https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/opinion/working-class-wealthy-legislators.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU0.XUZR.M9Hfj_OejlQJ
What explains the almost total absence of working-class people from elected positions in state government?
Here's an idea: Every election, you randomly choose ~5-10 people for each seat, and these are your candidates. If you're not selected, you can't run. To make sure people actually want to be elected, let's also make the salary really enticing for the representatives. Maybe, just maybe, let's also make the incumbent one of the candidates, so you can get re-elected if you do a good job and people like you (but I'm really not sure about this part).
I think it'd help make the composition of Parliament mirror more closely that of the general population.
randomly choose ~5-10 people for each seat, and these are your candidates
It would be better if the representative themselves were randomly chosen, rather than candidates.
The problem is that elections are fundamentally undemocratic. Oligarchs, elites, the rich - whatever you call our aristocrats - will always be better placed to influence others, win elections and then represent their narrow interests against the majority. As they do now.
That was my first thought, actually. I've since come to realize that a completely random selection may not properly reflect the will of the population, and some electoral input is desireable.
What you're referring to is the influence of money in politics, and my answer to that would be pretty simple: 100% forbid all advertising in elections. Instead, candidates are provided screen time on public television & radio (CBC / Radio-Canada), a website where they can present their platform, and some form of print media that gets distributed in all homes. They can only advertise through these channels, and nowhere else. If a journalist wants to interview a candidate, they also have to give equal coverage to their opponents.
Basically, money would be useless as a tool for winning elections. Electoral spending is already closely scrutinized here in Canada, this would only bring that even further.
I wish more people thought like this and realized that as humans, we can make whatever system we want. We have infinite possibilities and surely can find systems that do what we desire.
That’s the whole point of technology. Out of all the possibilities, we found the design that turns light into electricity. If only we realized politics can work the same way.
Yeah it should be in between a draft and jury duty. I think there are plenty of really bright people who are smart enough to stay away from politics. It’s not just the working class who aren’t represented but also scientists, engineers, young people, or minorities. Two year terms, can serve multiple terms. Very good idea.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
There is a coordinated, nationwide effort to roll back child labor laws, part of a broader campaign to concentrate even more power into the hands of employers.
One way to understand this fight to roll back labor laws is as a function of conservative ideology and a reflection of the views of the social base of Republican politics.
Now there is a case to make that Congress needs more staff and higher pay — that to attract the best candidates for federal office, compensation should be competitive with salaries in private-sector fields of similar power, prestige and responsibility.
The main point, however, is that Congress is at least structured in a way that would make it possible for a working-class person to do the job without jeopardizing his or her financial security (although this still leaves us with the problem of actually winning a seat).
Setting aside the difficulty of getting elected — the necessity of raising money from wealthy friends, family and acquaintances that most Americans simply do not have — if a working-class person of modest means somehow won a state legislative position, she would almost certainly have to sacrifice a large part of her income to do so.
The problem is that all of this runs counter to our ingrained hostility to politics and politicians — our cynical distrust, even contempt, for people who choose to make a career of elected office.
The original article contains 955 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This article is an abuse of the source data. "Working class" here is closer to manual laborer and excludes teachers, farm workers, military, emergency services, nurses, law enforcement, and others. The data is also fairly noisy, with typos and 2% of values being empty affecting the calculation.
To conclude that anyone not "working class" by this definition is "upper-class" is absurd. I guess for some it is hard to imagine the lofty former assistant manager at Burger King (D-AR) understanding the struggles of the common man.
There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the disruptive influence of wealth on elections and about balancing representation with competence -- and folks are having that discussion -- but this article contributes less than nothing to those conversations.
"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" I know I sound like a jerk here, but I expect someone with the ability to be an effective politician to have the ability to reach the upper middle class, generally by becoming a lawyer, even if starting with nothing.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
-Kurt Vonnegut
You’re so rich, how can you be so dumb?
Wealth and status has everything to do with family background and generational wealth. You either have it or you don’t.
That's simply not true for the upper middle class - look at the statistics for Chinese immigrants. They start out much poorer than the average native-born American but they quickly end up earning significantly more than the average native-born American does. Plenty of them go from poverty to the upper middle class in one or two generations.
It’s almost like people who come from a culture that’s not “fuck you, I got mine” are really successful when dropped into a tight immigrant community in a country that has more open social and economic policies.
America’s problem is Americans.
Social mobility is largely a lie, but even if it wasn't, why would you think that a government controlled by a narrow group of interests is better? You're arguing for oligarchy.
This may be true if your working with two assumptions. One society is a meritocracy, which isnt true in most cases success is determined by birth and luck rather than merit, other comments have mentioned this so I won't get too deep into it.
The other is that politics and government are just about getting the smartest most credentialed people in the room and then they will solve all the issues. While we do want smart capable people in office this view ignores the other qualification a representative needs, to identify with and understand the people they're representing. If Congress is just a bunch of lawyers from Harvard they don't understand what it's like to be a single mom working on minimum wage and are unlikely to increase that wage. If there only talking to people in the successful upper middle class that they inhabit they're less likely to see the struggles of the common worker. This is why we need working class representatives to give a voice to those struggles.
You make a good point. In my experience, American society is a meritocracy - my family started out with almost nothing and now we're upper-middle-class. I know plenty of other people with a similar experience; this experience is one reason why so many immigrants want to come to the USA. However, it's clear that my experience isn't universal. I don't identify with the many people here who don't think we're living in a meritocracy, and I don't identify with people in generational poverty despite having experienced poverty myself. I admit I don't understand the former group (are we living in the same country?) and my understanding of the latter group is only academic. I can see why people in these groups wouldn't want a representative with a life experience like mine.
On the meritocracy argument if you think of it like economic success = merit = hard work and determination, I think that's wrong because there are two things required, that are matters of luck, to turn that hard work into economic success.
One you have to be talented, or have some innate ability that others may not have. Just like some people will never be a top basketball player no matter how hard they work because they just don't have the body for it many people just dont have the brain to understand medicine or law or business at high levels. There's nothing wrong with not being able to do that though and people shouldn't be punished by having a lower standard of living because of it. Hard work !=merit
The second is you have to be talented in a field that the market values. The classic example of this is the starving artist but even if you're talented at child care you may not be payed well unless you "advance" to becoming a manager which you may not be good at. This also goes into how we value work as a society since that childcare worker is doing more good for society then a Google engineer figuring out ways to click ads, but the latter is payed far more and is deemed worthy of merit. Merit != Economic success
If you'd like to know more about this perspective I'd recommend reading "the tyranny of merit" by Michael sandel. It's written by a Harvard philosophy professor on the reality and the moral and political implications of the "meritocracy" as it exists in the U.S. today.
I disagree with this. Law school isn't cheap. Law school doesn't come from nothing. I'm seeing kids in my class who are stacked six to a bed, working full work weeks and trying to squeak by in class, and largely failing. Also, effective politicians need to raise funds to run campaigns. Funds come from rich people. Even if this effective politician somehow manages to afford an expensive law degree, they also need to have the time and opportunity to succeed in school, and then somehow manage the free time to also make connections among the wealthy so they can raise the funds to run a campaign.
Politics has become for the rich, by the rich.