equal opportunity to express their political stance and voters vote based on what they believe is best for the country. With financial support, candidates have an advantage of getting potential voters’ recognition and then most will vote for a candidate because they have heard of them. A candidate with a great stance can lose to someone who does not have the greatest platform simply because of the money they have from large corporations to expand recognition.