Billionaire politicians have become 'shockingly common' around the world, new study finds
Billionaire politicians have become 'shockingly common' around the world, new study finds
Billionaires who become politicians tend to "lean to the right ideologically," according to the research.
More than 11% of the world’s more than 2,000 billionaires have run for election or become politicians, according to a study highlighting the growing power and influence of the super-wealthy.
While billionaires have had mixed success at the ballot box in the U.S., billionaires around the world have a “strong track record” of winning elections and “lean to the Right ideologically,” said the study, which is by three professors at Northwestern University.
“Billionaire politicians are a shockingly common phenomenon,” the study said. “The concentration of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite has understandably caused many observers to worry that the ‘super-rich have super-sized political influence.’”
There are now 2,000+ billionaires? We'd better get to eating.
They already run the world. They just don't want to do it behind closed doors anymore.
The old capitalists were smart... they knew that hiding behind politicians camouflaged the class structure that enabled their privilege and power. But now it seems they've forgotten the lesson of the guillotine...
The new capitalist never bothered to read their Machiavelli
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Yes, I'm glad they added this (on why there are more billionaire politicians in authoritarian countries):
‘We surmise that this is due to stronger wealth-protection motives for political entry in autocracies and the wide array of ‘stealth’ pathways to informal political influence in democracies,” the study said.
Billionaires in (so-called) democracies don't need to get their hands dirty. They can control the whole polity via well-paid lackeys.
I mean... politicians have been rather wealthy throughout history. You think our founding fathers worked fields? They were significant land owners with influence.
Basically anyone could come settle land (literally free real estate), that's why they had to borrow a system of indentured servitude to produce. While white indentured servants were initially preferred, the Dutch trade routes and invention of the cotton gin turned in to the institution of chattel slavery of primarily Africans as we know it. Out of this period came the modern notion of "race" and conceptions of white-supremacy as a justification. Then you basically had a merchant economy in the north and an agricultural one in the south, and what was a moral concern for the north was the foundation of the economy in the south. Even after they lost Andrew Johnson basically gave all the planters back their seats in local governments.
Marx is spinning in his grave, of course they are. You don't need to be a communist to read his book. Its called Capital, its almost entirely about capitalism, and much of the critique AND techniques he used for the critique (Dialectics) have become foundational in other aspects of modern society. They should make people read this in school, the only communist teacher I ever had in college made us young lefties who signed up read Milton Friedman and John Smith FIRST. The baby daddies of capitalism, and we did because not knowing only makes us dumber. Why are we dead set on not making ourselves smarter? Remember when General Milley said even he's read Marx, there's reasons for that.
Lmao good Marx had bad ideas and got millions of people who believed in them killed.
Also it's weird to imply Marx invented Dialectics, since he just adopted Hegelian Dialectics in the same style as Engels.
But yes Marx is a very easy read and everyone should analyze his writings, if only to understand the criticisms and why his economic philosophy didn't age well.
In the 1880s the phenomenon of the Robber Baron became a thing- industrial capitalism and corporate power vaulted private citizens into spheres of power and influence to rival that of royalty.
Sure enough, allowing the Robber Barons to become influential led to the collapse in prior regulatory regimes that had once balanced the interests of workers vs. their employers and the resulting abuses (and poverty) led to a crisis of confidence in fledgling democracies, in which socialists would argue for democratizing the workplaces and fascists would argue to reject democracy altogether and revert to a stronger-strong-man model of government that wouldn't fail the way monarchs had in the face of the democratic revolutions of the 1840s.
It was a messy process, but by the 1930s much of the world had figured out it would be much better off with its billionaires on short leashes, its monopolists tightly constrained, its fascists shamed into hiding (or pushing up daisies). The resulting economic boom is still remembered as a high point of the middle class, and it lasted until the 1970s because until then the PR efforts of the industrial barons were laughed off as being transparent and self-serving. Eventually enough of the folks that remembered life under the Robber Barons passed on and by the time the Boomers came of political age they stopped protecting unions and enforcing antitrust law and defending the New Deal.
Since then, the corporate-power/pro-billionaire lobby has re-asserted corporate power to a state of affairs that has concentrated wealth and power much more than it was even in the deepest throes of the Great Depression or the decades leading up to it.
Of course the Billionaires are feeling ascendant. Also, at this point people are generally becoming as eat-the-rich as they were in times when it took literal violence to re-establish labor protections and re-assert democratic authority over public affairs. This is the second big-cycle of declining/crisis- democracy -> fascism -> resurgent democracy since the wave of democratic revolutions swept Europe in the 1840s and 50s. We're in the dark part of it now, the forces of fascism are ascendent and extremely powerful but don't forget they are and will always be a small minority
“Billionaire politicians are a shockingly common phenomenon,” the study said. “The concentration of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite has understandably caused many observers to worry that the ‘super-rich have super-sized political influence.’”
Every aristocracy in history has entered the chat.
Wow who would have guessed that the people who have all the time and money checks notes have the time and money to run for office?
So they're dabbling in politics themselves as opposed to simply buying the politicians they want.
Yeah... this whole capitalism thing sure seems to be on-track to reach it's logical conclusion - I sure hope there will be humans left afterwards.
One thing that I do respect the Swedish Vänsterpartiet (the left party) is that any MP belonging to the party can only make X ammount of money from their political position, any more has to be sent back to the party.
There are plenty I dislike about the party, but that I can respect.
Cost-savings. Why pay all these middle-men to do things for you when you can do them yourself AND have the state pay you for it?
I'm shocked, shocked I say! well... not that shocked.
It's because people are proud to lower their standards for what they can get.
They see that the ruling class is tightening its grip, so they convince themselves that this is the best way to go to avoid feeling bad about what we're missing out on.
