{"id":68308,"date":"2015-11-09T10:37:57","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T15:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68308"},"modified":"2016-11-19T16:01:38","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T21:01:38","slug":"what-the-1-wants-from-our-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/11\/09\/what-the-1-wants-from-our-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"What the 1% wants from our politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 1% in America\u00a0have an out-sized influence on the political process. What policies do they support? And do their priorities differ from those of less wealthy\u00a0Americans?<\/p>\n

Political scientist Benjamin Page and two colleagues wanted to find out, so they started trying to set up interviews with\u00a0the richest of the rich.\u00a0This, they noted, was really quite a feat, writing:<\/p>\n

It is extremely difficult to make personal contact with wealthy Americans. Most of them are very busy. Most zealously protect their privacy. They often surround themselves with professional gatekeepers whose job it is to fend off people like us. (One of our interviewers remarked that \u201ceven their gatekeepers have gatekeepers.\u201d) It can take months of intensive efforts, pestering staffers and pursuing potential respondents to multiple homes, businesses, and vacation spots, just to make contact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Persistence paid off. They\u00a0completed interviews with\u00a083 individuals<\/a> with net worths in in the top 1%.\u00a0\u00a0Their mean wealth was over $14\u00a0million\u00a0and their average income was over\u00a0$1\u00a0million\u00a0a year.<\/p>\n

Page and his colleagues learned that these individuals were highly politically active. A\u00a0majority (84%) said they paid attention to politics “most of the time,” 99% voted in the last presidential election, 68% contributed money to campaigns, and 41% attended political events.<\/p>\n

Many of them were also in contact with politicians or officials. Nearly a quarter had conversed with individuals staffing regulatory agencies\u00a0and\u00a0many had been in touch with their own senators and representatives (40% and 37% respectively) or those of other constituents (28%).<\/p>\n

These individuals also reported\u00a0opinions that differed from those of the general population. Some differences really stood out: the wealthy were substantially less likely to want to expand support for job programs, the environment, homeland security, healthcare, food stamps, Social Security, and farmers.\u00a0Most, for example, are not particularly concerned with ensuring that all Americans can work and earn a living wage:<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Only half think that the government should ensure equal schooling for whites and racial minorities (58%), only a\u00a0third (35%) believe that all children deserve to go to “really good public schools,” and only a quarter (28%) think that everyone who wants to go to college should be able to do so.<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The wealthy generally opposed regulation on Wall Street firms, food producers, the oil industry, the health insurance industry, and big corporations, all of which is\u00a0favored by the general public.\u00a0A\u00a0minority of the wealthy (17%) believed that the government should reduce\u00a0class inequality by redistributing wealth, compared to half of the\u00a0general population (53%).<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Page and his\u00a0colleagues\u00a0also compared the answers of the top 0.1% with the remainder of the top 1%. The top 0.1%, individuals with $40 million or more net worth, held views that\u00a0deviated even farther from the general public.<\/p>\n

These attitudes may explain why politicians take positions with which\u00a0the majority of Americans disagree. “[T]he apparent consistency between the preferences of the wealthy and the contours of actual policy in certain important areas,” they write, “\u2014 especially social welfare policies, and to a lesser extent economic regulation and taxation \u2014 is, at least, suggestive of significant influence.”<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1% in America\u00a0have an out-sized influence on the political process. What policies do they support? And do their priorities differ from those of less wealthy\u00a0Americans? Political scientist Benjamin Page and two colleagues wanted to find out, so they started trying to set up interviews with\u00a0the richest of the rich.\u00a0This, they noted, was really quite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23642,36,23633,23634,23666,34,702,2124,252,3920,85,234,20068,304,283,285,20063,76],"class_list":["post-68308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-class-prejudicediscrimination","tag-economics","tag-economics-corporations","tag-economics-finance","tag-economics-social-welfare","tag-education","tag-energy","tag-foodagriculture","tag-healthmedicine","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-democracy","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-the-state","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/5.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68312,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68308\/revisions\/68312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}