I think you overestimate the importance of money on politics. There have been lots of studies that show once you reach a certain threshold level of spending, the marginal utility of extra expenditures is tiny. I.e., plenty of politician win who are outspent by their opponent. Donald Trump is a classic example being outspent by Hillary almost 2 to 1. The Koch brothers reached that level in 2012, and decided they were going to cut back on spending, and that was before Trump was the nominee. The top spender last cycle was Tom Steyr at $20 million. I confidently predict that neither Tom nor Bloomberg will be the Democratic nominee this cycle, even though Bloomberg is going to be the biggest spender.
But mostly I think you have the causal relationship wrong. Rich donors chose politician whose view best align with theirs Politician, on big fundamental issues don’t suddenly change their views based on the top supporters. Nancy Pelosi’s daughter did a fun documentary a few years ago, called "Meet the Donors" where she interviewed both Conservative and Liberal super donors (including one of the Koch brothers and Soros). When asked why most basically said it was fun to hobnob with the politicians, and gain access to them. I saw it on Netflix, not sure it is still there.
As for buying media companies, I think there importance is exaggerated, and there is really very little evidence that owners exert anything like day to day editorial control. Take Murdoch’s Fox Corp. At first approximation, nobody watches Fox News (or any cable network), with 99% of Americans not watching Fox at any given hour. In contrast, despite football rating dropping, Fox still gets 20 million viewers for Thursday Football, where Hannity gets 2-3 million, and the rest of cable news is lucky to get 2 million. Murdoch has always been far more focus on Fox entertainment than Fox news, cause that’s where the money is. I’ve seen no evidence that Bezo has any influence on Washington Post, other than more resources and a better and cheaper digital experience.
At the end of the day, I don’t believe that have a million times the influence. Not to mention of the 600+ billionaire, there is only evidence that a dozen are heavily involved in politics.
Matt_W
2029
I know the wind is blowing when I see the trees move.
We should have a chart that overlaps it with money spent on campaigns.
Can’t because of Dark Money.
CraigM
2032
You say this, but then your example proves you wrong.
Fox News has a huge impact, and to pretend that Murdoch hasn’t used that to create an alternate reality for many Americans is not just wrong, but absurd.
Sure it may peak at around 3 million concurrent viewers, but total viewership will be higher given they average over 2 million from 8-11pm. Then add in their daytime viewers, and those who read their website, and the number of unique viewers is well into the 8 figures.
You are correct their total weekly viewership is in the 20 million range. The population of the US is 330 million tell me how something that 90% of American don’t watch has an huge impact again?
The bigger point is which came first the chicken or the egg. Did Fox espousing crazy right wing views turn normal Republican into rabid Trump fans. Or did the existence of a bunch of crazy, racist and xenophobic Republican, and the election of Donald Trump influence Fox’s coverage. All the evidence I see is that Fox is catering the desires of its audience and pushing out the moderate voices.
This is entirely consistent with Murdoch has done with Fox entertainment, if people want stupid reality shows, adult cartoons, and game shows, then that is what Fox provides. I may turn my nose up at the low brow entertainment but then I watch the PBS NewsHour a show which is lucky to get a million viewers.
No, the existence of the median salary does not prove anything about mobility. You can’t use statistics about income groups and use them to draw conclusions about individuals (which is what “mobility” refers to). And even if there are the same number of people over the median at 60, they are still different people.
You’re drawing conclusions not based on the evidence (i.e. “that’s entirely an artifact of income growth at the top”).
Because I’m the one who keeps making that point.
What shell game? I simply pointed out (and will continue to point out) that you can’t draw conclusions about what happens to individuals based on the relationships between income groups whose memberships are constantly changing.
ShivaX
2036
Because it spreads by social media to basically every one.
My mother doesn’t watch it and yet almost every day she’s quoting the worst of it on Facebook.
Edit: I mean Hannity, Tucker and Dobbs are basically running the country right now along with Fox and Friends.
That’s a very misleading chart. I wish the Taxpolicy center (part of the liberal Urban and Brooking Center) provided a cool chart but instead they provide useful data. The average effective tax rate by income level.
In 1979, right before the Reagan slash the top bracket from 70% to 28%. The top 1% was paying 35.1% average effective tax. After the Reagan tax cut the effective rate dropped to 26.8%, because in addition to slashing the top rate, the Reagan tax cut also eliminated hundreds of deductions. Including crazy thing like horse breeding farms that my engineering friends were all excited about in my first job out of college.
The rate hit an all time low of 24.7% right after the 2nd Reagan tax cut which reintroduce capital gains tax. Since then the effective tax rate on the top 1% has been gradually creeping up and was at 33.3% in 2016. It overall it is really remarkable how little change in effective tax rate there has been despite numerous tax bills over the last almost 40 years.
Look it’s very easy and you are wrong (or at least obscuring the matter), upwards mobility from the bottom half to the top half is the same as downwards mobility between the same groups by definition. Since the median stays the same, and very close to the overall median, the percentage of people in the lower half aged 35 is the same as aged 60.
It does not disprove upwards mobility in individuals, right, but it does say even if it exists in a statistically significant number, it’s compensated by equal in size downwards mobility. So the upwards mobility is meaningless in terms of discussing inequality, since the same number of people drop into the low end of an extremely unequal spread.
It does suggest lack of upwards mobility between those two groups even in individuals. It does suggest any upwards mobility between the bottom and top half after 35 years of age is probably not statistically significant or that a lot of people are getting screwed out of a decent income late in life and that the economy is thus even more fucked than inequality itself would suggest.
But, again, since the percentage of people in the bottom half is the same at any age group after 35, any upwards mobility does not make inequality less important or hurting.
Strollen
2039
Lots of shit spread on social media, included tiny Facebook ad buys by Russian agents, as we learned in the Mueller Report. The nightly shows, pretty much all have liberal bias now, generally have slightly higher rating than Fox news. I never watch them but I see their political skits on my social media all the time. Plus of course there is Saturday Night Live which crushes all the news channels in viewership and gets amplified on both mainstream and social media.
Of course it’s not! New people are constantly coming into the workforce at the low end, and older people are constantly leaving the workforce (through retirement or death) at the high end. It’s entirely possible for the median to stay the same, while most people in the workforce continue to get wage increases. Again, this is another example where talking about income groups obscures the reality of individuals.
It doesn’t suggest any such thing. With a median salary of X, you could have a lack of income mobility, or you could have absolute income mobility where everyone changes salaries every month, or anything in between. The existence of a median, or even the same median at different ages, does not prove anything about the income mobility of people within those groups.
The median remains the same across 3 decades of age groups at ages most of which are not associated with those ages where people enter the workforce or retire and die. Who are the 50% of 40-year-olds below the median, are they the new entrants or the soon-to-be-dead? Same question for the 45-yr-olds, and for the 50-yr-olds.
Alternatively, if we agree they aren’t new entrants or nearly-dead, and you say that they aren’t the same people at each age break because some have moved up, then you’re saying exactly what @Juan_Raigada says, which is that some others have moved down.
Matt_W
2042
Your chart shows effective federal tax rate only. The one I posted shows total tax rate: federal, state, and local. Given that difference, the two charts actually track pretty well.
Not only that, that data seems to be about people in the workforce.
That is also true. No dead employees in this chart.
Can’t find the original study, though, but data ends at 65, so it seems it doesn’t look into retirees other than early retirees if that. Probably accounts for unemployed people, though, or uses median after taxes, since the 48k median is lower than the nationwide median
Strollen
2047
No your chart show the top total marginal tax rates, which is complete different than average effective tax rates. Do you have a link to the underlying data for the chart? Also it is truly bizarre to add state taxes to chart like that since they vary from 0 to 13% (I believe in CA )
