More on Failed Democracy in the US
August 29, 2010 Leave a comment
More on democracy in the US. It says what I tried to express in an earlier post. Our democracy is not standing up to our hopes and expectations, and inequality is the most terrible result of this failure. The electorate is being sold policies that basically will hurt most of us in the future when spending on health and social security has to be constrained.
Tocqueville’s observations no longer ring true. America is no longer a land of equality, and it’s largely because our democratic system no longer promotes “the welfare of the greatest possible number.” And that’s because many citizens are only too eager to support policies that are “opposed to their own advantage,” like the then-popular (and apparently still-popular) Bush tax cuts, which shifted the relative tax burden from the rich onto the middle class… What Tocqueville underestimated was the power of money in modern politics and the marketing genius of modern politicians, which have freed democratic politics from the constraints of the actual interests of the majority.
About Stephen E. McGaughey
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