[mattlanger]

You're right, Paul, there's no evidence of any of this at all.

There's no evidence of pharma companies lobbying for more lax FDA regulations.

There's no evidence of the automative industry lobbying against higher CAFE standards.

There's no evidence of utilities companies lobbying against net neutrality.

There's no evidence of the last midterm election cycle seeing an amount of private spending nearly double the previous record.

Meanwhile there's an abundance of evidence that poor people are successfully lobbying for a higher living wage, longer unemployment benefits, and access to quality healthcare.

[pg]

If you find yourself saying something so obvious as that lobbying exists, you should wonder whether it supports the point you're claiming.

What this discussion is about is the purported "systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else." Merely pointing out that lobbying exists doesn't support that. In fact, some of your examples are actually counterexamples: e.g. the companies lobbying against net neutrality are less controlled by the superrich than Google, which is lobbying for it. What you have to show is that lobbying is increasing, and that it's increasingly being driven by the agenda of the superrich (rather than merely large corporations).

[Benjo]

I'm not sure if you are disputing the claim that lobbying is increasing. Here's some data: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php Looks to be trending upwards fairly quickly with the exception of 2010. I would assume that represents information not publicly available due to the effects of the Citizens United decision.

Is lobbying a result of income inequity? I think it has more to do with the increasing power and competition between corporations than individual wealth. The more competitors one has, the more likely that one has to match their lobbying efforts just to keep the playing field even.

Beyond that, the effectiveness of lobbying enables the rich to exert more influence over the election process. It may be because our election system is not insulated against this influence that the income distribution seems so unfair. This would imply that we should reduce that influence or reduce the inequity of wealth. Which one is more fair, if they can even be done separately, is not clear to me.