Democ

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality
*** General ***.............................................................................................................................................3 Additional Bibliography.................................................................................................................................4 Stuff That is Critical to Democracy............................................................................................................5 Definitions of Democracy..............................................................................................................................6 Broad Definitions of Democracy Are Bad.....................................................................................................7 *** Pro Inequality Threatens Democracy ***............................................................................................8 Inequality Threatens Democracy...................................................................................................................9 Inequality Threatens Democracy.................................................................................................................10 Inequality Threatens Democracy.................................................................................................................11 Inequality Increasing....................................................................................................................................12 Participation Critical to Democracy.............................................................................................................13 Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation......................................................................................................14 Poverty Reduces Political Participation.......................................................................................................15 Poverty Reduces Political Participation.......................................................................................................16 Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation......................................................................................................17 Inequality Threatens Political Participation.................................................................................................18 Inequality Threatens Political Participation.................................................................................................19 Inequality Threatens Fair Political Access...................................................................................................20 Equality Key to Democracy.........................................................................................................................22 Politics is Stratified......................................................................................................................................23 Interest Groups.............................................................................................................................................24 Voting...........................................................................................................................................................25 Voting...........................................................................................................................................................26 Political Parties.............................................................................................................................................27 Political Parties.............................................................................................................................................28 Voluntary Associations................................................................................................................................29 Public Opinion Surveys................................................................................................................................30 Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence...................................................................................................31 Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence...................................................................................................32 Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence...................................................................................................33 Poverty Isnt Mobilizing Interest Groups that Protect the Poor...................................................................34 Business Interests Dominate Politics...........................................................................................................35 A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes............................................................................................36 A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes............................................................................................37 A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes............................................................................................38 Reducing Poverty Increases Participation....................................................................................................39 A2: Inequality Leads to Protests/Protests are Good & Democratic.............................................................40 Poor Underrepresented.................................................................................................................................41 A2: Populist Organizations Protect the Poor................................................................................................42 A2: Kuznets Curve/Poor Have Political Power...........................................................................................43 A2: Political Equality Means Redistribution Can Occur.............................................................................44 A2: Government Leaders Protect the Poor..................................................................................................45 Wealthy Generally Politically Advantaged..................................................................................................46 *** Con Inequality Doesnt Threaten Democracy ***.............................................................................47 A2: AAPSA Report......................................................................................................................................48 A2: Need to Hear the Voice of the Poor......................................................................................................50 A2: Poor Arent Politically Active...............................................................................................................51 Inequality Boosts Civic Engagement...........................................................................................................52 1
General Take-Outs.......................................................................................................................................53 General Take-Outs.......................................................................................................................................54 General Take-Outs.......................................................................................................................................55 General Take-Outs.......................................................................................................................................56
*** General ***
Additional Bibliography
Brady, Henry E., Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba and Laura Elms. 2002. Who Bowls?: The (Un)Changing Stratification of Participation. In Understanding Public Opinion. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freeman, Richard B. 2004. What, Me Vote? In Social Inequality. New York: Russell Sage Foundation pp. 703728.4 Lijphart, Arend. 1997. Unequal Participation: Democracys Unresolved Dilemma. American Political Science Review 91(1):114. Dahl, Robert A. 1996. Equality versus Inequality. PS: Political Science & Politics 29(4):639648. Benabou, Roland. 2000. Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract. American Economic Review 90(1):96129. Muller, Edward N. 1995. Economic Determinants of Democracy. American Sociological Review 60(6):966982. Video http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=13571
Stuff That is Critical to Democracy

Elections, transparency, voice, and open institutions are all critical to democracy
Yue Yang, Journal of Politics & Law, September 2011, The Course of Democratization under Globalization, p
170
Democratic system has four basic functions: the first is fair election and independent authorization of the public. Ensure the equity and equality in the process of generating public power; the second is openness and transparency. The public know and monitor the performance of public power. Ensure that the public power works in public; the third is convenient communication. The public can express their wills freely. Ensure that public power reflects the opinion of all social members equally and equitably in performance; the fourth is open institution. The public participates in decisionmaking. Ensure more social members can join in equally and equitably in the execution of public power. The four basic functions (see Figure 1) embody the leading effect of the public in public affairs and its initiative position relative to the public power. If one of basic functions is missing or weakening, the democratic system will be imperfect and impossible.
Democracy depends on majority rule

Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 423 Blum and Kalven reveal the bases for their political objections when they discuss progressivity as a means of wealth redistribution. Democracy, defined as majority rule, necessarily rests political sovereignty with the majority (who are the poor). If democracy must also protect the minority (who are the rich), the possibility of majority decisions effecting wealth redistribution poses the actual problem--the conflict inherent in majority rule and minority protection. Yet their analysis also reflects a concern with the paradox that wealth inequality may inherently conflict with democracy.
Definitions of Democracy
Democracy is a form of government where the laws apply to the people who made them
Robert Post is David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and, Social Science, January 2006, The Rule of Law: What Is It?: Democracy and Equality, p. 25 In this article, I shall take a very different path. I shall closely examine the meaning of democracy, and, having fixed a definition, I shall discuss the logical and practical connections between this definition and various forms of equality. I begin with what I take to be the unobjectionable premise that democracy refers to "the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy: Democratic forms of government are those in which the laws are made by the same people to whom they apply (and for that reason they are autonomous norms), while in autocratic forms of government the law-makers are different from those to whom the laws are addressed (and are therefore heteronomous norms)" (Bobbio 1989, 137). The question I shall address is the relationship between autonomous forms of government and equality.
Democracy is not popular sovereignty or majoritarianism Robert Post is David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and, Social Science, January 2006, The Rule of Law: What Is It?: Democracy and Equality, p. 25-6
What does it mean for a form of government to be autonomous? Democracy is not the same thing as popular sovereignty, a state of affairs in which the people exercise ultimate control over their government. Popular sovereignty is compatible with forms of popular fascism in which a dictator carries the genuine and spontaneous approval of an entire people. Nor is democracy identical to majoritarianism, in which a majority of the people exercise control over their government. Although it is frequently said "any distinct restraint on majority power, such as a principle of freedom of speech, is by its nature anti-democratic, anti-majoritarian" (Schauer 1982, 4041), a majority of the electorate can implement rules that are plainly inconsistent with democracy, as for example by voting a monarchy into office. These examples suggest that popular sovereignty and majoritarianism may be intimately associated with the practice of democracy, but they themselves do not define democracy. That is why it is not unintelligible to conclude that particular exercises of popular sovereignty or majoritarianism are antidemocratic.
Broad Definitions of Democracy Are Bad

Broad definitions of democracy make it meaningless
Robert Post is David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and, Social Science, January 2006, The Rule of Law: What Is It?: Democracy and Equality, p. 24 In this article, I shall discuss the relationship between democracy and equality. Consideration of this topic is made difficult because "democracy" is such a notoriously vague and encompassing term. It is often used as an elastic synonym for good government, stretching to include whatever is desirable in a state. Understood in this way, of course, the idea of democracy loses specific content and analytic bite. If democracy means merely good and desirable government, we need not discuss democracy at all but only the forms of equality that ought to characterize a modern state.
*** Pro Inequality Threatens Democracy ***
Inequality Threatens Democracy

Inequality is the most pressing threat to democracy
Stephen Loffredo, law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1993, ARTICLE: POVERTY, DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, p. 1277-8 In the winter of 1987, M. A., a homeless man in poor health, challenged the constitutionality of a federal law that barred him from receiving food stamps because he slept in a city-run shelter. n2 The shelter did not provide Mr. A. with the meals that his medical condition required and it often ran out of food altogether so that he frequently went hungry. After repeated hospitalizations, Mr. A. died of renal failure brought on by malnourishment and dehydration. A federal district court subsequently found nothing irrational about a legislative classification that withheld food assistance from a starving man. Two decades ago, the Supreme Court held that the constitutional claims of poor people would be assessed under socalled rationality review. The judiciary must broadly defer to political outcomes in the area of "economics and social welfare," the Court declared, even when they deny "the most basic economic needs of impoverished human beings." The reasoning that led to this result is by now familiar. First, since the Constitution does not expressly guarantee material subsistence, the claims of people like Mr. A. implicate no fundamental right or interest that commands special judicial protection. Second, since the Court does not regard poverty as a suspect classification, even explicit legislative discrimination against poor people does not trigger heightened judicial scrutiny. Rather, the Court will tolerate even inhumane treatment of poor people because "[u]nder our structure of government" courts ought to defer to democratic decisionmaking, especially on ordinary distributional matters. By justifying its poverty cases in this manner, the Court places considerable weight on a bare assumption that poor people have fair access to the political process. Yet the Court has never paused to consider whether the political process is in fact "democratic" with respect to the poor. For the millions like Mr. A., though, having their claims remitted to "the democratic process" usually means no process at all. This Article examines the Supreme Court's use of the rationality standard in areas that affect poor people, and argues that the political powerlessness of the poor requires some form of enhanced judicial protection. The Court's nearly limitless deference to legislation that disadvantages poor people ignores the central role that wealth plays in American politics. Although the poor are generally recognized as a politically powerless minority, the Court's poverty discourse nevertheless treats society's most marginalized members as though they were the fully empowered equals of the more affluent. By contrast, commentators from across the ideological spectrum recognize the realpolitik of money and its dominance in the political sphere. As Kevin Phillips puts it, "it's hard to overstate the importance of American politics to American wealth -- and vice versa." Indeed, the inordinate role that wealth plays in American politics -- and the political debilitation caused by poverty -- has been characterized as the
most pressing threat to American democracy today.

Poor are excluded from the democratic political process Stephen Loffredo, law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1993, ARTICLE: POVERTY, DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, p. 1292-3
Needless to say, when courts broadly defer to political outcomes involving the most basic needs of impoverished human beings, the consequences may be tragic. Whether by design or default, our political system routinely condemns even infants and children to painful and desperate lives of hunger, homelessness, and disease amidst the greatest wealth and abundance in human history. These effects of the Court's poverty jurisprudence are sadly apparent. Far less apparent, however, are the benefits of the Court's approach. The rote insistence that any judicial interference with distributional decisions would be undemocratic or antithetical to our system of government rings hollow in the poverty context. Whatever solace the malnourished child might take if her suffering safeguarded so great an ideal as "democracy," commitment to democratic values can hardly be served by consigning the economically dispossessed to a political system in which they are nonplayers and "perpetual losers."
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Wealth concentration means the US is becoming a democracy in name only
Paul Krugman, The Oregonian, November 5, 2011, THREAT OF INCOME INEQUALITY U.S. closer to a
democracy in name only

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only. The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that's a vision increasingly at odds with reality. In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: The data are flawed (they aren't); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we're still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well. It's a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it's not true. Workers with college degrees have indeed, on average, done better than workers without, and the gap has generally widened over time. But highly educated Americans have by no means been immune to income stagnation and growing economic insecurity. Wage gains for most college-educated workers have been unimpressive (and nonexistent since 2000), while even the well-educated can no longer count on getting jobs with good benefits. In particular, these days workers with a college degree but no further degrees are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979. So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority. The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it's really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong. If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn't look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which went only to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent --the richest thousandth of Americans --who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent from 1979 to 2005. Who's in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they're corporate executives. Recent research shows about 60 percent of the top 0.1 percent either are executives in nonfinancial companies or make their money in finance, i.e., Wall Street broadly defined. Add in lawyers and people in real estate, and we're talking about more than 70 percent of the lucky one-thousandth. But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don't share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling. The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger? Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.
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Inequality means many voices are excluded from politics
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), September 26, 2011, Democracy or capitalism? Other Voices o Income
inequality plus political cash is a recipe for unrest, p. A12

Yet simultaneously, the importance of money in politics has grown to its greatest level in the past 50 years.... It's when you put these trends together that you begin to understand why the U.S. may soon be faced with a choice unlike any other in its history: the primacy of democracy or capitalism. So far, the decision, whether explicit or not, has been that capitalism matters more.... We've somehow managed to engineer ourselves a situation where not only do we have a massive concentration of wealth, but also a political system where wealth can influence the ballot box in a way that wasn't conceivable before. It's meant that a whole range of voices and ideas have been excluded from the national debate, and it's part of the reason why all the proposed solutions to our economic problem seem relatively narrow and only appear to be making things worse. We're all so focused on staying the world's capitalist superpower that we've let slip some of the most important principles of democracy.
Inequality makes democracy impossible Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
That democratic regimes depend for their existence on a relatively equal distribution of economic resources across citizens is one of the oldest and best established insights in the study of politics. Indeed, Aristotle observed that the threat of re-distribution posed by the promise of political equality makes democracy intolerable to the wealthy as economic disparities increase. Alexis de Tocqueville (1990, 3) famously attributed the development of democracy in the United States to the relative economic equality he observed there: The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of condition is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. Modern political scientists have repeatedly tested and found support for this inverse relationship: greater economic inequality makes transitions to stable democratic regimes much less likely to occur.
Inequality undermines democracy Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf The Declaration of Independence promised that all American citizens would enjoy equal political rights. Nearly every generation has returned to this promise and struggled to elevate the performance of American democracy to its high ideals. But in our time, the promise of American democracy is threatened again. The threat is less overt than the barriers of law or social custom conquered by earlier generations. Today, the risk is that rising economic inequality will solidify longstanding disparities in political voice and influence, and perhaps exacerbate such disparities. Our government is becoming less democratic, responsive mainly to the privileged and not a powerful instrument to correct disadvantages or to look out for the majority. If disparities of participation and influence become further entrenched and if average citizens give up on democratic government unequal citizenship could take on a life of its own, weakening American democracy for a long time to come.
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Inequality Increasing
Gulf between the rich and the poor is growing
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), September 19, 2011, Unequal; Worsening gap, p. 4A AMERICA - the idealistic democracy where "all men are created equal" - suffers ever-worse inequality, all studies confirm. "The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in an essay titled "The Limping Middle Class." Average U.S. families are floundering, losing ground, as the privileged few amass wealth. The gulf between the rich and the rest happened mostly because advancing technology wiped out millions of midrange jobs, while opening a bonanza for top specialists skilled at manipulating data. Reich explained: "Wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies - container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet - started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever-larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs - the 'talent' who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street - soared."
US one of the most unequal countries in the world

Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), October 18, 2011, 'Primal scream of democracy' from Occupy Wall
Street protesters
The frustration in America isn't so much with inequality in the political and legal worlds, as it was in Arab countries. Here the critical issue is economic inequity. The CIA's ranking of countries by income inequality shows the U.S. is more unequal a society than Tunisia or Egypt. Three factoids underscore that inequality: The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million. The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent. There's a growing sense that lopsided outcomes are a result of tycoons' manipulating the system and lobbying for loopholes. Of the 100 highest-paid chief executives in the U.S. in 2010, 25 took home more pay than their company paid in federal corporate income taxes, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.
Inequality increasing
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), September 26, 2011, Democracy or capitalism? Other Voices o Income
inequality plus political cash is a recipe for unrest, p. A12

The first is income inequality. It's hard to look at a newspaper, a periodical, or listen to the radio without seeing more and more about inequality in the U.S. And this isn't just happening because those at the top are winning. In real income terms, those at the bottom have been going backwards. This trend continues with every passing day given the "jobless recovery" the country is experiencing at the moment. While corporate profits are beginning to return to their pre-Financial Crisis numbers, unemployment is not budging.
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Participation Critical to Democracy

Equal participation important to democracy Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 29 Nonetheless, what public officials hear clearly influences what they do. Therefore, so long as citizens differ in their opinions and interests, the level playing field of democracy requires that we take seriously the fact that citizens differ in their capacity, and desire, to exercise political voice. The democratic principle of one person, one-vote is the most obvious manifestation of the link between voluntary participation and equal protection of interests. However, for forms of voluntary participation beyond the vote for example, writing letters to public officials, attending protests, making political contributions, joining organizations, working for a political party --- there is no such mandated equality of participatory input. When placed in the context of equal protection of interests in a democracy, concerns about the aggregate quantity of civic engagement become less significant and questions of representation come to the fore. What matters is not only the amount of civic activity but its distribution, not just how many people take part but who they are and what they say. Political participation critical to democracy Larry Bartels et al, professor of public and international affairs, Princeton, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 117 One of the most basic principles of democracy is popular sovereignty and the expectation that the decisions of government should, as a general rule, parallel the preferences of the citizens. Vibrant debates regarding the importance of government leaders possessing the discretion to act and, on occaision, to exert independence from public opinion in solving urgent problems or crises are, of course long standing. Nonetheless, the normative underpinning of democratic government and the practical reality of political equality is that the decisions of government should normally reflect the policy preferences of its citizens. In some respects, this is the most basic standard for evaluating democracy.
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Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation

Poverty depresses political participation Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
Although economic inequality has been rising in nearly all of the advanced democracies, the consequences of inequality for democratic politics have been almost completely neglected. Because economic resources are political resources, greater inequality should be expected to skew the shape of politics in ways that discourage lower-income citizens from being politically engaged. This study combines cross-national survey data on political engagement with information on income inequality from the Luxembourg Income Study in multilevel analyses and confirms that income inequality powerfully depresses political interest, the frequency of political discussion, and participation in elections among all but the most affluent quintile of citizens.
Poor withdraw from politics Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
The winnowing of issues that occurs with increasing frequency as economic inequality grows may well make politics less important to all citizens, but it especially affects the political engagement of those with lower incomes. Confronted by a political system that fails even to develop alternatives regarding many issues of importance to them, lower-income citizens can be expected to become more and more likely to quite rationally conclude that there is little point to being engaged in politics.
Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 69 Most important, the level of political inequality in America is high. The expression of political voice is strongly related to social class. Those with high levels of income, occupational status and, especially, education are much more likely to be politically articulate. Affluent more likely to have the skills and resources necessary for participation Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 32 The affluent and well-educated are not only able to afford the financial costs of organizational support but they are in a better position to command the skills, acquire the information, and take advantage of connections that are helpful in getting an organization off the ground or keeping it going. In short, a group of jointly interested citizens that is well endowed with a variety of kinds of resource si is more likely to overcome the hurdle posed by the logic of collective action than is a group of similar size and similar intensity of concern that is resource poor.
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Poverty Reduces Political Participation Consensus of studies prove that participation correlates with income Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 34 As the evidence just presented suggests, foremost among the characteristics associated with political participation is socioeconomic status. Study after study has demonstrated that individuals with high socioeconomic status that is, those who have high levels of education, income, and occupational status are much more likely to be politically active. This relationship, which obtains for all democracies, is especially pronounced in the United States. Figure 2.1a uses data from a 1990 survey of the American public to contrast the political activity of two income groups, each of which constituted roughly one fifth of the sample those having family incomes below $15,000 and those at the top of the income ladder with family incomes over $75,000. For instance, nine out of ten individuals in famlieis with incomes over $75,000 reported voting in presidential elections while only half of those in families with incomes under $15,000 reported voting. This pattern of class structuring of voter turnout has been documented in a variety of analyses including those based on census data and validated votes. This gap in voting between the well-off and the poor is also evident, or even greater, for the other seven political activities listed in figure 2.1: working in a campaign; making a campaign contribution; getting in touch with a public official; taking part in a protest, march, or demonstration; getting involved in an informal effort to solve a community problem; serving as an unpaid volunteer on a local governing board such as a school board or city council; and being affiliated with an organization that takes stands in politics. Well-educated more likely to participate Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 40 Not only does education have a direct impact on political activity, but more important, education has indirect effects through its consequences for the acquisition of nearly every other participatory factor. The welleducated earn higher incomes on the job; are more likely to develop civic skills at work in organizations, and to a lesser extent, in church; are more likely to receive requests for political activity; and are more politically interested and knowledgeable.
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Poverty Reduces Political Participation

Well-off are five times more likely to participate Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 46 Figure 2.5A also makes clear the striking degree to which political activity is structured by SES. The five quintiles array themselves neatly in order with discernible differences between adjacent quintiles. The lines move more or less in tandem and never cross. Those at the highest level of SES are roughly five times more active than those at the bottom undertaking an advantage, about 2.1 acts compared to the .4 acts for the lowest quintile.
Poor dont participate in politics Stephen Loffredo, law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1993, ARTICLE: POVERTY, DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, p. 1326-7
A conservative response might emphasize that the poor have a relatively low participation rate in the political arena. The poor do not vote, this argument goes, and you cannot be a winner if you do not play the game. The argument is ironic coming from conservatives, who have consistently endeavored to block political participation by poor people. Moreover, the fact of nonparticipation cannot be dismissed as merely a bad political choice by the poor. As one commentator notes, "[p]eople who are literally struggling to find enough to eat are highly unlikely to participate in the political process." The failure to vote corresponds to other indicators of political powerlessness, including poor people's inability to amplify their voice through financial resources, the creation of organizational structures, or the building of coalitions with more affluent groups. The "politically quiescent" attitude of the poor, therefore, is less a matter of free choice, than of the mutually reinforcing effects of "low resources," weak political incentives, and "inadequate skills" that trap the poor in what democratic theorist Robert Dahl has termed a "cycle of defeat."
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Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation

Those who participate are not economically stressed Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 43 Compared with those who are politically quiescent, those who take part in political are much less likely to have experienced a need to trim their sales economically to have been forced to work extra hours to get by, to have delayed medical treatment for economic reasons, or to have cut back on spending on food. Predictably, almost no one among substantial campaign donors reported having cut back financially to make ends meet. Not only are there differences in economic circumstances, there are differences in their needs for various kinds of government assistance. Those who receive such means-tested government benefits as food stamps and housing subsidies are underrepresented among political activists, even among those who undertake participatory acts that might be expected to be especially relevant to their circumstances getting in touch with public officials, taking parts in protests, and getting involved in informal community efforts. Their inactivity has consequences for the messages sent to public officials about government programs. The government hears more from those on some programs than on others, and the ones it hears from are systemically among the more advantage citizens; for example, Medicare recipients are more likely than Medicaid recipients to get in touch with a public official about their medical benefits.
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Inequality Threatens Political Participation

Economic inequality in tension with political participation Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
Economic inequality and political democracy stand in tension. Income and wealth can be used to influence others or to resist others influence; in short, they are readily converted into political resources. Therefore, to the extent that income and wealth are distributed unequally across citizens, citizens are not political equalsand those who are less equal than others are more likely to withdraw from the democratic process.
Income inequality is the largest driver of reduced political participation Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
With all other variables constant at their median values, among those in the poorest 20% of households a change from the lowest to the highest observed level of income inequality is estimated to cause a 13.2 percentage-point average shift out of categories of higher political interest and into categories of lower political interest, according to these results. Among those in the second poorest quintile, moving from the lowest to the highest observed level of income inequality generates an average shift of 11.0 percentage points towards less interest in politics. For those with incomes in the median quintile, the average shift towards less political interest is 8.6 percentage points over the observed range of income inequality. These are powerful effects; of the variables considered, only education was estimated to have a stronger impact on the political interest of the poorest quintile.
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Inequality Threatens Political Participation

Income inequality reduces political engagement Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
The surge in economic inequality in many of the worlds democracies in the last few decades should be expected to have negative implications for the political engagement of their citizens. Theory suggests that, because economic resources are easily convertible into political resources, where income and wealth are more concentrated, the relative political influence of the most affluent increases. As the rich become better able to shape the scope and nature of politics, less well-off citizens should be expected to be more likely to find that the issues debated are not those that interest them, to give up on discussing political matters, and to conclude that, given the options presented, participating in elections is just not worth their effort. The evidence presented by this study supports this theory. Combining individual survey responses with information about national context in multilevel models confirmed that for those with household incomes at or below the median, income inequality has a powerful negative influence on political engagement. The findings of this paper indicate that growing inequality, by discouraging engagement among those with lower relative incomes, contributes toward an explanation of this puzzle. Inequality snowballs because protection of the rich means income re-distribution is not debated Although not contradicting these insights, the results of this article support a third explanation: economic inequality undermines political equality. The declining political engagement of non-affluent citizens with rising inequality indicates that issues on which a consensus exists among the rich, such as redistribution, become increasingly unlikely even to be debated within the political process. The Meltzer-Richard model and its extensions assume that the issue of redistribution is put before the electorate. It appears that this assumption is increasingly unjustified as economic inequality grows.
Income inequality stacks the political deck in favor of the rich Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
That higher levels of economic inequality tend to depress the political engagement of most citizens is a finding of considerable importance. Despite rising levels of inequality in many democracies, the political consequences of the distribution of economic resources have received scant scholarly attention, especially in comparison to the extensive literature on the effects of an individuals income on his or her political behavior. Ones political engagement, however, is shaped not only by how much money one has, but also by how much money everyone else has. Where economic resources are distributed more evenly, political influence is distributed more evenly, and the politics that result encourage relatively poor citizens to take interest and take part. Greater economic inequality increasingly stacks the deck of democracy in favor of the richest citizens, and as a result, most everyone else is more likely to conclude that politics is simply not a game worth playing.
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Inequality Threatens Fair Political Access

Wealthy have more political resources Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
In contrast, whether economic inequality continues to affect politics once democratic institutions are in place is far less certain. There are compelling theoretical arguments that it does. Because income and wealth are political resources, to the extent that they are distributed unevenly across members of a society the political equality promised by democracy is undermined (Dahl 1996). Greater economic inequality means that the wealthy have many more political resources than the poor, and this larger advantage allows the wealthy to more successfully dictate which issues and cleavages will structure politics and which ones will not be open for debate. As economic inequality grows, issues on which the affluent are divided become more likely to form the basis of politics; issues on which they generally agree are increasingly likely to be resolved in accordance with their consensus, regardless of the views of poorer citizens.
Citizens are withdrawing from public life because the government is only responsive to the needs of a few Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf The evidence our Task Force has compiled suggests that our fellow citizens are right to be concerned about the health of our democracy. We find disturbing inequalities in the political voice expressed through elections and other avenues of participation. We find that our governing institutions are much more responsive to the privileged than to other Americans. And we find that the policies fashioned by our government today may be doing less than celebrated programs enacted in the past to promote equal opportunity and security and enhance citizen dignity and participation. Indeed, worrisome trends in all three of these areas citizen voice, government decision-making, and public policy may be coming together to amplify the influence of the few and promote government unresponsive to the values and needs of the many. Such a negative spiral can, in turn, prompt Americans to become increasingly discouraged about the effectiveness of democratic governance, spreading cynicism and withdrawal from elections and other arenas of public life Wealthy more likely to participate in politics Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Only some Americans fully exercise their rights as citizens, and they usually come from the more advantaged segments of society. Those who enjoy higher incomes, more occupational success, and the highest levels of formal education, are the ones most likely to participate in politics and make their needs and values known to government officials. Campaign contributions from the wealthy aggravate inequality Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Campaign contributors are the least representative group of citizens. Only 12 percent of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but a whopping 95 percent of the donors who made substantial contributions were in these wealthiest households.15 Figure 2 shows that 56 percent of those with incomes of $75,000 and more reported making some form of campaign contribution compared with a mere 6
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percent among Americans with incomes under $15,000. Giving money to politicians is a form of citizen activity that is, in practical terms, reserved for a select group of Americans. As wealth and income have become more concentrated and the flow of money into elections has grown, campaign contributions give the affluent a means to express their voice that is unavailable to most citizens. This undoubtedly aggravates inequalities of political voice. Exercising citizenship requires the resources of the affluent Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf
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Exercising the rights of citizenship requires resources and skills, which privileged smaller proportions take part in more demanding and costly activities occupations disproportionately bestow on the economically well-off. Managers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals enjoy not only higher education and salaries but also greater confidence and abilities to speak and organize than do individuals who sweep floors, clean bedpans, or collect garbage. These disparities in resources and skills are evident in a host of political activities shown in Figure 2: Nearly three-quarters of the well off are affiliated with an organization that takes stands in politics (like the AARP or advocacy groups) as compared with only 29 percent of the least affluent. Half of the affluent contact a public official as compared with only 25 percent of those with low incomes. Thirty-eight percent of the well-off participate in informal efforts to solve community problems compared with only 13 percent of those in the lowest income groups. Even protesting which might appear to demand little in the way of skills or money and is often thought of as the weapon of the weak is more prevalent among the affluent. Seven percent of the better-off protest to promote such causes as abortion rights or environmentalism, compared with 3 percent among the poor who might march to demand the basic necessities of life. Some argue that the Internet will be a democratizing force because it heralds a new frontier of virtual participation and new forms of citizen-to-citizen communication. Despite these hopes, however, the Internet appears to be reinforcing existing inequalities because it is disproportionately accessible to and used by the affluent, non-Hispanic whites, and the highly educated.16 The Internet also places a premium on knowing in advance that one wants political information, or knowing that one wants to enter a discussion or make a monetary contribution. People who are ambivalent about politics or not already involved may not readily be drawn in simply by the availability of the Internet. In short, the Internet may activate the active and widen the disparities between participants and the politically disengaged by making it easier for the already engaged to gain political information, to make political connections, and contribute money.
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Equality Key to Democracy
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Equality is the cornerstone of democracy

Yue Yang, Journal of Politics & Law, September 2011, The Course of Democratization under Globalization, p
170
The cornerstone of democracy is equality and equity. The core of democratic politics is to make all social members equally and equitably possessing and exercising political power, and build a public power system of social management around the core. On the contrary, the opposite of democratic politics is unequal and inequitable power politics and hegemonic politics.
Equality of participation critical to democracy

Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 239 The current debate over campaign finance reform typically overlooks a compelling reason why such reform is important: equality of political participation. American representative democracy, the Constitution and its Amendments embrace the principle of equality of political participation. Specifically, there are very important lessons to be learned by reconsidering several revolutionary Supreme Court decisions in the context of campaign finance reform today.
Democracy is founded on equality of participation

Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 438-9 Emergence of democratic government depends, above all, on acceptance of the belief that no member is better qualified to rule than any other. More accurately, democratic government depends on the belief that all are equally qualified to participate in government. For proponents of democracy, the right of ordinary laborers to participate in government is essential.
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Politics is Stratified Government more attentive to the needs of the affluent Larry Bartels et al, professor of public and international affairs, Princeton, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 117 An enduring body of research has investigated the extent and nature of popular sovereignty by studying the relationship of mass opinion and elite action in the American political system. Although past research suggests that policy responds to public opinion, more recent analysis indicates that the government has become less responsive than it was several decades ago and that it is particularly attentive to the views of the affluent and business leaders. Evidence that politicians are disconnected from citizens is consistent with the broad findings previously reported that the American governing process tends to cater to the organized and vocal and to block egalitarian policies that are supported by the broad public. All political activities are stratified Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 215 As chapter 2 documents, disparities in citizen voice are a consistent theme across an array of quite different political activities ranging from contacting officials, to voting and giving money, to protesting. All these activities are stratified including protesting, despite the fact that it is often considered a weapon of the weak.
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Interest Groups Wealthy dominate interest groups Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf
Interest Groups for the Well-Off Dominate Washington Citizens express preferences not just by individual acts but also through the organized groups they support. Today, there are many more voluntary and interest group organizations than in the past. In the 2001 Washington Representatives a publication identifying individuals, firms, and organizations registered as lobbyists organizations that begin with the word American alone numbered more than 600, including the American Automobile Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Airlines, American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Corn Growers Association.17Over the past four decades, Americans have organized a broader array of interest groups than ever before. Among the newly created groups are watchdogs for the previously
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unorganized for example, poor children, gays, and the disabled. Many new groups have also formed to expand the representation of consumers, women, environmentalists, and African-Americans and ethnic minorities. All of this organizing amounts to an enrichment and enlargement of U.S. democracy.
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Voting Poor arent likely to vote Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 9 Overall, the US electorate has contracted since the 1960s, and the well-educated and well-to-do are much more likely to vote than the least educated and economically privileged. Stratified voting was not, of course, created by any recent increases in economic disparities. But recently growing economic inequalities may reinforce voting differentials, counteracting major reforms that otherwise should have greatly expanded voter turnout.
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Growing income inequality reduces electoral participation Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
The third column of Table 1 shows the results for electoral participation, and the third line of Table 2 presents the estimated effects of income inequality on electoral participation across incomes. Following the pattern of the other aspects of political engagement examined, the negative effect of inequality on voting shrinks as income increases, and it remains statistically significant at incomes in the four poorest quintiles of households. The estimated effect of income inequality on the electoral participation of the less well-off was again among the strongest in the model. When all other variables are fixed at their median values, the probability of voting for the poorest falls an estimated 12.9 percentage points over the range of income inequality. Among those in the second income quintile, the estimated decline in the probability of voting is 10.6 percentage points with these assumptions. For those in the median income quintile the estimated effect is 8.6 percentage points, and those in the fourth income quintile are estimated to become 6.8 percentage points less likely to vote under these circumstances. Age and education have stronger effects on participation in elections than income inequality according to this analysis, but the effect of the context of inequality on those in all but the richest income quintile is similar to or larger than the powerful effect of compulsory voting laws. Economic inequality plays an important role in depressing the electoral participation of non-affluent citizens.
Decline in voter turnout most pronounced among the poor Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 45-6 In the most recent contribution to the literature, Richard B. Freeman concludes that, despite many efforts to expand the electorate and make voting easier, the decline in voter turnout since the late 1960s has come disproportionately from the bottom of the SES hierarchy, thus, exacerbating the demographic bias of the electorate.
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Voting
Voting is stratified Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 215 Voting is of special interest, in part because political scientists have long focused on it, and in part because it is the most widespread political activity and hence has the greatest equalizing potential. Nevertheless, in the United States turning out to vote remains quite stratified, a regular habit only for (most of) the more affluent and better educated. A clear gap in voting between the well0off and the less affluent is revealed in national surveys.
As the wealthy gain power, the idea of one person, one vote is diluted Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 241-2
In the 1960s, vote dilution took the form of redistricting and voting patterns, which concentrated power into the hands of the few. Today, money in politics has concentrated power and access in the hands of the wealthy few, creating a modern sort of vote dilution. As the wealthy gain power, they attain greater representation; in effect, there is a multimember district for those with access to money. The flip side of the coin is that the average voter is denied equal participation in the political-governmental process - this is modern vote dilution. Unfortunately, current campaign finance reform analysis does not consider this perspective.
Poor do not vote Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Voting is the most obvious means for Americans to exercise their rights of citizenship, yet only a third of eligible voters participate in mid-term congressional elections and only about half turn out for todays presidential elections. Even voters in presidential elections tend to be from the ranks of the most advantaged Americans. Figure 2 uses a national survey of Americans to compare the political activity of two income groups (each of which constituted roughly one-fifth of the sample) those having family incomes below $15,000 and those at the top of the income ladder with family incomes over $75,000. Nearly nine out of 10 individuals in families with incomes over $75,000 reported voting in presidential elections while only half of those in families with incomes under $15,000 reported voting. This pattern of stratificationhas also been documented in all kinds of analyses, including those based on census data and validated votes.
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Political Parties
Political parties target the wealthy Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 10 Even political parties which the APSA and generations of political activists and observors have held out as a vehicle for an inclusive form of democracy that counteracts the advantage of the better off may nowadays skew participation in US politics. Along with contemporary professionally managed interest groups, todays major political parties target resources on recruiting those who are already the most privileged and involved. Democrats and Republicans alike have come to depend heavily on campaign contributors and middle-class activists, and have gotten used to competing for just over half of a shrinking universe of voters. Political parties an essential element of democracy Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 57-8 No account of political voice in a democracy can neglect the role of political parties. In democracies around the world political parties serve to shape political voice in two ways influencing not only whose voices are heard but also what is said. First, in seeking support for the candidates for political office running under their banner, parties mobilize citizens to vote or otherwise to get involved in politics, especially by giving time or money to electoral campaigns. When parties reach deeply into the citizenry to mobilize the less advantaged, they may have an equalizing impact. In addition, they represent party programs that appeal to contrasting coalitions of citizens. Political parties no longer protect the poor Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 62 However, even as far back as the 1950s, the Democrats backed away from the populist economic rhetoric, with its denunciations of the interests of the rich, they had used during the Roosevelt and Truman years. More recently, in their attempt to attract a majority of voters, Republicans have broadened their economic appeal by stressing tax cutting and economic performance policies presented as serving all Americans and some Democrats have sought to pursue more moderate economic policies that appeal to a broader middle class. Overall, the result is a shift to the right in the economic agenda.
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Political Parties
Political parties dominated by the well-off Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 216 It is hard to find aspects of the American political life that are not dominated by the better off. Even political parties which generations of political activists and observors have held out as a vehicles for democracy mobilization function nowadays in ways that often intensify participatory inequalities. Party operatives are less likely than they were decades ago to scour neighborhoods in search of every available voter. Instead, they use sophisticated data banks to locate voters who already lean their way and are inclined to vote. The effect can be to reinforce decrements and inequalities in voter turnout. Political parties focus on the affluent Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Less advantaged Americans vote less because they lack the skills, motivation, and networks that the better advantaged pick up through formal education and occupational advancement. In addition, political parties and campaigns focus their resources on citizens who are affluent and are already active politically.
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Voluntary Associations
Participation in voluntary associations is important to democracy Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 46 Activity in voluntary associations is significant for political voice in two ways. First, regardless of whether the organizations in questions take stands in politics, people who are active in membership associations are more likely to take part in politics because, through their organizational involvement, they develop politically useful civic skills and they are exposed to political cues and to requests for political participation. Second, voluntary associations themselves are an important vehicle for the expression of political voice. Theda Skocpols demonstrates that recent decades have witnessed not only erosion but also transformation in this sphere. Participation by the poor in voluntary associations is declining Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 48 The decline in membership in voluntary associations has not been uniform across different kinds of groups. Instead, organizations that traditionally enrolled working-class as well as middle-class members have fared especially badly: in the period between World War II and the later 1990s, the median decrease in membership for a group of seven elite professional societies was only 28 percent. Furthermore, with the erosion of the share of workers enrolled in unions, the gap between the proportion of college-educated Americans who are members of a professional society and the proportion of non-college educated Americans who are union members has grown substantially. In addition, increasing numbers of professionally managed national organizations that require little of their members other than financial support draw their members very disproportionately from among the well educated.
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Public Opinion Surveys

Public opinion surveys over-represent the demands of the wealthy Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 217 Because of their capacity to register mass opinions in a more comprehensive way than voting does, public opinion surveys have been held out as a potential means for political equalization. Yet recent research suggests that the results of the surveys are also biased toward over-representing the views of the better off. Individuals with lower income and education levels are particularly prone to be uncertain or confused and to say dont know when interviewers ask their opinions, even though they also harbor real political wants, needs, and desires.
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Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence

Growing importance of campaign contributions means wealth families have disproportionate political influence Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 9 Far fewer Americans take part in more demanding and costly political activities, form protest to giving money. The direct impact of rising economic inequality may be most directly apparent in campaign contributions. As wealth and income have become more concentrated and the flow of money into elections has grown, wealthy individuals and families have opportunities for political clout not open to those of more modest means. Stratification in participation is also evident in a range of other activities, such as joining and supporting a voluntary association or interest group, working in an electoral campaign, getting in touch with a public official, getting involved in an organization that takes political stands, and taking part in a protest or demonstration. Well-developed theory shows that exercising the rights of citizenship requires not only individual resources of income, time, and education, but also skills of the sort that privileged occupations disproportionately bestow on the economically well-off. Managers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals enjoy not only higher education and salaries but also greater confidence and abilities to speak and organize. The policy preferences of high income Americans are protected Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 1 Generations of Americans have worked to equalize citizen voice across lines of income, race, and gender. Today, however, the voices of American citizens are raised and heard unequally. The privileged participate more than others and are increasingly well organized to press their demands on the government. Public officials, in turn, are much more responsive to the privileged than to average citizens and less affluent. The voices of citizens with lower or moderate incomes are lost on the ears of inattentive government officials, while the advantaged roar with a clarity and consistency that policymakers readily hear and routinely follow. The scourge of over discrimination against African Americans and women has been replaced by a more subtle but potent threat the growing concentration of the countrys wealth, income, and political influence in the hands of the few.
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Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence Decision-making responds to the preferences of the wealthy Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Skewed participation among citizens and the targeting of government resources to partisans and the wellorganized ensure that government officials disproportionately respond to business, the wealthy, and the organized and vocal when they design Americas domestic and foreign policies.30Recent research strikingly documents that the votes of U.S. senators far more closely correspond with the policy preferences of each senators rich constituents than with the preferences of the senators less-privileged constituents. Wealthier constituents from the top of the income distribution appear to have had almost three times more influence on their senators votes than those near the bottom. And the better-off enjoyed even greater influence on the most salient bills legislation on the minimum wage, civil rights, government spending, and abortion. At the very bottom, moreover, the preferences of constituents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have little or no effect on the votes of their senators. The bias in government responsiveness toward the affluent is evident not only in Congress but also in national government policy more generally. Government officials who design policy changes are more than twice as responsive to the preferences of the rich as to the preferences of the least affluent. The rich have even greater leverage, moreover, when their preferences diverge substantially from the preferences of the poor. When class warfare proceeds in the cloistered confines of government offices, the rich generally win. Business and other elites also exert far more influence than the general public on U.S. foreign policy, which not only guides the countrys diplomatic and defense affairs but also has powerful consequences for domestic economic conditions through decisions on trade and the protection and promotion of American jobs and businesses.33 The views of policy experts and especially business leaders closely corresponded to the foreign policy views of government officials from 1974 to 2002. The preferences of ordinary citizens had very little discernible impact. Even the recent rise of public interest citizen associations has not significantly corrected the bias of the system toward the more privileged. Professionally run advocacy groups such as environmental or consumer groups have developed an impressive capacity to go head-to-head with business groups in gaining publicity in the national media and shaping agendas of congressional debate. This means that concerns important to many Americans can receive a strong hearing in the national media and in Washington, D.C. But research also shows that, as professional advocacy groups speaking for broad public concerns have gained influence, they have become less likely to champion bread-and-butter issues of concern to less privileged Americans.
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Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence

Politicians more responsive to the demands of the wealthy, wealthy have more access
Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Generations of Americans have worked to equalize citizen voice across lines of income, race, and gender. Today, however, the voices of American citizens are raised and heard unequally. The privileged participate more than others and are increasingly well organized to press their demands on government. Public officials, in turn, are much more responsive to the privileged than to average citizens and the least affluent. Citizens with lower or moderate incomes speak with a whisper that is lost on the ears of inattentive government officials, while the advantaged roar with a clarity and consistency that policy-makers readily hear and routinely follow. The scourge of overt discrimination against African-Americans and women has been replaced by a more subtle but potent threat the growing concentration of the countrys wealth and income in the hands of the few.
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Poverty Isnt Mobilizing Interest Groups that Protect the Poor Poverty has not lead to an increase in interest groups that protect the poor Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 10 With socioeconomic inequality on the increase, there are some theoretical reasons to believe that the political participation of the less privileged should actually increase. But much depends on the role of organizations and political parties in mediating social interests. Although the sheer number of organizations in Washington that speak for the once-underrepresented preferences and constituencies has grown, blue-collar trade unions have weakened and are thus less likely to mobilize working-class voters. Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 70 On the other hand, advocacy on behalf of the economically disadvantaged has not been correspondingly expanded. When coupled with the weakening of the labor unions, the organized representation of the economic needs of the less well off has suffered in relative terms.
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Business Interests Dominate Politics Corporate managers and professionals have increased their political interest Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf
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But even as the number of organizations speaking for underrepresented interests and preferences has grown, corporate managers and professionals have also increased their sway for a number of reasons: Since the 1970s, the proportion of the work force that is unionized fell by nearly half to 13.5 percent due to the decline of unionization in the private sector (where only 9 percent are currently unionized).19 Bluecollar trade unions have experienced especially sharp decline. A larger and growing proportion of highereducated Americans belong to professional societies compared with those with less education who belong to trade unions. Put simply, the already privileged are better organized through occupational associations than the less privileged. Contemporary advocacy groups that focus on social rights or public values (such as environmentalism or the family) tend to be professionally run and focus on appealing to more affluent and educated supporters rather than on mobilizing large memberships. Corporations and professions have spawned a new generation of political organizations since the early 1970s in response to the rise of citizen organizations and global competition. This transformation reflected, in part, a massive mobilization into politics of advantaged groups that had not previously been active in Washington. It also reflected the decision of many existing corporate and professional organizations to expand their political efforts, often by establishing an independent office in Washington rather than relying on trade associations and lobbyists-for-hire to manage their political affairs.
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A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes Money doesnt buy votes but it influences legislative outcomes Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 11 Research surveyed in chapter 3 documents that campaign contributions influence who runs for government office and therefore who sits in the halls of government. The notion that monetary contributions can directly buy votes on the floor of Congress is not supported by rigorous empirical research that controls for a variety of other relevant factors. But wealthy citizens and moneyed interests who make big contributions do gain privileged access to send clear signals about their political demands and support. Money and its increasingly unequal distribution bys the rare opportunity to present self-serving information or raise problems that can be addressed through a host of helpful, low-profile actions inserting a rider into an omnibus bill, for example, expediting the scheduling of a bill that has been languishing in committee, or making sure that threatening regulatory legislation receives minimal funding for implementation. Money buys access Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, 2004, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf Money is the oxygen of todays elections, given the reliance of candidates on high-priced consultants and expensive media advertisements. The principal problem is where the money comes from and the influence it buys. Big contributors have the power to discourage or perhaps suffocate unfriendly candidates by denying them early or consistent funding. After the election, moreover, government officials need information to do their jobs, and research shows that big contributors earn the privilege of regularly meeting with policymakers in their offices. Money buys the opportunity to present self-serving information or raise some problems for attention rather than others. Larry Bartels et al, professor of public and international affairs, Princeton, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 116 Moneyed interests do exert, then, a substantial influence on policy-making by using their contributions to mobilize legislators already disposed to support them to increase their levels of participation at the committee level. The ability to make contributions, which is largely restricted to the affluent or well organized, creates an unequal playing field in the halls of Congress. Money does buy something privileged access for contributors and the special attention of members who reward them with vigorous help in minding their business in the committee process. In short, interest groups and money are tools wielded disproportionately by a small segment of American citizens to enact policies that concentrate benefits on them and to block egalitarian policies that would impose onerous costs on them.
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A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes Politicians more responsive to the demands of the wealthy Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 11 Scholars are beginning to document the exact degree to which skewed political demands and support are converted by the government process into policies and activities that disproportionately respond to business, the wealthy, and the organized and vocal. Recent research documents that the votes of US senators are almost three times more likely to correspond with the policy preferences of their most privileged constituents than with the preferences of their least privileged constituents, even though the latter are of course much more numerous. Bias in government responsiveness is evidence not only in Congress but also in national government policy more generally. Government officials who design policy changes are more than twice as responsive to the preferences of the rich as to those of the least affluent. Business and other elites also exert far more influence than the US public on US foreign policy, which not only guides the countrys diplomatic and defense affairs but also has powerful consequences for domestic economic conditions through decisions on trade and the protection and promotion of American jobs and enterprise.
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Lobbying pays off -- literally

Richard Kaplan, law professor, Illinois, Michigan Law Review, May, 2003, SURVEY: XII. LEGAL HISTORY: ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND THE ROLE OF LAW: Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, p. 1989 Just check out these results. The Timber Industry spent $ 8 million in campaign contributions to preserve the logging road subsidy, worth $ 458 million*the return on their investment was 5,725%. Glaxo Wellcome invested $ 1.2 million in campaign contributions to get a 19-month patent extension on Zantac worth $ 1 billion*their net return: $ 83,333%. The Tobacco Industry spent $ 30 million in contributions for a tax break worth $ 50 billion*the return on their investment: 167,000%. For a paltry $ 5 million in campaign contributions, the Broadcasting Industry was able to secure free digital TV licenses, a give-away of public property worth $ 70 billion*that's an incredible 1,400,000% return on their investment. (p. 326). As this posting suggests, concentrated wealth is able to distort democratic processes for private enrichment, and the amazing aspect of this arrangement is not that public policy is for sale, but rather how cheaply it can be bought!
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A2: Money Doesnt Buy Congressional Votes

Access translates into results Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 253-4
Further, access may also translate into results. Modifying his statement just quoted, Justice Scalia distinguished a next level of influence: "I mean, access is not votes." On that count, however, the evidence suggests a strong correlation. concentrated power in the hands of the wealthy shapes outcomes during the legislative process. One recent, thorough study cross-referenced numerous votes on financial services legislation against contribution patterns by PACs and interest groups, spread from 1991 to 1998. The unmistakable conclusion was that "interest groups "buy' legislators' votes with PAC contributions." Another study looked at ten congressional votes on agricultural programs and reached similar conclusions. This study also found that major donors had the ear of members of Congress, and that influence resulted in votes and legislative victories. But for money and the influence it bought, bills would not have been passed. Further in-depth research shows that on issues ranging from NAFTA to defense spending to gun control, major contributors seek and get targeted access n101 and move votes. These studies reinforce the proposition that money concentrates power in the hands of the few, and not only helps provide access, but also influences voting patterns and ultimate legislative success. As a result of well-placed campaign contributions, the few have many members of Congress working for them, while the many see their power diluted.
Contributors get special political access

Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 251-2 The few who control the financing get much in return; not only are they lavished with attention during the campaign, they get special access and power when the candidates they support are in office. The recent litigation in the McConnell case provided full exposure to the system. Judge Kollar-Kotelly, on the three-judge panel that first heard the case, summarized: The record demonstrates that large donations ... to the political parties provide donors with access to Members of Congress. The record is a treasure trove of testimony from Members of Congress, individual and corporate donors, and lobbyists, as well as documentary evidence, establishing that contributions ... are given with the expectation they will provide the donor with access to influence federal officials, that this expectation is fostered by the national parties, and that this expectation is often realized. Similarly, Judge Leon provided a detailed account with a heading that says it all: "Party Donation Programs Show that Increased Access Corresponds with Larger Donations." These judicial opinions provide the most recent, and by far the most thorough, n82 record ever compiled, exposing the "special access" that large donors receive. A majority on the panel painstakingly detailed, in their findings of fact, the two major parties' programs for ensuring a constant stream of big-dollar soft money contributions, and they discussed the "special access" that is provided in exchange. Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote about the correlation: Large donations to the political parties ... provide these donors with special access to federal lawmakers. This access is valued by contributors because access to lawmakers is a necessary ingredient for influencing the legislative process ... . The political parties take advantage of contributors' desire for access by structuring their donor programs so that as donations increase, so do the number and intimacy of special opportunities to meet with Members of Congress. The findings of special access were detailed by the three judge panel, and the Supreme Court majority opinion favorably cites Judges Kollar-Kotelly and Leon, and then decries this "pervasive" "access peddling." Even opponents of campaign finance regulation understand that campaign contributions buy access. For example, in oral argument in McConnell, Justice Scalia, who consistently opposes campaign reform, observed that "members of Congress are going ... to give time to people who have given money ... to their campaign."
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Reducing Poverty Increases Participation

Programs to reduce inequality boost political participation Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 12 Research shows that broad social programs such as the GI Bill of 1944 and the Social Security Act not only distributed economic benefits, but also encourage ordinary citizens to increase their political participation. Recent social programs are likely to be narrowly targeted and to work in complex and relatively invisible ways through the tax code. Such programs may do less than major social programs of the past to boost the political engagement of ordinary Americans, especially those who are not elderly. Those with fewer economic resources are less likely to participate Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 19 Studies of civic engagement in America are unanimous in characterizing political input through political participation as being extremely unequal. The exercise of political voice is related most fundamentally to social class. Those who enjoy high levels of income, occupational status, and especially education are much more likely to take part politically than those who are less well endowed with these resources.
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A2: Inequality Leads to Protests/Protests are Good & Democratic Turn Protesting by the wealthy is more effective Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 35 Interestingly, even protesting which demands little in the way of skills or money and is often thought of as the weapon of the weak is characterized by the pattern of socioeconomic bias. The success of the labor and civil rights movements illustrate the possibilities for the disadvantaged when the mobilize collectively. However, the Untied States also had a long tradition of middle-class protest movements ranging from abolition and temperance to environmentalism and disarmament. The bottom line is that, even when it comes to protest, the well-educated and well-heeled are more likely to take part. IN fact, when the protestors in this survey were asked about the issue or problem at stake in their activity, those who had demonstrated about a national issue were farm more likely to mention abortion than any other issue.
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Uprisings are not democratic they are simply convulsive mass politics of the dispossessed Stephen Loffredo, law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1993, ARTICLE: POVERTY, DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, p. 1330
The constant across all of these explanations, however, is a lower class disconnected from the normal channels and processes of politics and able to influence political outcomes only through threats of social disorder. The most recent example of this phenomenon is the Los Angeles "uprising" that occurred in May 1992 and the political response that it quickly elicited from the federal administration. Even if one accepts, against all evidence, the poor person's success story told by the conservative apology, the "success" results not from a democratically inclusive politics, but rather from a convulsive mass politics of the dispossessed.
New groups have formed, but groups representing the poor have declined Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 57 On the one hand, many relatively marginal groups including racial and ethnic minorities, women, gays, and the disabled have become organized, and business has new antagonists (and allies) among public interest groups. On the other, labor unions have grown substantially weaker, and the economically disadvantage have been left behind in the explosion organized interest representation. The bottom line would be extremely difficult to calculate. Whether these contradictory trends have had an impact in either direction on the inequalities that have long characterized organized interest politics may be impossible to measure. What is clear is that, in the realm of citizen politics, substantial inequalities of political voice remain.
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Poor Underrepresented
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Poor underrepresented in pressure politics Kay Scholzman, political scientist, Boston College, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 54 Moreover, the economically disadvantaged continue to be underrepresented in pressure politics. Organizations of the poor themselves are extremely rare, if not nonexistent, and organizations that advocate on behalf of the poor are relatively scarce. Furthermore, as Jeffrey Berry points out, the health and human service nonprofits that have as clients constituencies that are too poor, unskilled, ignorant, incapacitated, or overwhelmed with their problems to organize on their own are constrained by the 5013 provisions in the tax code from undertaking significant lobbying.
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A2: Populist Organizations Protect the Poor Populist organizations have declined Lawrence Jacobs, political science Chair at U of Minnesota, & Theda Skocpol, professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard, 2005, Inequality and American Democracy, ed. Skocpol and Jacobs, p. 216 Yet there is considerable agreement that many broad-gauged, popularly rooted trade unions and voluntary membership associations have declined, while business and professional associations have continued to proliferate and professionally managed advocacy groups and nonprofit associations have flourished in unprecedented numbers. Except perhaps in the sphere of evangelical churches and associated voluntary federations active in the antiabortion and pro-gun movements, the experience of joining and meeting voluntarily in America may now be more tilted than ever toward the affluent and the best educated. Organized interest groups and civic institutions may speak most loudly about the values and the needs of the middle class and the privileged.
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A2: Kuznets Curve/Poor Have Political Power

Kuznets curve is now inverse Andrea Brandolini, Banca dItalia, Economic Research Department Timothy M. Smeeding, Syracuse University, January 2006, American Journal of Political Science, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJan06BrandoliniSmeeding.pdf
High income inequality is often seen as a threat to the social fabric. The recent report on American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality states right at the beginning that progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some arenas reversed because of the recent rise of income and wealth disparities. The relationship between inequality and democracy has a long tradition not only in political science, but also in economics, and it can work both ways. In fact, in his famous model of an inverted-U shaped relationship between inequality and economic development, Kuznets explained the falling part of such a relationship as follows: In democratic societies the growing political power of the urban lower-income groups led to a variety of protective and supporting legislation, much of it aimed to counteract the worst effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization and to support the claims of the broad masses for more adequate shares of the growing income of the country. However, since Kuznets day, quite the reverse has emerged: in fact an inverse Kuznets curve has emerged in many countries as we shall see below.
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A2: Political Equality Means Redistribution Can Occur

Redistribution wont occur if the ideal of political equality is disrupted by the market forces
Yoav Dotan, law professor, Hebrew University, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Summer, 2004, CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM AND THE SOCIAL INEQUALITY PARADOX, p. 987-8 If the way economic disparities in liberal democracy can be legitimized is by a political process aimed at correcting the inequalities of the markets, obviously this process of redistribution should be immune from influence of economic disparities. In our imaginative illustration of the bargaining table, the haves cannot say to the have-nots the following: "You can participate in the redistributive discussion - as long as you have enough money to pay for your seats," for that would be a violation of both the requirement for political equality and of the rationale of viewing the have-nots as full partners for the liberal democratic project. The liberal imperative requires that the have-nots possess the status of full partnership. This could only be if all members, including the have-nots, were secured under the requirement of strict political equality. Likewise, we cannot say to the have-nots who get near the table: "You are allowed to sit here and to vote, but if you want to speak to the other participants before the voting begins you should pay for the cost of the microphone" - since this would entail the very same result. Nor can we say to the have-nots, "You can speak to the crowd, but it is none of your business if some people use their money to buy stronger loudspeakers that will (effectively) drown your voice." This, as well, would not be to treat the have-nots as full partners in the political process, and would thereby defeat the moral rationale underlying the basic principles of liberal democracy. It should also be noted that when the disparities of the market interfere with democratic procedures in a way that violates the requirement of political equality, they create a vicious circle. The very same process that is supposed to supervise and correct market disparities is controlled by the same disparities and is therefore incapable of fulfilling its purpose. This impasse in the possibility of effecting social change via the democratic process calls for the attention of the judicial branch. This circularity will be called the social inequality paradox.
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A2: Government Leaders Protect the Poor

Lack of appropriate representation means programs for the poor are cut-back Stephen Loffredo, law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April 1993, ARTICLE: POVERTY, DEMOCRACY AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, p. 1318-9
Government cutbacks to social programs contributed heavily to the increased impoverishment of the poor during this period. Because poor people lack political clout commensurate with their numbers, the political arena, unchecked by judicial constraints, has converted the war on poverty into a war on the poor. The poor subsist in an underclass, dehumanized and demonized in the public's mind. Viewing social welfare programs as the source of all the nation's ills, government has instituted a systematic rollback on its commitment to alleviate poverty. Punitive eligibility requirements have been imposed without any evidence of their effectiveness in dealing with the poverty crisis. The myth has reemerged that the poor are "lazy and shiftless," rather than victims of an economic system that generates systematic unemployment and underemployment at low wages.
Inequality means the political process is only protecting the interests of the rich
Richard Kaplan, law professor, Illinois, Michigan Law Review, May, 2003, SURVEY: XII. LEGAL HISTORY: ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND THE ROLE OF LAW: Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, p. 1987 Festooned with more than seventy charts and graphs, the book explains how wealth has been accumulated throughout the entire history of the United States. It is full of intriguing insights and demands serious consideration of its message and warnings. For example, one of the book's persistent themes is that concentration of economic power inevitably corrupts the political process - a point dramatized in recent debates about campaign finance, including the valiant efforts of Senator John McCain and former Senator Bill Bradley in the most recent presidential-election campaign. But Phillips goes further to show how the political process, thus corrupted, spews forth public policies that protect its patrons, often at the expense of the masses whose votes theoretically sustain that process. Even more important, Phillips shows how the economic concentration that corrupts the political process came about - namely, through exploiting public policies for private gain. As he states with unflinching clarity: "Laissez-faire is a pretense. Government power and preferment have been used by the rich, not shunned" (p. xiv). At this point, a brief biographical note about Mr. Phillips is essential. A self-described Republican, he was the chief political analyst to Richard Nixon's successful presidential campaign in 1968. One can begin to appreciate how much the American political landscape has changed since that time from his reference to President Nixon's support for national health insurance and "income maintenance for the poor" (p. viii). Such positions today might jeopardize his standing in the Democratic party, let alone the Republican party! The political evolution of this transformation and its implications for various legal regimes are the focus of this commentary.
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Wealthy Generally Politically Advantaged

Wealthy have inordinate political power Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 244
Those who can give and/or raise large sums of money are extraordinarily important to candidates and campaigns. Elections are growing costlier by leaps and bounds, and because elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate are privately financed, voters who can most efficiently raise large sums have a special value. Thus, the wealthy have special access and influence; power is concentrated in the hands of the few who control money. After the campaigns, the wealthy wield inordinate power, enjoying access to elected officials that others do not.
Wealthy are the most important people in mordern politics Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 244-5
First, consider the costs of campaigns and the way in which funds are raised. Campaigns cost tens of millions of dollars, and the amounts are increasing rapidly. In the 2000 election cycle, approximately $ 4 billion was spent on campaigns. Congressional campaign expenditures, in constant dollars, have more than tripled, rising from $ 318.5 million to just over $ 1 billion from 1972 to 2000. There is a strong correlation between money spent and electoral success, which prompts more and more spending, at an ever-increasing rate. "The cost of a competitive House race has doubled during the past decade," and competitive Senate races have increased by 25 to 50 percent. The 2004 race for United States Senator in South Dakota provides a recent glaring example, as the two candidates raised a total of approximately $ 37 million n39 for a state with a population of 764,309. It seems that everywhere you turn, a new record for spending is being set, with no end in sight. Because House and Senate races are not funded publicly, these amounts must come from private contributions. But as the costs have soared, it is harder and harder for campaigns to keep up. Because of the need for such large sums of money, the wealthiest contributors are perhaps the most important people in modern politics. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act ("FECA"), n42 individuals can contribute up to $ 2000 to an individual candidate's campaign in the primary season and another $ 2000 in the general election. The more that people can write checks of $ 1000 or $ 2000 at a time, the more efficiently the campaign's goals can be reached. Accordingly, power, access, and attention flow to people based on their access to money instead of the people represented, constituency spoken for, or ideology espoused. Conversely, the individual contributor who cannot give $ 2000 becomes less and less meaningful in the high-money game.
Candidates can now raise more money from fewer people Mark Alexadneer, law professor, Seton Hall, Law and Inequality, Summer, 2005, Money in Political Campaigns and Modern Vote Dilution, p. 247-8
The power is even more concentrated now than before. In particular, while the McCain-Feingold law n52 has been heralded as the most far-reaching campaign finance reform in a generation, it has also increased the concentration of power in the hands of the few. The law raised contribution limits from $ 1000 to $ 2000 per person, per election cycle, so that an individual who wants to max out now can donate $ 4000 to a candidate over a primary-general election cycle. With the contribution levels doubled, candidates can raise more and spend more with the assistance of fewer people. This inevitably will further concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy. President Bush's fundraising strategy gave voice to this concentration. In 2000, the Pioneers existed with the same goal, and in 2004 Bush added the Rangers. With the higher limits, President Bush doubled the goals for the wealthiest; with the new $ 2000 contribution caps, the same 100 people who max out could give him twice as much money as in the 2000 election - and over 60,000 people maxed out, accounting for nearly half of all money raised. More money raised by the same number of people further concentrates the power in the hands of the few.
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*** Con Inequality Doesnt Threaten Democracy ***
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A2: AAPSA Report

The report is terrible inequality is not undermining democracy Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois-Urbana, American Journal of Political Science, January 2006, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJan06Weissberg.pdf
The 22-page Reports quantitative data and erudite citations aside, the over-heated radical egalitarian tone remains as fervent and annoyingly repetitive as before. That the privileged are privileged comprises the Mother of All Facts and the source of every evil. This copiously footnoted tome might better be characterized as non sequitur polemical decorations, not scientific confirmation. Let me just highlight some key Report claims and offer some contrarian comments. The Report begins by asserting that equal political voice and democratically responsive government are widely cherished American ideals. In nearly four decades of scrutinizing American political values, I have never, never seen any evidence that Americans cherish equal political voice; at most, Americans want to be heard, and while everyone agrees that responsive government is a splendid idea, the term invites so many murky meanings as to be analytically useless unless precisely defined. Detailed discussion of this alleged public craving for economic equality in the footnote-laden Inequalities of Political Voice is gobbledygook and reflects a cartoonish grasp of policy. Here, for example, Social Security and federal aid to education ~and just about every other social welfare goodie! are portrayed as efforts to level wealth so, ipso facto, poll data showing desires for more spending is twisted into proof that the public really favors economic egalitarianism. Zero, for example, is said about Social Security being a flat, if not slightly regressive, tax since all income over $90,000 are untaxed ~15% of total income in 2002!. Analysis is equally silent about the poor receiving less due to shorter life expectancies though they receive slightly higher benefit levels. That federal education subsidies probably disproportionately reward the middle class at the expense of the poor also goes unnoticed ~the authors naively conflate spending to assist the needy with actual assistance!. Oddly, the authors admit that Americans generally endorse economic inequality and a bit later confess that the public opposes government efforts to diminish income gaps. Similar deception applies when discovering public support for political equality. Almost any handy survey tidbitopposing the Electoral College, endorsing term limits, supporting campaign contribution limits, a distaste for Senate filibusters, rejecting a single six-year presidential termbecomes proof of the publics burgeoning egalitarian embrace. As pickpockets see only pockets, these levelers only see an egalitarian infatuated public ~and polling, it is further alleged, under-reports egalitarian appetites by disproportionately excluding the destitute who surely must crave more taxing and spending!. And how do we know that racial-gender-ethnic income disparities are fundamentally inimical to democracy? Surely no standard definition of democracy inserts this almost impossible-to-satisfy ~let alone measure! requirement. Fear not, the Declaration of Independence authoritatively assures us that all men are created equal, which, according to these students of history, in our time means that every citizen regardless of income, gender, race, and ethnicity should have an equal voice in representative government. Think about this ground-breaking interpretation seriously: Does the Declaration forbid Whites from donating more money to campaigns, or having more bumper stickers than African Americans? If so, is this equality enforceable given the First Amendment ~which, unlike the Declaration, does have legal standing! protects unrestrained political access? Again, stay tuned. Uneven voting rates receive tedious scrutiny, as if they inherently de-legitimized democratic elections. That turnout gaps are often slight hardly lessons their alleged despicable, subversive character. Curiously, both parties are slammed for catering to habitual voters versus energizing the chronically apathetic. Shame! Perhaps these Ivory Tower residents, unlike party professionals, possess the ancient secret of mobilizing the lethargic and grasp that this reallocation better utilizes political capital vis--vis trying to sway regular voters. Barring felons from voting is predictably assailed as victimizing minority men though this disenfranchisement is legal, not a hidden plot, and thus reversible by democratically elected state legislatures ~that excluding felons might improve democracy is, of course, unthinkable!. And how do the wealthy more skillfully advance their political aims ~which are, assumedly, totally divergent from those preferred by those below!? Is civic engagement structured to give plutocrats unfair advantages? Just about: Exercising the rights of citizenship requires resources and skills, which privileged occupations disproportionately bestow on the economically well-off. In other words, if one becomes a lawyer versus a garbage collector, one gets the skills necessary to be a savvy participant. Talk about on-the-job training! Never considered is that the very ineptitude that confines people to menial jobs also diminishes their political dexterity. Even apparent upbeat news is twisted into a democratic threat. Consider, for example, the explosive growth in liberal do-gooder organizations protecting gays, at-risk children, women, and others at a disadvantage. Whats wrong with this picture showing newfound voice? Plentythese ostensible guardians attract well-heeled donors, associations are professionally run, and they must battle burgeoning
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business-rivals! Might we want to exclude rich folk from donating to Public Citizen, demand amateur administration, and limit would-be business lobbies la scarce airwave licenses? Seems reasonable enough, the professors might say.
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A2: Need to Hear the Voice of the Poor

Expressing voice is not important to democracy Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois-Urbana, American Journal of Political Science, January 2006, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJan06Weissberg.pdf
Asserting that political voice is uneven requires fully measuring voice levels. Unfortunately, Task Force scholars apparently grew deaf after reading Lester Milbraths 1965 Political Participation. Activism exemplarsvoting, writing letters, donating money or time, joining a political group, engaging in a protestare, to be sure, bona fide activities, but they are but a tiny outcropping in todays civic landscape, at best a sampling, and there is no reason to suppose a representative sampling. In fact, political necessity guarantees adaptive innovation if only because yesterdays attentiongetting tactics grow stale and, believe it or not, reality changes. Moreover, what separates the political from the nonpolitical is exceedingly contentious, so calibrating voice loudness inescapably reflects differing theoretical conceptions of political. Are rioters political activists or just hooligans? How do we classify teachers propagating ideologies under the guise of objectively explicating American history? If all civic instruction is inherently political, as some respectable scholars claim, participation levels explode. This is a serious problem in calibrating voice, and cannot be dismissed by insisting that measuring it is just too arduous. How do we measure voice expressed via bribery, sabotage ~a favored tacit of certain environmental groups!, or even terrorism? Speaking up doesnt mean your interests are protected. More important, claiming that those now silent would gain only if they would speak up is scientifically unproven. In a political arena prizing articulateness, relentless screeching is dismissible noise.
Voices dont produce change Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois-Urbana, American Journal of Political Science, January 2006, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJan06Weissberg.pdf
These just get involved lessons have even motivated the obese to demand that government remove temptations to cure their gluttony, though one could argue that marching and demonstrating is healthy exercise. Such examples, unfortunately, have grown commonplacewhatever the problem, harangue officials for a government fix. That many of these quandaries are not amenable to government-provided solutions or are doomed from the get-go, or that private responses are more efficacious, seems almost unthinkable. That shouting louder ~voice! is likely to be futile, and a recipe for chronic political dependency, is hardly trivial for those mired in poverty. Democracy, let alone economic progress, hardly prospers when semiliterate Florida teenagers foolishly believe that an awaiting lifetime of menial work can be escaped by threatening to boycott the lottery.
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A2: Poor Arent Politically Active

No benefit to activism Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois-Urbana, American Journal of Political Science, January 2006, http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJan06Weissberg.pdf
The Task Force also embraces a Pollyanna view of politics as in carnival game pitches, everyone is a winner, but you have to play. Again, wacky nonsensepolitical engagement is not positive sum, civic activism has opportunity costs, and, of the utmost import, political engagement can make things worse! Some pro-choice TV ads may only alienate potential allies, even generate a backlash, not rally support to block a judicial appointment. And this is so patently obvious, save, perhaps, cloistered monks mired in statistical data. My own work, The Limits of Civic Activism showed how misguided, though highly successful, gay activism to sustain a promiscuous lifestyle against public health officials brought brutal, and largely unnecessary, carnage. Tens of thousands of young men would be alive today had this voice never been expressed. Does the scientific evidence prove that fervent African-American electoral politicking has produced the desired socio-economic gains? Would additional rallies to protest school segregation boost student performance? Perhaps the time could be better spent studying. Civic engagement may be a dreadful investment.
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Inequality Boosts Civic Engagement

Widening inequality increases citizen engagement Frederick Solt, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist, Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement, 2006, http://www.unc.edu/~fredsolt/papers/Solt2006a.pdf
The argument that widening economic inequality reduces citizens engagement in democratic politics, particularly that of the poor, has been challenged both theoretically and empirically. Some contend that inequality should instead be expected to increase political engagement. According to this conflict model of political engagement, higher levels of inequality increase the stakes of political competition. As the poor grow poorer relative to their fellow citizens, they should become increasingly strident in their demands for policies that will improve their circumstances. At the other end of the income scale, as the rich grow richer, their potential gains from lower tax rates increase, leading them to seek policies that reduce rather than increase redistribution. The increasingly contradictory policy goals of the two groups, in this view, lead to more conflictive politics, stimulating interest and participation in the political process. Conversely, contexts of lower inequality should lead to fewer demands on government, greater consensus about the shape of policy, and so less engaging politics.
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General Take-Outs
Representative democracy is based on the idea that the wealthy would rule Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 339
Representative democracy resulted in the transfer--the alienation--of power from the people to their representatives. Representation thus [permitted the operation of democracy in America, too geographically vast to permit actual participation in government. It also permitted the limitation of popular participation and ultimately elevated the interests of those whose wealth derived from property, not simply labor. Representative democracy served to limit interest group factionalism. It did more than protect the property rights of the wealthy; it substituted for the common craftsman his wealthy better as representative. For the Founders, discussions of representation do not focus on "equality" but on "tempering" the people. Madison captures both sentiments in Federalist No. 10. The result, according to Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood, is "no incompatibility between democracy and rule by the rich." But, it is important to note that this substitution of the wealthy for the humble craftsmen is justified by ability as much as wealth, the two functioning essentially as synonyms.
US democracy isnt built on economic equality Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 440
The Founders aimed to form a democratic government, using representation to satisfy the need for consent, but intended to temper the views of the many and give predominant voice to the natural aristocracy of property owners. The "equality" reflected in our representative democracy is, as a result, more complex than simple notions exemplified by "one person, one vote." Therefore, a comparison may be useful. Perspective gained by reviewing Athenian democracy, dedicated to political equality, may help clarify our understanding of American democracy, its views of political equality, and any corresponding equality of obligation to pay for the fruits of our democratic society.
Democratic IDEALs are self-detemrination, personal liberty, individual rights, and freedom and automony. Those all exist in a world of inequality Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 445
Because a democracy is a government of all citizens, their participation in debate, from the routine to the momentous, presupposes the ability of every individual to participate fully in collective decisions. In short, each individual is deemed to possess political ability. Although expertise is acknowledged, a political elite is fashioned by public performance; on matters of public concern, no one stands above any individual. n154 Thus, democratic ideals (both ancient and modern) are generally thought to include: (i) the right of self-determination through participation in the creation of social order; (ii) collective decision-making and guarantees of personal liberty; (iii) individual rights (including criminal procedural rights and the security of person and property); and (iv) freedom and autonomy (both public and private).
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General Take-Outs
The poor are still equal before the law Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 446
If all men are by nature equal, the conclusion that follows, according to Aristotle, is that all men should have a share in ruling--ruling and being ruled in turn. In a democracy, poverty is no bar to individual success that is based on ability to contribute to public (political) life as well as permitting a private life that suits the individual. Equality before the law and equality through the law (isonomia) are the chief characteristics that distinguished democracy as the fairest of constitutional forms. Striking is the frequent appearance of these important democratic ideals, especially legal equality, in the tragedies performed in the state-sponsored dramatic festivals, as Euripides's Suppliant Women illustrates: People of few resources and the rich Both have the same recourse to justice. Now A man of means, if badly spoken of, Will have no better standing than the weak; And if the lesser is in the right, he wins Against the great.
Inequality is not an intrinsic threat to democracy. The rich can simply share their resources Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 444
Political equality, the dominant political ideology of Athenian democracy, did not require economic equality. Because the ancient (as the modern) world was characterized by significant disparity in resources among individuals, the challenge for advocates of popular sovereignty was to prevent this gulf between political and economic equality from resulting in destabilizing class conflict. Significant social and political upheavals characterized Athens's early history because of extreme wealth and political inequality. With the adoption of democracy, which ensured political equality but allocated the tax burden to the wealthy, there was no need to redistribute wealth to achieve an economic equality commensurate with political equality.
Progressive taxation makes democracy possible in a world of inequality Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 461
No systematic treatise written by any ancient author sets forth the ancients' theories on how to structure the public economy with a goal to ensure an adequate revenue stream for a democracy's operations. Yet, modern commentators often assume the classical Greeks' aversion to taxation of either person or property obviated the need to fund their government or that Athenian democracy was made possible by the empire. As a result, insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of the shift from universally applicable taxes, in use by the tyrants before the adoption of democracy, to the wealthy bearing most of the cost under the democracy. Significant features of Athenian democracy were made possible because taxes were imposed on the property of the wealthiest of its citizens or by liturgies-obligations entailing both personal service and financial cost assigned only to the wealthiest of its citizens. As Cohen notes, "The Athenian system, in fact, constitutes the quintessence of 'progressive' taxation . . . ."
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Progressive taxation means the wealthy can use resources for the benefit of democracy Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 465
However these various political systems are described, none can be characterized as democracies, or governments concerned with political equality. In the one democracy available for examination, Athens, with which we share the most common democratic ideals, the historical record shows that its aristocratic government, including a constitutional tyranny, broadly applied taxes at a fixed rate. When the Athenian people claimed sovereignty by instituting democracy, they abolished the universal, annual flat tax. At the same time as they instituted a series of constitutional reforms that led to the most advanced democracy known, they shifted the tax burden to the wealthy. This allocation of the tax burden to the wealthiest of the wealthy allowed the wealthy few to put their wealth, and the power associated with that wealth, to use for the good of the democracy. In their role as the taxpayers, the wealthy were thus legitimately able to achieve a greater power than the equality consistent with pure democracy otherwise permitted.
Democracy is protected if the wealthy rule as long as there is a progressive tax Maureen Cabanaugh, law professor, Washington & Lee, Alabama Law Review, Winter, 2003, Democracy, Equality, and Taxes, p. 466
Identification of the wealthy as a natural aristocracy occurred early on in the American constitutional debate. The allocation of power among the three branches and the recognition that the vastness of America would require representation allowed a democratic form of government wherein preeminence would devolve naturally to the wealthy. By virtue of our constitutional system, greater power rests with people of property. A logical corollary of that greater power would be greater responsibility to put their resources to work for America, not simply to exercise greater authority by reason of those resources. To the extent that the wealthy can occupy greater control in government while shifting the cost of that government onto the rest of the people, we are describing a non-democratic regime. A decision to impose a broad and flat tax rate across the population in American democracy would be consistent with democracy only if we now define "democracy" as government by the wealthy. If democracy retains its original definition and normative content (government of ordinary, not wealthy, citizens), this political decision requires progressive taxation to permit a democratic government. As Thomas Jefferson suggested, democracy can be achieved and extreme wealth inequality and associated factionalism avoided by exempting the largest number from paying tax and shifting an increasing tax burden to the wealthy.
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As long as the state treats each citizen equally, democracy is protected Robert Post is David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and, Social Science, January 2006, The Rule of Law: What Is It?: Democracy and Equality, p. 28-9
We are now in a position to deduce our first postulate about the relationship between democracy and equality. Democracy requires that persons be treated equally insofar as they are autonomous participants in the process of selfgovernment. This form of equality is foundational to democracy because it follows from the very definition of democracy. Democracy requires an equality of democratic agency. Democracy continuously strives to reconcile the self-determination of individual citizens with the self-government of the state. This means that democracy must regard each citizen as an autonomous, self-determining person, at least insofar as is relevant to maintaining a live identification with the self-government of the state. Every citizen is equal in this regard. To the extent that the state treats citizens unequally in a relevant manner, say by allowing some citizens greater freedom of participation in public discourse than others, the state becomes heteronomous with respect to those citizens who are treated unequally. The state thereby loses its claim to democratic legitimacy with respect to those citizens. It follows that every citizen in a democracy is entitled to be treated equally in regard to the forms of conduct that constitute autonomous democratic participation.
Liberal democracies do not support economic equality

Yoav Dotan, law professor, Hebrew University, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Summer, 2004, CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM AND THE SOCIAL INEQUALITY PARADOX, p. 969 The United States is a liberal democracy. For the purpose of the current analysis I define "liberal democracy" as a sociopolitical system which has a strong requirement for political equality among its members but lacks a similar requirement for economic equality.
The goal of a liberal democracy is to protect the equal distribution of political rights, not economic rights
Yoav Dotan, law professor, Hebrew University, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Summer, 2004, CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM AND THE SOCIAL INEQUALITY PARADOX, p. 973-4 Secondly, I also need to explain the distinction between "political" and "economic" goods. Political goods are the goods related to political expression, to the free exercise of religion, to criminal-process rights, and others commonly associated with fundamental political liberties. The norms applied to these social goods are subject to the stringent requirement of equality, which does not apply to other social goods regarded as belonging to the economic sphere. In other words, one of the fundamental elements of liberal democracy is the existence of a line of separation between those two social fields (which is demonstrated by the two separate propositions presented above). The exact "location" of this line is not always clear, and may be subject to variations in different societies, as well as to ideological disagreement. For example, in some liberal democracies health care and education are primarily considered as belonging primarily to the political realm (and thus subject to the regime of equality) while in others these goods are regarded as a commercial commodity, subject to regulation by market forces and thus not subject to the norm of equality. It will suffice, for the purpose of the current analysis, to point to the very existence of this line of separation, and to suggest that the social goods related to democratic elections - the subject of the current discussion - clearly rest within the political sphere. To sum up this point: the line of separation between markets and politics in liberal democracies is always there; it is a constitutive element of the notion of liberal democracy even if the borders between the two realms along this line are sometimes unclear, blurred, or contested.
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Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

*** General ***

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Stuff That is Critical to Democracy

Democracy depends on majority rule

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Broad Definitions of Democracy Are Bad

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

*** Pro Inequality Threatens Democracy ***

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Democracy

most pressing threat to American democracy today.

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Democracy

democracy in name only

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Democracy

inequality plus political cash is a recipe for unrest, p. A12

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

US one of the most unequal countries in the world

inequality plus political cash is a recipe for unrest, p. A12

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Participation Critical to Democracy

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Poverty Reduces Political Participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Poverty Reduces Politicial Participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Political Participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Political Participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Inequality Threatens Fair Political Access

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Equality is the cornerstone of democracy

Equality of participation critical to democracy

Democracy is founded on equality of participation

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Public Opinion Surveys

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Wealthy Have Disproportionate Influence

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

Planet Debate December PF Democracy & Inequality

* General *

* Pro Inequality Threatens Democracy *

* Con Inequality Doesnt Threaten Democracy *