Thread by @Noahpinion

1/So, lots of people cite this paper by Gilens and Page as evidence that we live in an oligarchy, that rich people control our political process, etc. etc.: scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/…

But that is NOT what this paper finds. Not at all.

2/The paper basically looks for correlations between A) policy outcomes, and B) the policy preferences of various groups.

Gilens and Page find that outcomes are more correlated with the preferences of the "rich" than of the "middle class".

3/But who are the "rich" in Gilens and Page's paper?

Answer: Households making more than $146,000 a year (in 2012 dollars).

That's a good income, but billionaires? Billionaires it ain't.

4/Gilens and Page ALSO find that the policy preferences of the households making >$146k are HIGHLY correlated with the preferences of the households making median income.

In other words, the upper-middle-class and slightly-wealthy want mostly the same things as the middle class.

5/Also, Gilens and Page don't isolate causation from correlation.

It could be that policy is slightly more correlated with the preferences of the upper-middle-class because politicians themselves happen to come from that class, not because of any influence of money on politics.

6/BUT, all this being said, it's also possible that Gilens and Page's findings are just flat-out wrong.

I summon @dylanmatt of Vox to give some contrary evidence! Prepare to be Voxsplained!

vox.com/2016/5/9/11502…

7/Enns (2015): "Even on those issues for which the preferences of the wealthy and those in the middle diverge, policy ends up about where we would expect if policymakers represented the middle class and ignored the affluent."

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

8/Bashir (2015): "The original study is based is prone to underestimating the impact of citizens at the 50th income percentile by a wide margin...average Americans have received their preferred policy outcome roughly as often as elites"

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

9/Elkjaer and Iversen (2018): "government policies largely reflect the economic preferences of the middle class...middle-class power has remained remarkably stable over time...The rich have no or little influence on redistributive policies"

people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfi…

10/Branham et al. (2017): "We find that the rich and middle almost always agree and, when they disagree, the rich win only slightly more often. Even when the rich do win, resulting policies do not lean point systematically in a conservative direction."

jabranham.com/papers/when-do…

11/Another caveat: There's evidence that the GOP represents the rich more, while the Dems represent the poor and middle class. As you'd expect:
vox.com/policy-and-pol…

12/Is it bad that we have one political party that basically ignores the poor and middle class in America?

Hell yes, it's bad.

But it's different than living in an oligarchy.

13/And everyone who is quoting the Gilens & Page study to say that we live in an oligarchy is being irresponsible.

Headlines like these are irresponsible and wrong and bad.

14/Is it possible that billionaires wield influence over U.S. policy far in excess of what the upper-middle-class and slightly-rich wield? Sure it's possible!

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…

15/But the Gilens/Page study is NOT evidence of this. It is NOT evidence of the influence of money on politics. It is NOT nearly as important, conclusive, or interesting as all the breathless headlines would have you believe.

16/This is a clear case of a social science paper being over-interpreted and blown out of proportion by the media. It's bad science reporting. For shame.

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