To what extent has democracy in the US been subverted by money?

[Berkut]

Why didn't any bankers end up in jail? Why hasn't there been obvious financial system reform? Duh, how could there be, when the people who would need to do that reform are funded by the corporations who would be harmed by that reform?

You know what I love about this? The presumption that the bankers broke the law and that reform would do any good.

Take the Enron / Arthur Anderson scandal. The world turned upside down for that one with a while. Arthur Anderson was effectively shut down, and massive reforms passed.

You know what happened to the partner at Arthur Anderson actually at the center of the situation? The government went after him, and he initially received a criminal conviction. However, it effectively was overturned on appeal, he settled the civil charges, and is now the CFO of an oil company, probably making more than he ever did at Arthur Anderson.

As for the reforms passed over the howls of the business lobby, which created a whole new accounting oversight board and tons of regulations, I think any accountant involved will tell you that the vast majority of effort is not going into work that will prevent the next Enron. But it is without a doubt helping my career as an accountant, so by all means bring on the next scandal and even more reforms.

Your right. All reform is impossible and futile. We should just give up.

[alfred russel]

Your right. All reform is impossible and futile. We should just give up.

I know you are being sarcastic, but I think the system is too dysfunctional to address the more complex topics.

[frunk]

Your right. All reform is impossible and futile. We should just give up.

I know you are being sarcastic, but I think the system is too dysfunctional to address the more complex topics.

If the system is incapable of addressing the more complex topics then it is bound to collapse.  I don't think that's true.

[Valmy]

Gotcha! 

You bastard

[alfred russel]

If the system is incapable of addressing the more complex topics then it is bound to collapse.  I don't think that's true.

I don't think slow and incremental change to the status quo is impossible, but significant real and positive reform probably is. That doesn't leave us in danger of collapse though. The USSR had one of the worst systems ever and still muddled through for a really long time, and if it wasn't for the presence of a better example of how to do things might still be going.

Just my opinion.

[Berkut]

Your right. All reform is impossible and futile. We should just give up.

I know you are being sarcastic, but I think the system is too dysfunctional to address the more complex topics.

The system is not dysfunctional, it functions exactly as it was designed.

The problem is not that the system doesn't work, the problem is that the system works to purposes that do not serve the interests of 99.6% of Americans.

[alfred russel]

The system is not dysfunctional, it functions exactly as it was designed.

The problem is not that the system doesn't work, the problem is that the system works to purposes that do not serve the interests of 99.6% of Americans.

I guess that is why that other great western financial center, London, has a government that has passed all sorts of the effective financial reforms that we haven't. It all comes back to campaign finance reform.

[crazy canuck]

Ah no.  The majority of the Western world has single payor (government) health care models.  In the US you have made primary private health insurance mandatory.  The reason the US is not able to reform its medical system to one that is more rational and efficient is exactly because of the reasons Berkut has stated.

You are disagreeing with me on terms regarding whether the US is an "outlier", but then talking about what the majority is doing? Either we don't have a common understanding of the word "outlier", or your post is something of a non sequitor.

I have no idea what you are trying to say.  Your claim that the US medical system "isn't a dramatic outlier when it comes to the rest of the western world" is absurd.

[Zanza]

Berkut lists a list of things that he believes money is paralyzing the US regarding, but what he skips over is that when he talks about income inequality or health care (for instance) not being addressed, is that the US really isn't a dramatic outlier when it comes to the rest of the western world, and to the extent it is that difference hasn't corresponded to the USSC decisions. And if anything we seem to be converging with places like Western Europe.

Based on the the discussions on income inequality, I would agree that the US Gini coefficient is in general not such a big outlier. I got the impression (that I can't tie to any data) that while maybe the Gini coefficient for 100% of the population is comparable, there is still a more extreme concentration of wealth among the 0.001% or whatever that is not significantly influencing the Gini coefficient for the entire population, but still creates a very small group of hyper-rich people that have extreme influence on campaign financing and policy. Not sure if that makes any sense from a statistics perspective, but if e.g. the 1000 richest Americans are hyper rich, that wouldn't influence the Gini coefficient for 300 million too much, right?

Similar to Russia. 

[crazy canuck]

Berkut lists a list of things that he believes money is paralyzing the US regarding, but what he skips over is that when he talks about income inequality or health care (for instance) not being addressed, is that the US really isn't a dramatic outlier when it comes to the rest of the western world, and to the extent it is that difference hasn't corresponded to the USSC decisions. And if anything we seem to be converging with places like Western Europe.

Based on the the discussions on income inequality, I would agree that the US Gini coefficient is in general not such a big outlier. I got the impression (that I can't tie to any data) that while maybe the Gini coefficient for 100% of the population is comparable, there is still a more extreme concentration of wealth among the 0.001% or whatever that is not significantly influencing the Gini coefficient for the entire population, but still creates a very small group of hyper-rich people that have extreme influence on campaign financing and policy. Not sure if that makes any sense from a statistics perspective, but if e.g. the 1000 richest Americans are hyper rich, that wouldn't influence the Gini coefficient for 300 million too much, right?

Similar to Russia. 

In his book Piketty does a good job analyzing the concentration of wealth in a number of nations.  He identifies the US as an outlier in regard to that concentration both in terms of capital and wages.  The rise of what he terms the "supermanagers" who have obtained dramatically increased wages is particularly acute in the US.  He also notes that in the US went from a nation which had significantly less concentration of wealth than Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries to a country that has more concentration than Europe did in the 19th century.  I particularly like his style of writing as he often uses pieces of literature from the applicable periods of time.  It is striking to think that the US has gone beyond the concentration of wealth and income disparity which marked the English novels written in the 19th Century.

He also makes the point that the Gini coefficient is a crude measure at best but I am no economist and so my explanation of his point would be weak at best.  But your intuition is confirmed by picketty.  He breaks down the top percentile into smaller groups for analysis and the concentration of wealth in the top of the US 1% is truly astounding.

[KRonn]

I dunno, seems like the democracy of Tammany Hall/Mayor Daley/Governor Huey Long might be a tad more corrupt than today.

I think today is far worse, because it is actually "legal" corruption. It isn't "Here is a bag of money, please vote as such" but it is "Here is a funding stream, and as long as you represent us, it will remain in place". This is far worse, IMO, than overt corruption.

Agreed on that. Systemic corruption, legal and all, but the system is corrupted so that it best serves the interests of the connected, big business, unions, other large entities, and politicians will work within certain guidelines so as to gain influence for their party or for certain of these interests. I had never thought that way, been more of an establishment type, but I've been of the view that the US system has become quite corrupt for a while now. 

[Razgovory]

Oh please, people have been bitching about corruption in the US pretty much since the moment we had a nation. This is just more of the same, and nothing has really changed.

The issue is less corruption, but a very high bar to anyone who wants to enter politics.

If you're planning to jump right in with a bid for Congress, yeah.  But that's probably always been true.  And it's not really true if you're running for your local city council or board of education or the like, at least in the vast majority of cases.

It takes a surprising amount of money to run for lower offices.  You need to be raising funds constantly.  For instance the average amount of money raised for a state representative race was 66,000 bucks.  That's a lot of cash to raise on your own for a fairly low office.

[Jacob]

Hey Berkut, I just came across this which might be grounds for a bit of mild optimism: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/politics/left-and-libertarians-unite-to-amend-house-spending-bills.html

Cats and dogs lying together! Or rather, libertarian inclined Republicans working with the left wing of the Democrats in Congress to pass mutually acceptable amendments.

[Valmy]

That has been my straw to grasp.  That a few who are still motivated by ideology will band together. 

But ultimately what we need is an amendment to the Constitution that will take the money out of the elections.  How people are supposed to run for office I guess needs to be addressed but we have the internet now so perhaps we can find a low rate way to campaign that will allow it to be more about the ideas, and how those ideas appeal to the voters, and less about fund raising.

[viper37]

The reason the US is not able to reform its medical system to one that is more rational and efficient is exactly because of the reasons Berkut has stated.

and that has changed in Canada... how exactly?  What reforms have we done since the 60s?