| > "Yes to make it simple to intuitively see how rich people paying more gives more voting power to everyone else IF they choose to spend it that way. If you want to think about US presidential elections, you'd need to increase the total number of people by 3,000,000. Based on my math, this would just further amplify the effect I was trying to illustrate with my numbers." I respect that you had good intentions, but I think the approach was flawed. In your example, $1000 vs. $400 ($4 * 100), what does it take for the rich person to gain the lead again? They can either spend more or split the money. For example, if they split the $1000 with a family member who was voting for the same party/candidate, that's all it would take to gain the lead. Also, consider the difference in fundraising potential between the rich and the poor. For example, in the 2016 US Presidential Election, Bernie Sanders ran what I believe to be the most successful citizen-led fundraising campaign in US political history, raising approximately $228 million: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00000528 In contrast, in the same election, just the top 23 super PAC donors alone spent a total of $468 million: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/superpac-do... So the most successful crowdfunded campaign in history was outspent by just 23 people. I don't know if you were a Bernie supporter or not, but I hope you'd agree that he was a candidate that people were strongly behind. However, due to the income inequality in the US, the difference in spending power is massive. It's not a matter of the general public wanting something badly enough, $228 million is a clear message that the want was there. The only caveat with all this is that not all the super PAC money would've been spent for a single party. However, the majority would've been spent supporting corporate-friendly candidates. |