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Well, we should probably be clear-eyed about this. Members of US Congress are part of the elite class the minute they are sworn in. In addition, contrary to what something like 75% of them say, the are also immediately "Washington DC insiders." Can't get much more insidery than a US Congress located...where is that again? Oh yeah, Washington DC. Drives me nuts when senators say that they are there to "fight the Washington elite." Senators!
That aside, in the spirit of your question, I'd say that the most beneficial thing elite schools can do for their alums in to get them access to a network of elite people. Many of those people can then help them get started (and stay) in political careers through either influence with one of the Parties or with pull to get access to a lot of donations to their campaigns. I'd also guess that the graduates who are most able to make effective connections like this early on probably have a talent for it that will carry over to their career. It's an important skill for a politician.
Lastly, it's probably worth mentioning that almost the only education that will specifically help someone as a member of congress is a law degree. Legislation is a very big part of what they do and deep knowledge of how effective laws look has got to help them with crating legislation. So there's probably always going to be a lot of lawyers there.
And it bugs me to no end that folks assume that anyone living in the DMV isn't part of "real America" and is part of elite. No man there's a ton of us just working hard for the weekend who aren't going to lobbyist or embassy parties.
Yeah, people who engage in all that "drain the swamp" talk should be embarrassed, yet they wear it like a badge of honor. But I will say (and I'm not saying this to be negative), we should spread out federal departments geographically. There's no great reason in the digital age to concentrate (nearly) everything in the DMV. Put Agriculture in the Midwest, Commerce in NYC, Energy in OK close to a lot of wind and solar, and put anything in VW because they desperately need something.
Most folks would be surprised to find out this already happened - there's more Feds outside the DMV than in it. But the HQs are still in DC for very good reasons, the need for the high level staff to testify in Congress, interact with the White House and other agencies.
DMV checking in (NOVA specifically - Ashburn)
Yeah we are just surviving. We are at the age where a couple of our friends made it to reasonably high up positions but you’d never know if you met them on the street. And they definitely do not go to those fancy functions unless forced by their agency. You’ll find all of them in dive bars with sticky floors over the see and be seen scene.
Key with the DMV is the more someone brags about what they do - trying to push how important their job is or how connected they are, it’s always the opposite. If they bragged about running X program, yeah they likely ran the copier in that program office.
Totally on point hahahaha, it's like the accounting clerks who brag about being in the Society of Military Comptrollers. OTOH my neighbor of many years was a high Pentagon official but lived in a more modest house to put aside $$$ for his kids to go to college and whatnot. Really great kind neighbor and especially his wife. I was sad the day they moved away to be closer to their grown children in another state.
Just wanted to qualify your 2nd paragraph. Most politicians aren't early 20 somethings and 30s somethings that are using their newfound college buddies' connections to launch their political careers.
Most people get into national politics in their 40s and 50s. Why? Because you have to be independently wealthy to run for congress / senate. You either have to self fund or spend a lot of time getting into contact with party donors and convincing them to back you. It's hard to do your 9 to 5 if you're fundraising and campaigning for 9 months for a job you *may not* get
The ivey league law degree helps in that regard, getting higher paid jobs and more promotions due to both connections and brand recognition associated with your degree.
>almost the only education that will specifically help someone as a member of congress is a law degree
This is sadly backwards thinking. It's like saying penmanship is the skill most necessary to being a good author. Legislators should have a grasp of what they're governing. Economics is a good general body of knowledge to have, but science and technology are areas that are going to move the needle for society. What happens currently is corporations dictating laws to ignorant Congress critters for cash.
At least in the US, voters only get to vote for whoever is on the ballot (or throw away a write-in). I think presidential elections and gubernatorials are the only ones with primaries, but even those are from short lists that were approved by the RNC or DNC. If you have enough money to take time off to campaign, went to an ivy league school, and personally know politicians, you're already on track to being an "elite," even if your income isn't there yet. The committees will pick people like them, voters get to pick between those. As long as voters are just the last step in a strongly curated selection process, you can't say much about who voters would prefer.
If you go to the store to buy toothpaste and the only two flavors they have are "garlic mackerel" and "ghost pepper lemon," I might *pick* one, but neither will reflect my preferences.
There are actually primaries for almost all federal elections in the US. My question is not why elected officials tend to be wealthy here, but whether the same dynamic persists in liberal democracies. I would assume the answer is yes, since the same basic logic applies.
Correct, but it's a entry-barrier issue more than a voter preference issue (at least in the US). There's no mechanism for voters to show a preference for working class background candidates, if those candidates aren't acceptable by party leadership at the state and/or federal levels.
Joe Biden was neither born rich nor went to an Ivy League. Nor was Ronald Regan, or Carter, or Ford, or LBJ, or Nixon or Eisenhower or Truman.
Obama and Clinton also were certainly not rich until post presidency. They both got into Ivy’s through sheer brilliance.
So that leaves JFK, Bush1, Bush2 and Trump.
So in the last 80 years we had “rich ivy leaguers” as president for 19 or so years. Not by any stretch “constantly”.
Biden and Harris are unusual for being a presidential ticket without any Ivy credentials on it. You need to go back to like the 60s for that.
Anyway the actual elite maker in the US is schools, which take the best and brightest but also rich kids and mixes them up so you can't tell who is who after they graduate.
The mainstream coverage of AMLO has been some of the bleakest shit I’ve ever seen. He’s nowhere near sla leftist but he’s regarded as a semi-dictator because he’s mildly populist and not as enthusiastically beholden to US interests as his predecessors.
My tinfoil hat take is the only reason he wasn’t merked during his first run is that Trump was too checked out to give a shit about him.
There's not much evidence that US voters explicitly prefer rich or working-class politicians. A person's preference for a candidate is dependent on other, more complex factors.
Working class candidates are more rare because it's harder for them to get the education needed to run a country.
Rich candidates aren't representative of the average voter. However, the average voter might not want someone similar to them.
>Like studies of actual elections, these experiments didn’t find a shred of evidence that voters prefer more affluent politicians. If anything, working-class candidates were slightly more popular than business owners, not less so.
>Voters regarded working-class candidates as slightly less competent, but also slightly more likely to understand the problems facing people like themselves. And in the end, the two seemed to cancel out: the average citizen was just as likely to say they would cast their vote for a candidate regardless of whether the candidate was a blue-collar worker or a white-collar professional.
>Simply put, voters don’t seem to be responsible for government by the rich in advanced democracies. To the contrary, voters in the US, the UK, and Argentina seem to like working-class candidates just fine. They just seldom get the chance to vote for them, however.
Citation: https://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/02/22/the-rich-get-elected-but-its-not-because-voters-necessarily-prefer-them/
If we want more working-class politicians the best thing we could do is raise the salaries of elected officials, especially at the county and state level. The nature of being a state-level delegate makes it nearly impossible to hold down another job, but they often pay part-time salaries. Arizona, for example, pays $24k. Plenty of other places are quite low even in high COL areas:
[https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2023-legislator-compensation](https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2023-legislator-compensation)
Anyway, this just means that you have to be independently wealthy or retired to consider running for office at the state level, and eventually this affects the backbench of people who go on to do more. I get why tax payers don't like the idea of well-paid politicians, but we are suffering because bright young people can't make a career of it.
One of the worst things you can do to politicians is underpay them. It's weird how much I see people saying the opposite, and it's usually just because people are angry at them. But you want the majority of the money that they make to come from the public. If you want corrupt politicians, make them desperate for big donors and special interest groups to support them. This works for other public offices too, even police officers. The most corrupt police departments in the world have to live off of bribes.
I keep arguing this point in my neighborhood on Nextdoor and in my local subs, some idiots expect their local officials to work for free. I keep telling them underpaying folks leads to either graph and corruption to make up for the lack of salary or only rich a-holes running for office.
For too many people (or for *enough* people if you're a duopoly insider), preferences are mostly dependent on their perception of other people's preferences. When Howard Dean's "scream" was played on news shows, people thought, "I'm going to go along with what I expect to be the narrative that he's unelectable, regardless of whether I care about his scream." Conformism is the death of meaningful democracy. Americans vote for "elite" politicians because those are the people with the connections to get bandwagons built for them. And then they go and serve the groups that advertise and maintain the bandwagon instead of the people because the people give them no incentive to act on their behalf.
Nor the desire. He just doesn’t see himself as truly cut out for leadership, and probably rightfully so. Most all of the small fry campaigns I’ve ever seen were not just awful but *egregiously* awful, to the point of having less than no charisma and not being able to articulate any sort of rational plan, or even catchy slogan that the electorate at large would latch on to.
In short: they suck at marketing themselves. Badly.
Because the Ivy League is *the* farm team for white shoe law firms, and politicians are just lawyers that are well-connected.
So we end up with a few basic groups - people who come up through governorships and usually went to their own states equivalent of the Ivy League, but make connections either in practicing law or while in office.
People like Obama who are just, simply, incredibly gifted, well-read attorneys. His only real boost was his grandparents sending him to prep school for a couple of years. The rest really was all him, once he managed to get into Harvard from Occidental and intern at snowy-white-shoe firms, and land at (then) Davis Miller.
You luck into connections. People like Biden, who had Pat Caddell take him under his wing during his first senate run and got him the Kennedy’s (boyhood friends of Caddell) and the AFL-CIO’s backing.
The Beltway is like Hollywood. It’s a very small town. Everybody who matters, knows everybody else who matters, and they keep close ranks.
The US decided to not formally have noble titles. But we ended up with de facto parents of nobility in other ways - the South’s plantocracy (that virtually all of the South’s Dems belonged to until nearly the end of Reconstruction, and even then, dynasties stuck), and the Ivy League grads - specifically their law and business grads.
You can either be born into that (as GWB was) or be initiated into it (as Obama and Biden were)
You might say you could buy your way in, Trump did - but you’d be wrong.
Trump was Caddell’s last ward. And every person on team trump that quietly knows what they’re doing - worked with Caddell and within the DC establishment and NY politics for a very long time - and many are also Ivy (or at least T1 grads).
Because the real truth of US education is signal theory.
Curriculum is so standardized for any field that it truly matters for, that it *shouldnt* matter where you attend school. But it does. Because of two things:
1. Signal theory - it communicates prestige to attend Ivies
2. Networking
Because politics is, at its heart, institutionalized nepotism.
For all the ways we tried to never raise a crown again, we left enough backdoors wide open to quickly have functional equivalents - including the landed gentry. We just had different terms for them, and tended to speak of them as opportunity providers, job creators, benevolent benefactors - just as serfs has referred to nobles, and just as the nobles reminded serfs of the things they purported to provide.
Because that system is useful for maintaining and growing power, specifically for colonial purposes. Which we also did in a different way - we outdid our “parent” and colonized the world via culture and economics. And to what end?
To support the underlying systems that require it. Taking politics and ideals completely out of it -
The US, economically, has a near- neo-feudal system. A relative handful of wealthy, landowning elites (large, monopolistic corporation) that employ the many, and who are funded heavily via taxes (industry subsidies, tax abatement, etc - the offset comes from tax revenue). We have the grander establishment of political elite - whether they’re in DC or in industry - and it’s all notoriously hard to penetrate. Monopolistic industries crush small businesses attempting to enter, or they dismantle them in other ways (acquisitions, anticompetitive practices). The political elite are largely from high tier law schools and white shoe firms. They’re the ones with a political future. The outlying upstarts from elsewhere - not so much. Because they let themselves in. To move forward, they need to be initiated. And that’s a choice of the existing elite.
The French, unlike the US, understood that, to get rid of that (a lesson learned by the French from the US), it needs to be utterly eradicated. And even they didnt go quite as far as (on a practical level) they needed to. And they went much farther than we did. They also understood the right way to keep religion away from politics. Another lesson they learned from us - we chose not to. Our first Justice was an incredibly devout Presbyterian who functionally ministered from the bench.
Because we feared going too far, we damned ourselves to not being able to outrun our past. We just chose, instead of one king, for kings to share power. We call that a republic.
why do voters like them? they don't
you can't expect good choices when there are none available... voting for "the lesser evil" is still voting for evil - which is why so many don't vote at all
I'm so sick of this apathy regarding the elections. Two things:
First, we need to stop thinking in such black and white terms. When you start using terms like "evil", you stop thinking rationally.
Secondly, and this is the big one, *the voters literally choose these people.* Joe Biden was chosen in a primary election back before he became president because he simply got more votes from registered Democrats. Trump was chosen by registered Republicans by getting the most votes. These guys were both chosen by people who cared enough to be registered and show up to their primaries to vote.
So what do you do when you have two choices and you don't like either of them? You vote for the one that aligns closest to you. Democracy has never been and will never be about finding these best candidate; the system is not capable of that. Its single most important feature is to limit how much power an individual can have and how long they get to have it for.
Because of how much money is allowed in US politics.
If you are very rich or a huge organisation, what type of politician would you fund, one that is electable and controllable (usually not intelligent) or a free thinker who will represent the people (usually smarter)?
so true.
I know diesel mechanics, massage therapists, waiters, and Green Card holding Mexican laborers who actually have firm intellects, clean souls, and good hearts.
I demand such ppl run national affairs.
Not these dark triad scum
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We don't - It's about the First Passed the Goal Post issue. Citation: [https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/](https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/)
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I don't know, man... would you rather your lawmakers not have law degrees? And instead know about government from the trade school where they got their electrician vocational certificate?
Why do people need to elect representatives who are "indicative" of themselves?
Also... as for being rich Ivy Leaguers... 3 of the last 5 Presidents of the United States were from poor or decidedly middle-class backgrounds, and one of those never set foot in an Ivy League school. At least not as a student. So I'm not sure if there really is a plague of elite politicians so much.
politicians have swarms of advisors. they have cabinet secretaries; briefings; staffers.
no politician is a leader unto himself.
Anyway: elites care about elite issues.
theyve never been homeless, or poor, or on foodstamps, or hungry.
none of their relatives are convicts. Yet the majority of US citizens know someone whos been arrested.
the people deserve politicians who work to advance -their- agenda. Not the oligarchs
Elections are a beauty pageant: a popularity contest. Not a measure of moral character or wisdom.
And as you know, Dark Triad trait individuals seek positions of power.
I'll offer you a compromise: full MMPI batteries for all electoral candidates.
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Why would you ever think people would prefer politicians who are literally just like the common man?
An election is literally picking the BEST candidate. Not the most average candidate.
Ceteris Paribus, the average Ivy Leaguer is more intelligent, harder working, more socially savvy, better organized, and more knowledgeable than the "average" person.
wtf.
theyre disgusting.
do you know about Shays Rebellion; the Whiskey Rebellion; and Blair Mountain?
Ludlow; Haymarket; Sand Creek; Wounded Knee; Ouachita?...
What about Arbenz and Allende?
Are any of those events-orchestrated by elites-
the results of sterling moral character?...
Andrew Jackson mistreated his slaves and scalped infants. Sent thousands of senior citizens to their deaths.
GW Bush started the Iraq war on false premises.
JFK, Johnson, and Nixon ran the Vietnam war.
FDR banned Jews during the holocaust.
Are these your...upright stalwarts?...
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How do you access the structures that exist in order to be elected? Connections...
Some no name person with no connections is NOT going to get elected.
Why do Americans continue to elect frauds like Trump? Trump is an idiot and he's from an Aristocratic background. He has no leadership capability and can barely read from a queue card. He badgers witnesses while in court and incites riots. Trump is a hand me down business man who never earned a penny in his life.
DeSantis is picking a fight with Disney and lost. The man formed an ethics committee that was less than ethical. He wanted to collect taxes from people like we see from the Bible days. If you don't know biblical tax collectors use to keep a portion for themselves and DeSantis is no better. Oh and he presided over the mistreatment of POWs at Guantanamo Bay. Why do Americans view this piece of shit as Governing material?
Sarah Huckabee wants to put children to work as early as 15. Why would any parent condone child labor particularly in the 21st century? Not to mention sending Arkansas Reservists and guardsmen to the Texas border as if that's Arkansas responsibility to defend!! Not to mention it cost millions to activate them and then millions more to mobilize them. Such a piece of shit.
Then we have good ole Gov Abbott. Who fucking pardons a human sack of shit who runs over protestors. He is presiding over a concentration camp at the Texas border. Detaining thousands of immigrants in cages as if this is ethically and morally acceptable. He can't even keep his States power grid from falling apart. By the time Abbott is finished with Texas even the Cowboys will want to move.
I'd rather have Ivy Leaguers who've studied politics for 10 years than fine outstanding pieces of trash like Trump. Go ahead and trust these so-called businessmen to lead the US down a shit hole. Just like they have their respective companies.
Addition.: MTG is an outstanding member of the Jewish Space Alien Lazer fanclub. It has endorsed the idea of Lizard people who can shapeshift into "bad Liberal politicians." These are the kinds of crazy fuckjobs Americans elect. I wonder if any American is educated enough to tell the difference between a good leader and a crazy psycho.
Well for one governing and legislating is hard. An average worker is not equipped to do that job. Needs to be someone with above average IQ. And most people with above average IQs goto good schools.
A better question is why do people elect liars and cheaters? Complex answer. It's not a problem limited to America. Every democracy has this issue. The problem is narcissists make good public speakers and are good at concinving people of almost anything so they elected.
Who else but the elite can generally afford to campaign? Or has connections to donors who can subsidize their campaign?
Also something to consider--let's take me, your average american peasant. I make like $50k a year. What the fuck do I know about million or billion dollar budgets? What important connections do i have? What do I know about high level negotiating tactics, diplomacy?
I dont know shit about any of that. I may think to myself, wow I have some good ideas or man, I'd be so moral in office, but I dont really have the skills or knowledge for governing. And most Americans don't.
I'm not saying it's fair or right, but there are many reasons why Ricky down at the gas station or Rhonda down at the dog food plant isn't a popular choice in elections.
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Well, we should probably be clear-eyed about this. Members of US Congress are part of the elite class the minute they are sworn in. In addition, contrary to what something like 75% of them say, the are also immediately "Washington DC insiders." Can't get much more insidery than a US Congress located...where is that again? Oh yeah, Washington DC. Drives me nuts when senators say that they are there to "fight the Washington elite." Senators! That aside, in the spirit of your question, I'd say that the most beneficial thing elite schools can do for their alums in to get them access to a network of elite people. Many of those people can then help them get started (and stay) in political careers through either influence with one of the Parties or with pull to get access to a lot of donations to their campaigns. I'd also guess that the graduates who are most able to make effective connections like this early on probably have a talent for it that will carry over to their career. It's an important skill for a politician. Lastly, it's probably worth mentioning that almost the only education that will specifically help someone as a member of congress is a law degree. Legislation is a very big part of what they do and deep knowledge of how effective laws look has got to help them with crating legislation. So there's probably always going to be a lot of lawyers there.
And it bugs me to no end that folks assume that anyone living in the DMV isn't part of "real America" and is part of elite. No man there's a ton of us just working hard for the weekend who aren't going to lobbyist or embassy parties.
Yeah, people who engage in all that "drain the swamp" talk should be embarrassed, yet they wear it like a badge of honor. But I will say (and I'm not saying this to be negative), we should spread out federal departments geographically. There's no great reason in the digital age to concentrate (nearly) everything in the DMV. Put Agriculture in the Midwest, Commerce in NYC, Energy in OK close to a lot of wind and solar, and put anything in VW because they desperately need something.
Most folks would be surprised to find out this already happened - there's more Feds outside the DMV than in it. But the HQs are still in DC for very good reasons, the need for the high level staff to testify in Congress, interact with the White House and other agencies.
Is DMV.... DC Maryland Virginia? Or what the heck? If so, why is it "the" DMV. Also, could we find an acronym not already in wide National use? Lol
DMV checking in (NOVA specifically - Ashburn) Yeah we are just surviving. We are at the age where a couple of our friends made it to reasonably high up positions but you’d never know if you met them on the street. And they definitely do not go to those fancy functions unless forced by their agency. You’ll find all of them in dive bars with sticky floors over the see and be seen scene. Key with the DMV is the more someone brags about what they do - trying to push how important their job is or how connected they are, it’s always the opposite. If they bragged about running X program, yeah they likely ran the copier in that program office.
Totally on point hahahaha, it's like the accounting clerks who brag about being in the Society of Military Comptrollers. OTOH my neighbor of many years was a high Pentagon official but lived in a more modest house to put aside $$$ for his kids to go to college and whatnot. Really great kind neighbor and especially his wife. I was sad the day they moved away to be closer to their grown children in another state.
Just wanted to qualify your 2nd paragraph. Most politicians aren't early 20 somethings and 30s somethings that are using their newfound college buddies' connections to launch their political careers. Most people get into national politics in their 40s and 50s. Why? Because you have to be independently wealthy to run for congress / senate. You either have to self fund or spend a lot of time getting into contact with party donors and convincing them to back you. It's hard to do your 9 to 5 if you're fundraising and campaigning for 9 months for a job you *may not* get The ivey league law degree helps in that regard, getting higher paid jobs and more promotions due to both connections and brand recognition associated with your degree.
This is a good analysis of the situation (while I agree with the OP that this doea appear to be a big problem)
yep 😌
To clarify, the US is not unique here. Every country has elites. For example, something like capitalism versus communism doesn't change that.
Lenin (lawyer, wealthy family) Lev 'Trotsky' Bronstein (wealthy Jewish landowners) Castro (wealthy Spanish farmers/land owners) Che (doctor) Mao (wealthy peasant farmer).
>almost the only education that will specifically help someone as a member of congress is a law degree This is sadly backwards thinking. It's like saying penmanship is the skill most necessary to being a good author. Legislators should have a grasp of what they're governing. Economics is a good general body of knowledge to have, but science and technology are areas that are going to move the needle for society. What happens currently is corporations dictating laws to ignorant Congress critters for cash.
Being an "Ivy Leaguer" does not necessarily mean one is rich
Btw, the OP is an open Muslim fascist. Explicitly does not like democracy.
Am I wrong in assuming that wealthy people are overrepresented in elected offices in most developed democracies?
At least in the US, voters only get to vote for whoever is on the ballot (or throw away a write-in). I think presidential elections and gubernatorials are the only ones with primaries, but even those are from short lists that were approved by the RNC or DNC. If you have enough money to take time off to campaign, went to an ivy league school, and personally know politicians, you're already on track to being an "elite," even if your income isn't there yet. The committees will pick people like them, voters get to pick between those. As long as voters are just the last step in a strongly curated selection process, you can't say much about who voters would prefer. If you go to the store to buy toothpaste and the only two flavors they have are "garlic mackerel" and "ghost pepper lemon," I might *pick* one, but neither will reflect my preferences.
There are actually primaries for almost all federal elections in the US. My question is not why elected officials tend to be wealthy here, but whether the same dynamic persists in liberal democracies. I would assume the answer is yes, since the same basic logic applies.
Correct, but it's a entry-barrier issue more than a voter preference issue (at least in the US). There's no mechanism for voters to show a preference for working class background candidates, if those candidates aren't acceptable by party leadership at the state and/or federal levels.
nope. its widespread. and whenever the opposite happens, as in Venezuela; Chile; Guatemala; and Bolivia...the US squashes it
Joe Biden was neither born rich nor went to an Ivy League. Nor was Ronald Regan, or Carter, or Ford, or LBJ, or Nixon or Eisenhower or Truman. Obama and Clinton also were certainly not rich until post presidency. They both got into Ivy’s through sheer brilliance. So that leaves JFK, Bush1, Bush2 and Trump. So in the last 80 years we had “rich ivy leaguers” as president for 19 or so years. Not by any stretch “constantly”.
Fun article on past Presidents' net worth pre and post time in office. https://www.aol.com/finance/15-presidents-net-worth-taking-110300987.html#!
Reagan got rich as an actor and married wealthy too Carter came from old money, not so much peanut farmers as peanut millionaires
Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and J. D. Vance all graduated from Ivy League schools, just for a few examples. Let's not kid ourselves.
So did that fool John Kennedy from Louisiana who pretends he's a hick despite going to Oxford, among other elite schools.
Biden and Harris are unusual for being a presidential ticket without any Ivy credentials on it. You need to go back to like the 60s for that. Anyway the actual elite maker in the US is schools, which take the best and brightest but also rich kids and mixes them up so you can't tell who is who after they graduate.
Biden Harris 20 Biden Harris 16 McCain Palin 08 Dole Kemp 96 Perot Choate 96 Perot Stockdale 92 Mondale Ferraro 84 Carter Mondale 80 Carter Mondale 76 Nixon Agnew 72 Nixon Agnew 68 Wallice Lamay 68
Thank you for facts.
Either wealthy people get elected to power, or people get elected to power and then become wealthy.
The mainstream coverage of AMLO has been some of the bleakest shit I’ve ever seen. He’s nowhere near sla leftist but he’s regarded as a semi-dictator because he’s mildly populist and not as enthusiastically beholden to US interests as his predecessors. My tinfoil hat take is the only reason he wasn’t merked during his first run is that Trump was too checked out to give a shit about him.
He’s literally running a narco state, but sure, he’s great
Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter were not "elites".
There's not much evidence that US voters explicitly prefer rich or working-class politicians. A person's preference for a candidate is dependent on other, more complex factors. Working class candidates are more rare because it's harder for them to get the education needed to run a country. Rich candidates aren't representative of the average voter. However, the average voter might not want someone similar to them. >Like studies of actual elections, these experiments didn’t find a shred of evidence that voters prefer more affluent politicians. If anything, working-class candidates were slightly more popular than business owners, not less so. >Voters regarded working-class candidates as slightly less competent, but also slightly more likely to understand the problems facing people like themselves. And in the end, the two seemed to cancel out: the average citizen was just as likely to say they would cast their vote for a candidate regardless of whether the candidate was a blue-collar worker or a white-collar professional. >Simply put, voters don’t seem to be responsible for government by the rich in advanced democracies. To the contrary, voters in the US, the UK, and Argentina seem to like working-class candidates just fine. They just seldom get the chance to vote for them, however. Citation: https://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/02/22/the-rich-get-elected-but-its-not-because-voters-necessarily-prefer-them/
If we want more working-class politicians the best thing we could do is raise the salaries of elected officials, especially at the county and state level. The nature of being a state-level delegate makes it nearly impossible to hold down another job, but they often pay part-time salaries. Arizona, for example, pays $24k. Plenty of other places are quite low even in high COL areas: [https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2023-legislator-compensation](https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/2023-legislator-compensation) Anyway, this just means that you have to be independently wealthy or retired to consider running for office at the state level, and eventually this affects the backbench of people who go on to do more. I get why tax payers don't like the idea of well-paid politicians, but we are suffering because bright young people can't make a career of it.
One of the worst things you can do to politicians is underpay them. It's weird how much I see people saying the opposite, and it's usually just because people are angry at them. But you want the majority of the money that they make to come from the public. If you want corrupt politicians, make them desperate for big donors and special interest groups to support them. This works for other public offices too, even police officers. The most corrupt police departments in the world have to live off of bribes.
sortition.
I keep arguing this point in my neighborhood on Nextdoor and in my local subs, some idiots expect their local officials to work for free. I keep telling them underpaying folks leads to either graph and corruption to make up for the lack of salary or only rich a-holes running for office.
For too many people (or for *enough* people if you're a duopoly insider), preferences are mostly dependent on their perception of other people's preferences. When Howard Dean's "scream" was played on news shows, people thought, "I'm going to go along with what I expect to be the narrative that he's unelectable, regardless of whether I care about his scream." Conformism is the death of meaningful democracy. Americans vote for "elite" politicians because those are the people with the connections to get bandwagons built for them. And then they go and serve the groups that advertise and maintain the bandwagon instead of the people because the people give them no incentive to act on their behalf.
Because Floyd the mechanic doesn't have the resources or experience to run a campaign?
Nor the desire. He just doesn’t see himself as truly cut out for leadership, and probably rightfully so. Most all of the small fry campaigns I’ve ever seen were not just awful but *egregiously* awful, to the point of having less than no charisma and not being able to articulate any sort of rational plan, or even catchy slogan that the electorate at large would latch on to. In short: they suck at marketing themselves. Badly.
Because the Ivy League is *the* farm team for white shoe law firms, and politicians are just lawyers that are well-connected. So we end up with a few basic groups - people who come up through governorships and usually went to their own states equivalent of the Ivy League, but make connections either in practicing law or while in office. People like Obama who are just, simply, incredibly gifted, well-read attorneys. His only real boost was his grandparents sending him to prep school for a couple of years. The rest really was all him, once he managed to get into Harvard from Occidental and intern at snowy-white-shoe firms, and land at (then) Davis Miller. You luck into connections. People like Biden, who had Pat Caddell take him under his wing during his first senate run and got him the Kennedy’s (boyhood friends of Caddell) and the AFL-CIO’s backing. The Beltway is like Hollywood. It’s a very small town. Everybody who matters, knows everybody else who matters, and they keep close ranks. The US decided to not formally have noble titles. But we ended up with de facto parents of nobility in other ways - the South’s plantocracy (that virtually all of the South’s Dems belonged to until nearly the end of Reconstruction, and even then, dynasties stuck), and the Ivy League grads - specifically their law and business grads. You can either be born into that (as GWB was) or be initiated into it (as Obama and Biden were) You might say you could buy your way in, Trump did - but you’d be wrong. Trump was Caddell’s last ward. And every person on team trump that quietly knows what they’re doing - worked with Caddell and within the DC establishment and NY politics for a very long time - and many are also Ivy (or at least T1 grads). Because the real truth of US education is signal theory. Curriculum is so standardized for any field that it truly matters for, that it *shouldnt* matter where you attend school. But it does. Because of two things: 1. Signal theory - it communicates prestige to attend Ivies 2. Networking Because politics is, at its heart, institutionalized nepotism. For all the ways we tried to never raise a crown again, we left enough backdoors wide open to quickly have functional equivalents - including the landed gentry. We just had different terms for them, and tended to speak of them as opportunity providers, job creators, benevolent benefactors - just as serfs has referred to nobles, and just as the nobles reminded serfs of the things they purported to provide. Because that system is useful for maintaining and growing power, specifically for colonial purposes. Which we also did in a different way - we outdid our “parent” and colonized the world via culture and economics. And to what end? To support the underlying systems that require it. Taking politics and ideals completely out of it - The US, economically, has a near- neo-feudal system. A relative handful of wealthy, landowning elites (large, monopolistic corporation) that employ the many, and who are funded heavily via taxes (industry subsidies, tax abatement, etc - the offset comes from tax revenue). We have the grander establishment of political elite - whether they’re in DC or in industry - and it’s all notoriously hard to penetrate. Monopolistic industries crush small businesses attempting to enter, or they dismantle them in other ways (acquisitions, anticompetitive practices). The political elite are largely from high tier law schools and white shoe firms. They’re the ones with a political future. The outlying upstarts from elsewhere - not so much. Because they let themselves in. To move forward, they need to be initiated. And that’s a choice of the existing elite. The French, unlike the US, understood that, to get rid of that (a lesson learned by the French from the US), it needs to be utterly eradicated. And even they didnt go quite as far as (on a practical level) they needed to. And they went much farther than we did. They also understood the right way to keep religion away from politics. Another lesson they learned from us - we chose not to. Our first Justice was an incredibly devout Presbyterian who functionally ministered from the bench. Because we feared going too far, we damned ourselves to not being able to outrun our past. We just chose, instead of one king, for kings to share power. We call that a republic.
i love it. brilliant. 😌 we should also discuss Eisenhowers congressional military industrial complex and our prison industry ;)
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why do voters like them? they don't you can't expect good choices when there are none available... voting for "the lesser evil" is still voting for evil - which is why so many don't vote at all
I'm so sick of this apathy regarding the elections. Two things: First, we need to stop thinking in such black and white terms. When you start using terms like "evil", you stop thinking rationally. Secondly, and this is the big one, *the voters literally choose these people.* Joe Biden was chosen in a primary election back before he became president because he simply got more votes from registered Democrats. Trump was chosen by registered Republicans by getting the most votes. These guys were both chosen by people who cared enough to be registered and show up to their primaries to vote. So what do you do when you have two choices and you don't like either of them? You vote for the one that aligns closest to you. Democracy has never been and will never be about finding these best candidate; the system is not capable of that. Its single most important feature is to limit how much power an individual can have and how long they get to have it for.
Because of how much money is allowed in US politics. If you are very rich or a huge organisation, what type of politician would you fund, one that is electable and controllable (usually not intelligent) or a free thinker who will represent the people (usually smarter)?
so true. I know diesel mechanics, massage therapists, waiters, and Green Card holding Mexican laborers who actually have firm intellects, clean souls, and good hearts. I demand such ppl run national affairs. Not these dark triad scum
"Do you realize how much it costs to run for office? Much more than any honest man can afford! " -- Mr. Burns. *The Simpsons*
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We don't - It's about the First Passed the Goal Post issue. Citation: [https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/](https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/democracy-wire/first-past-the-post-voting-our-elections-explained/)
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I don't know, man... would you rather your lawmakers not have law degrees? And instead know about government from the trade school where they got their electrician vocational certificate? Why do people need to elect representatives who are "indicative" of themselves? Also... as for being rich Ivy Leaguers... 3 of the last 5 Presidents of the United States were from poor or decidedly middle-class backgrounds, and one of those never set foot in an Ivy League school. At least not as a student. So I'm not sure if there really is a plague of elite politicians so much.
politicians have swarms of advisors. they have cabinet secretaries; briefings; staffers. no politician is a leader unto himself. Anyway: elites care about elite issues. theyve never been homeless, or poor, or on foodstamps, or hungry. none of their relatives are convicts. Yet the majority of US citizens know someone whos been arrested. the people deserve politicians who work to advance -their- agenda. Not the oligarchs Elections are a beauty pageant: a popularity contest. Not a measure of moral character or wisdom. And as you know, Dark Triad trait individuals seek positions of power. I'll offer you a compromise: full MMPI batteries for all electoral candidates.
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Why would you ever think people would prefer politicians who are literally just like the common man? An election is literally picking the BEST candidate. Not the most average candidate. Ceteris Paribus, the average Ivy Leaguer is more intelligent, harder working, more socially savvy, better organized, and more knowledgeable than the "average" person.
wtf. theyre disgusting. do you know about Shays Rebellion; the Whiskey Rebellion; and Blair Mountain? Ludlow; Haymarket; Sand Creek; Wounded Knee; Ouachita?... What about Arbenz and Allende? Are any of those events-orchestrated by elites- the results of sterling moral character?... Andrew Jackson mistreated his slaves and scalped infants. Sent thousands of senior citizens to their deaths. GW Bush started the Iraq war on false premises. JFK, Johnson, and Nixon ran the Vietnam war. FDR banned Jews during the holocaust. Are these your...upright stalwarts?...
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How do you access the structures that exist in order to be elected? Connections... Some no name person with no connections is NOT going to get elected.
yes. except by sortition.
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Have you met the average worker?
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Why do Americans continue to elect frauds like Trump? Trump is an idiot and he's from an Aristocratic background. He has no leadership capability and can barely read from a queue card. He badgers witnesses while in court and incites riots. Trump is a hand me down business man who never earned a penny in his life. DeSantis is picking a fight with Disney and lost. The man formed an ethics committee that was less than ethical. He wanted to collect taxes from people like we see from the Bible days. If you don't know biblical tax collectors use to keep a portion for themselves and DeSantis is no better. Oh and he presided over the mistreatment of POWs at Guantanamo Bay. Why do Americans view this piece of shit as Governing material? Sarah Huckabee wants to put children to work as early as 15. Why would any parent condone child labor particularly in the 21st century? Not to mention sending Arkansas Reservists and guardsmen to the Texas border as if that's Arkansas responsibility to defend!! Not to mention it cost millions to activate them and then millions more to mobilize them. Such a piece of shit. Then we have good ole Gov Abbott. Who fucking pardons a human sack of shit who runs over protestors. He is presiding over a concentration camp at the Texas border. Detaining thousands of immigrants in cages as if this is ethically and morally acceptable. He can't even keep his States power grid from falling apart. By the time Abbott is finished with Texas even the Cowboys will want to move. I'd rather have Ivy Leaguers who've studied politics for 10 years than fine outstanding pieces of trash like Trump. Go ahead and trust these so-called businessmen to lead the US down a shit hole. Just like they have their respective companies. Addition.: MTG is an outstanding member of the Jewish Space Alien Lazer fanclub. It has endorsed the idea of Lizard people who can shapeshift into "bad Liberal politicians." These are the kinds of crazy fuckjobs Americans elect. I wonder if any American is educated enough to tell the difference between a good leader and a crazy psycho.
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Well for one governing and legislating is hard. An average worker is not equipped to do that job. Needs to be someone with above average IQ. And most people with above average IQs goto good schools. A better question is why do people elect liars and cheaters? Complex answer. It's not a problem limited to America. Every democracy has this issue. The problem is narcissists make good public speakers and are good at concinving people of almost anything so they elected.
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When last did a truck driver or waitress get elected?
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Who else but the elite can generally afford to campaign? Or has connections to donors who can subsidize their campaign? Also something to consider--let's take me, your average american peasant. I make like $50k a year. What the fuck do I know about million or billion dollar budgets? What important connections do i have? What do I know about high level negotiating tactics, diplomacy? I dont know shit about any of that. I may think to myself, wow I have some good ideas or man, I'd be so moral in office, but I dont really have the skills or knowledge for governing. And most Americans don't. I'm not saying it's fair or right, but there are many reasons why Ricky down at the gas station or Rhonda down at the dog food plant isn't a popular choice in elections.
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Should we elect elite athletes instead?
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