| A bit off topic, but I think it speaks to the more general issues that voters (as employees) have little say in the laws which govern their workplaces. The notion that America is currently a functioning Democracy is still a bit up in the air for me. Americans in general have little factual policy knowledge, and for the few issues that do get fairly well covered there is a strong politicization which verges on propaganda. More to the point - many political arguments that we see today in the national press usually has the strong cashflow backing of a few elite pocketbooks. It is likely impossible to run an apolitical cause for the public good. If not for overwhelming politicization, is there another reason why so many US voters are basically anemic to political causes (e.g. wages, education, vacation, medical) which (in general) they could easily vote into law - but don't? Anyway, just my opinion. Gilens and Page[1]: >>>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. Some rebuttles: >>> Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant.[2] >>> The researchers found the rich’s win rate for economic issues where there's disagreement is 57.1 percent, compared with 51.1 percent for social issues. There's a difference, but not a robust one. "The win rates for the two issue types are not statistically different from one another," Branham, Soroka, and Wlezien conclude.[2] [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [2] https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... |