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Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think. The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. (act.represent.us)

submitted 4 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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[–] TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

And still anytime it's brought up, often the Americans downvote it... There have been a few great studies that show the complete ineffectiveness of voting. It's all about lobbying.

And when you finally get people to concede its about lobbying from elites, the definitions of elite is wildly skewed. People who make $100k/yr are not "the elites". "The 1%" are not the elites. It's about $700k/yr now to be a 1%er in the USA as of 2023 data. Even with 700k a year, you aren't buying a $25m private jet, and a $300m yacht. You aren't donating $3m at a time to Super PACs to get your pet project through.

$700k/yr is also just some tech dude coding for Netflix that lives in a 1500sqft house in California.

We humans are really really bad at numbers. A million sounds like so much. A billion sounds like so much more. But the concept of how much more is lost on most people. And now you have TRILLION dollar companies.

There are a few people and companies in the USA that control everything. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. And lots is purposefully designed to keep poorer and less powerful people fighting each other.