[InvisibleCities]

This has nothing do with people’s civic engagement levels, and everything to do with money. The semiconductor industry gets a massive subsidy because they spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying - impoverished schoolchildren get left to starve because they don’t.

[jobgh]

You honestly think tens of millions in lobbying efforts cause a tens of billions return on investment? Why is it so insanely cheap?

Maybe our elected representatives simply agree that national security is a priority just like the people who voted them into office?

[richbell]

> You honestly think tens of millions in lobbying efforts cause a tens of billions return on investment? Why is it so insanely cheap?

This is exactly how lobbying works, and it's depressing how insanely cheap our countries are being sold for.

- https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forg...

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/05/14/how...

For example, if a corporation doesn't like that the IRS is scrutinizing them they can just lobby congress to gut the IRS.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-to...

Think you can have an effect by contacting your elected officials? Public preference has almost no impact on what legislation gets passed. Not to mention all the gerrymandering...

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

[jobgh]

Your first two sources are just comparing spending to returns. It doesn't address the hard question which is about causality.

A better explanation for The American Jobs Creation Act is probably the fact that republicans support lower taxes, and they won in 2016.

Regarding the Microsoft case with the IRS, perhaps the fact that everyone hates the IRS is a better explanation?

>Public preference has almost no impact on what legislation gets passed. Why would it have a significant impact? We don't pass laws by poll.

>Not to mention all the gerrymandering This one seems real from what I've seen, but I need to look into it more, and I don't think it should be tied very closely to money in politics.

[runarberg]

I doubt it. The parallels of this rhetoric from the war on terror is stark. You can put anything under the umbrella of national security, and your average senator is perfectly aware of that. A theoretical threat to semiconductor distribution pails in comparison to the actual threat of climate change or the real threat of poverty which millions of Americans are facing.

No, I don’t believe the senators looked at this with an unbiased mind and came to this conclusion on their own volition. Much rather, they rely on some funding for their campaigning, and said funding had a deep influence on their decision. Not rational thinking.

[jobgh]

Securing core resources has been a long standing national security concern for countries. Also, there’s a good chunk of populist isolationist sentiment in the zeitgeist.

Senators aren’t unbiased. They’re biased towards what their voters want. If they step out of line, they’ll likely get crushed.

I don’t think money in politics is very explanatory. It seems a basic understanding of the 3 branches and the interplay between the states and federal government explains a lot.

[runarberg]

I think you might be underestimating voter apathy. Voter apathy stems further then low voter turnout, it also includes people who vote despite not caring or despite not believing their values will not be represented in that vote. That is, the lesser of two evils is a very real thing for many (most?) voters.

For that to be true there would have to be some dissonance between what voters actually want and to what their representatives actually deliver. If you don’t believe this dissonance exist, then sure, there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. I on the other hand, not only believe such dissonance exist, but is a fundamental flaw in our democracy.

[jobgh]

I don't think I am. A good recent example was the ACA under Obama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition#:~:text=The....

This is a big reason why Roe was never codified imo

[outsidetheparty]

I mean… yes? I thought this was common knowledge; there’s certainly no shortage of documentation available: the ROI from lobbying efforts is insanely high, on the order of 75,000% by many estimates.

I find it amusing that you dismissed this in a sibling comment as “just comparing spending to returns”… that’s literally what lobbying is: spending money to secure political favor. If our elected representatives simply agree that something should be a priority, companies wouldn’t need to bribe them to do it.

(Not so clear, personally, how you justify transposing this semiconductor handout to the more superficially defensible “national security”; but see also fossil fuel subsidies, corporate tax breaks, barring negotiated drug pricing: https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/politics/amazing-ro... )

As for “why is it so cheap”? I always assumed it was at least in part because there are a limited number of politicians competing with each other for the same funding sources.

It’s very low effort for a corporation to threaten to offshore and ask for a handout to not follow through on the threat. And it’s a very easy call for the politician to take the bribe, because then they can go back their constituency and say “We saved your jobs from going to China!” Everybody wins except the taxpayers. (And the corporations will go ahead and offshore, or not, just like they would have anyway, because one of the services they pay their lobbyists for is ensuring there will be no consequences for accepting the handout.)

[jobgh]

>I find it amusing that you dismissed this in a sibling comment as “just comparing spending to returns”… that’s literally what lobbying is: spending money to secure political favor. If our elected representatives simply agree that something should be a priority, companies wouldn’t need to bribe them to do it.

This is wrong. That's not what lobbying is understood to be. I think you're confusing lobbying with campaign contributions or PAC money. Lobbying is basically just advocating.

>I always assumed it was at least in part because there are a limited number of politicians competing with each other for the same funding sources.

That's kind of dodging the question. Why are there so few funding sources then?

[outsidetheparty]

> Lobbying is basically just advocating.

That's fair. I was imprecise: I should have made it explicit that I was speaking about lobbying in America:

> The one big difference between the US and the EU is that the majority of policymakers in the EU institutions are not elected, and since they do not need to stand for elections, they do not need to find the significant amounts of cash to support campaigns. Instead of spending innumerable hours fundraising, they balance competing interests in an effort to produce policies that are seen as legitimate, though produced by a less-than-democratic supranational structure. https://www.politico.eu/article/why-lobbying-in-america-is-d...

US Lobbyists funneled a total of 3.77 billion dollars into campaign coffers in 2021, and are already over 2 billion for 2022. I hope it's not necessary to point out that they're not doing that without the expectation of a return on that investment (and as we've already seen, they absolutely are getting that ROI.)

> That's kind of dodging the question. Why are there so few funding sources then?

Not sure I see how it's dodging the question, especially since my following paragraph continues not dodging it in greater detail.... but setting that aside, the obvious answer to "why are there so few funding sources" is "there is a finite number of wealthy individuals and organizations", with a side order of "and they tend to consolidate their lobbying activities into industry groups". (To be specific, in 2022 that finite number is 11,441.)

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying

[imtringued]

In an economic system where the rich earn money just from being rich, you have a strong incentive as a politician to sell your country as ten million dollars will result in a perpetual and exponentially growing income stream that exceeds a politicians salary multiple times and you don't even have to lift a finger, just do a single corruption stint and be locked in the upper class with the rest of the wealthy for the rest of your life.