The Power of Wealth and Politics
An excellent post at TCS daily makes some interesting points equating the power of super wealthy people and politicians.
Montgomery County, Maryland, has an annual budget of $3.8 billion. This sum is under the control of a County Council with nine members. On an average per-politician basis, each County Council member controls just over $400 million a year in spending.
To put an annual spending figure of $400 million in perspective, consider this: if you had $8 billion in assets and earned 5 percent per year on those assets, that would give you $400 million in annual income. And few Americans have that much. The world’s wealthiest person is Warren Buffett, with $62 billion (admittedly he has often been able to earn more than 5 percent per year from investments). Bill Gates has $58 billion. Fewer than 40 Americans have more than $8 billion in assets, and their names are largely familiar to us–the Waltons of Wal-Mart, Sergie Brin and Larry Page of Google, and so on.
Can you name the members of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland? I can’t name very many of them, and I live there. Still, getting elected to the County Council in Montogmery County, which is pretty far down the ladder in terms of political power in the United States, enables you to control more annual spending than the wealth of Donald Trump or Steven Jobs.
At the Federal level, the Budget is $3 trillion. If you divide that by 535 (the number of of Senators and Congressmen), then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.
He goes on to argue that:
Thus, the comparison between legislators and the super-rich is actually quite apt. Both are able to exert an unusually large level of control over which worthy causes receive money. Financially, wealthy people and politicians have the same type of power. The difference is that politicians have much, much more of it, by orders of magnitude.
Making one final point he states:
The monetary comparisons only scratch the surface of the inequality and excesses of political power in the United States. Bill Gates might be said to control as much money as a member of the County Council where I live. But he does not have the power to, say, tell the people of the County where they can and cannot smoke, or to tell local businesses what wages they must pay their workers, or to decide whether a local concert venue will be devoted to folk music or to rock.
This is about right. Politicians that are in control of large budgets have more money to spend on others than any rich person could over possibly hope to spend. Not only do theses politicians have this ridiculous amount of power, they then have power to outright ban and regulate. Politicians have a ridiculous amount of power.
The author of the post argues for fracturing the political landscape as a means of dispersing the power. I think this is a very wise suggestion. The best way to protect a democracy is planting safeguards preventing the excessive consolidation of power. Make it harder to get laws passed.
I would also like to point out, since many of my reader lean left, that many of the income redistribution polices you support are the kinds of polices that give politician more power. If you think its right to forcibly take money from one group of people and place it into the hands of another you must realize you are giving power to a class of people whose job it is to define the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’. In supporting such policy you are supporting the consolidation of power into the political class.
Both in 2000 and the current presidential race we hear rhetoric about uniting the country. As if it’s desirable that their is accordance between politicians. If you ask me such unity is scary and normally leads to policy that further consolidates power into an ever shrinking political class.