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| Figure 1: Bottom Decile Irrelevant To Policy |
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| Figure 2: Top Decile Much More Influential on Policy Than Median |
These striking figures are from Martin Gilens (2005). Gilens looks at 1,781 questions from opinion surveys given between 1981 and 2002 and soliciting opinions on policy changes that could be implemented by some combination of the president and the Congress. He codes the question based on whether the policy change was implemented in the four years after the survey was given. As I understand it, for each question he performs a regression based on opinions and income. This allows him to analyze the consistency, for each income percentile, of opinions and policy outcome.
Gilens then looks at questions where people at different income percentiles differ in opinion by at least 8% for his scale. He finds 887 such questions for the 10th and 90th percentile, and 498 questions for the 50th and 90th percentile. As you can see, poor people at the 10th percentile have virtually no impact on policy outcomes, and middle income people at the 50th percentile have only slight impact. Empirically, the United States is a plutocracy.
- Martin Gilens (2005). "Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness", , V. 69, N. 5: pp. 778-796.
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6 comments:
It's not that the opinion of the lowest decile doesn't matter: the lowest 10% income earners are invisible.
And in Australia, the lowest decile simply does not exist.
At least, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In Australia 90% of the population is 100% of the population.
Have I lost my marbles? Probably.
Judge by yourself:
"Is it Alive?"
http://aussiemagpie.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/is-it-alive.html
There you'll find links to the ABS methodological notes.
I haven't checked how American income statistics are compiled. It would be interesting to see how you guys handle this.
These statistics are not the whole story. It could well be, that the lowest income classes make low-quality suggestions. Their feelings may be right, but their arguments and conclusions could be inferior. So a quality assessment of their opinions seems desirable.
Thanks for the comments. I do not enough about Australia to have any thing to say.
"Their feelings may be right, but their arguments and conclusions could be inferior. So a quality assessment of their opinions seems desirable."
Seems reasonable. Does this apply to everybody or just to THEM?
"I do not enough about Australia to have any thing to say."
It sounds odd (more like infuriating, to me), but there it is. After a group here started insisting on this, it seems the ABS will release this month a study focusing on the lowest decile.
By the way, our employment statistics have been seriously questioned, too.
If you are in the US, as I believe, perhaps you should check, to make sure your own statistics mean what one thinks they mean.
I'm in the top decile and they aren't even listening to ME.
This ties into what you say in your next post. I'm advocating for policies which will reproduce civil society, rather than destroying it. (I happen to think civil society is a rather good deal for the upper 10% -- no mobs robbing our houses, etc.)
This -- advocacy of the long-term interests of the elite rather than the short-term monetary interests -- is Not Welcome among the elite consensus, which has been taken over by the greedheads. They are focused on the allocation of scarce resources to themselves, right now.
--Nathanael
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