I’ve always wondered why candidates need so much money. I mean, this doesn’t go directly into their pockets, it’s largely used to fund ads, right?
I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already support you and your party to show up and vote. If that’s true, then the root cause of all of this money being injected into politics is really a symptom of low voter turnout. And so anything we can do to improve voter turnout will lessen the influence of money in politics.
My justification for this theory is that I see all of these political ads and really don’t find them convincing or liable to change my vote. I actually find attack ads often have the opposite effect on me, where I am immediately skeptical of whatever claim they advance and feel sure there’s important context they are leaving out. Of course I know I’m not the average voter, and other people may see it differently, but I’d love to see some data on this.
This depends on the ad. Professional political analysts make it a job to understand whether they need to increase voter turnout, convince fence-sitting voters, etc, and shape ads that target those demographics.
Low voter turnout is much more of a problem in the US where voting isn't compulsory.
I think you may be taking for granted the political dupoloy and candidate equality.
Third-party candidates are almost always unknown and remain unknown to the public, because they have no money to advertise and achieve name recognition, get their message out. The pay-to-play nature of elections preserves the duopoly of the major parties.
Consider also primary campaigns: typically an incumbent has vastly more money to spend than challengers, who are again usually unknown.
When it comes to general election campaigns between two duopolist candidates, there is usually less of a difference in fundraising ability, so it may seem like money doesn't matter a lot. I see campaign donations as more of an entrance fee than a guarantee of victory. It's gatekeeping, where the gates are closed to any politician who can't be purchased by wealthy interests.
The passing of Dolly Parton has really had me thinking how much good these unfathomably rich people and corporations could do. It enrages me to think of how many people $106 million could have helped.
What's really interesting is when you look at how much good they could do without ever actually affecting their lifestyle at all. What actually is $100 million to a trillionaire? What could he do with 1,000,000,000,000 that he can't do with 999,900,000,000?
The problem with this logic is that it equally applies to someone who owns 999,900,000,000.
If someone is willing to spend money above some spendable threshold, then they will never become a trillionaire. Because they will start giving away sooner.
From one perspective I am not against lobbying in general.
The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.
I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.
But all of this seems quite too much.
Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.
Yeah, I don't mind walmart making a psa about theft if that's what they want to do with their money. I very much do have a problem with them putting their thumb on the scale and donating millions to one political candidate over another.
You want to hire a lobbyist to show up and educate a senator on soybean production, more power to you, but it shouldn't come with a check.
Good point, the endless growth means comical amounts of money at the top.
It feels like they discovered in 2008 that you just never let the stock market go down. Then corporations have endless funds and excess can flow freely into politics.
They just have to convince everyone the market going up is good for the average person. The big problem is most people can't afford to invest so they don't give a shit what it does.
Fortunately they are creating a $1000 investment account for all newborns so everyone will be addicted to the market remaining green from birth.
A lot of very effective democracies work better by making it so that one individual is does not have a disproportionately larger voice, so the idea that you can spend arbitrary amounts on speech just because it's speech doesn't really follow.
You shouldn't have the right to spend disproportionately more on influencing an election than other people. That's not democratic. It very much favors the interests of the extremely wealthy.
What would be most democratic is if tax money funded campaigns. Every candidate gets the same amount for that office. Take money out of the equation. It should not be a reason someone gets elected. That's corrupting and makes candidates beholden to monied interests.
That's a tough ask of a court where half its members (including the chief justice) were caught not only accepting lavish gifts from wealthy individuals who brought cases before the court, but where the outrage was that the gifts were merely undisclosed.
> "It's part and parcel to a system that fully embraces free speech," said Tom Garrett, a vice president at the Institute for Free Speech. "All Americans have the right to express themselves and exercise their right to political speech to the fullest extent possible."
If this was implemented, it would destroy almost all companies. Grocery store net profit margins are 2-4%, if they sell $1B and make $40M and you tax them on 25% of $1B, their loss for the year would be $210M.
Apple and NVidia might survive, but any company with profit margins less than 25% or so would lose money simply by operating.
Liquidating everything or selling the business outright is the only move if you lose money by operating your business, only everyone else is trying to liquidate their assets since operating a business is guaranteed to lose money so there are no buyers.
I agree in spirit, but if not courts, and government, who is the one who gets to decide on it? Since it's a democratic country, if people disagreed or had a strong opinion about it, then would've voted accordingly.
When was it put up to a vote? I don't recall many national elections where I was asked my opinion about issues, only to choose between two options. And most of the time between one option really.
Entrenched power is leveraged to further entrench power. No way such a bill would have gotten through Congress, even before Citizens United. But is that democracy?
Free speech is when I scream so loud, no one else can even be heard. Its your fault anyway. Maybe if you cared you should have spent your life learning how to scream louder.
Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. Or, to borrow the old maxim, "Corporations aren't people until Texas executes one."
I think the idea that we should also be able to hide our large donations started here, but got reenforced by later decisions. ok, it's your money, you get to send it to whoever you like. but you shouldn't be able to hide. companies shouldn't act as cover for their owners, and if a candidate is largely propped up by the billionaire class then shouldn't voters at least be aware? shouldn't we be allowed to connect the dots and say 'wow, so you're removing protection for these wetlands because this guy threw you a couple million to get elected'?
I have a pet theory about political ads that I would love to find data to be able to confirm/deny. My theory is that those political ads don’t actually convince anyone about who to vote for, and aren’t intended to. Instead, it’s about convincing the people who already support you and your party to show up and vote. If that’s true, then the root cause of all of this money being injected into politics is really a symptom of low voter turnout. And so anything we can do to improve voter turnout will lessen the influence of money in politics.
My justification for this theory is that I see all of these political ads and really don’t find them convincing or liable to change my vote. I actually find attack ads often have the opposite effect on me, where I am immediately skeptical of whatever claim they advance and feel sure there’s important context they are leaving out. Of course I know I’m not the average voter, and other people may see it differently, but I’d love to see some data on this.
Low voter turnout is much more of a problem in the US where voting isn't compulsory.
Third-party candidates are almost always unknown and remain unknown to the public, because they have no money to advertise and achieve name recognition, get their message out. The pay-to-play nature of elections preserves the duopoly of the major parties.
Consider also primary campaigns: typically an incumbent has vastly more money to spend than challengers, who are again usually unknown.
When it comes to general election campaigns between two duopolist candidates, there is usually less of a difference in fundraising ability, so it may seem like money doesn't matter a lot. I see campaign donations as more of an entrance fee than a guarantee of victory. It's gatekeeping, where the gates are closed to any politician who can't be purchased by wealthy interests.
Damn, I can't think of a better argument for wealth tax if one dude alone is willing to spend $100m to fight it. He clearly has too much.
If someone is willing to spend money above some spendable threshold, then they will never become a trillionaire. Because they will start giving away sooner.
Good!! No one needs or deserves to be a trillionaire!
It’s been turtles all the way down since the Citizens United decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
The idea is that legislator don't have the full context and don't know the impact of their work - so they welcome industry or matter experts. Which is quite reasonable. I would argue that the job of the legislator is to know what they are doing, but I can see it being hard for specific technical issues that really benefits from first hand experience.
I am not even particularly against the idea of donating money to make sure a particular issue is known to the public, so that the public can make an effective voting decision.
But all of this seems quite too much.
Companies have disproportionate amount of money to donate and much less synchronization issue that citizen.
You want to hire a lobbyist to show up and educate a senator on soybean production, more power to you, but it shouldn't come with a check.
Interestingly, the NASDAQ over the same time has also grown 40%.
It feels like they discovered in 2008 that you just never let the stock market go down. Then corporations have endless funds and excess can flow freely into politics.
They just have to convince everyone the market going up is good for the average person. The big problem is most people can't afford to invest so they don't give a shit what it does.
Fortunately they are creating a $1000 investment account for all newborns so everyone will be addicted to the market remaining green from birth.
It must be overturned. It was a bogus ruling.
Don't I have a right to buy a $10 yard sign? A $100 bard sign? A $1000 billboard? A $10K radio ad? A $50K book printing?
Why should I lose any of these rights because I join with others to help me afford it?
What would be most democratic is if tax money funded campaigns. Every candidate gets the same amount for that office. Take money out of the equation. It should not be a reason someone gets elected. That's corrupting and makes candidates beholden to monied interests.
Corporations are people, my friend.
Then maybe we should start taxing them like people...
File the 1040 take only the standard deduction no matter your income. Revenue, not profit, is your income. Etc.
If this was implemented, it would destroy almost all companies. Grocery store net profit margins are 2-4%, if they sell $1B and make $40M and you tax them on 25% of $1B, their loss for the year would be $210M.
Apple and NVidia might survive, but any company with profit margins less than 25% or so would lose money simply by operating.
Liquidating everything or selling the business outright is the only move if you lose money by operating your business, only everyone else is trying to liquidate their assets since operating a business is guaranteed to lose money so there are no buyers.