A billion dollars is nothing in an economy of 325 million people. That’s half of what Colgate-Palmolive spends each year advertising toothpaste and dish soap. It’s about three days of Google ad revenue.
It’s $5 per person of voting age, which is about Facebook’s ad revenue per user in a month. Think about that: has Facebook ever convinced you of anything? Because that’s 12x the advertising intensity of PAC funding.
The causal inference the article draws is insane. California voters rejected more rent control by a 60-40 margin. Facebook can’t convince more than 0.9% of users to even click on each ad, but somehow a fraction of the level of advertising changed peoples’ minds about rent control?
The only reason they spend that on advertising is because of their ROI. The people funding the super pacs aren't just giving their money away without some kind of return.
The difference between the two is one I can choose to avoid, the other is affecting who chooses my rights and laws with less focus on the people affected by those decisions and more on the affect to those funding their campaigns.
Right. And that means the return must be shit, because Colgate-Palmolive finds it worth its while to spend twice as much moneg advertising toothpaste and dish soap as all the wealthy individuals and companies in the country find it worth their while to invest in political advertising.
Put differently, corporate political advertising amounts to about 0.5% of advertising in the US. That tells you a lot about how unimportant it is to companies’ bottom lines. It’s basic arithmetic. These political decisions are worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. If corporations invest only a billion influencing them, that means the influence is very attenuated: it only affects votes at the margins.
Can you cite a source for that? This anecdotal but my impression has been that self-funded candidates do not do especially well in elections. Mike Huffington's run against Diane Feinstein was a failure [0] despite committing an enormous about of his money to the campaign. Also, the Koch Brothers' direct spending on elections has similarly not been especially effective according to some accounts. [1]
There are ample reasons to be concerned about the effect of money on the American political system. Personally I am more focused on regulatory capture through lobbying than elections per se. In the current system it looks to me as if billionaires win regardless of who's in office.
I think the problem is that when 100 million people contribute $10 to a cause they basically don't get heard but one person contributing the same amount will have all doors opened and be listened to.
We’re talking about PAC spend, which doesn’t go directly to candidates. A billion in small donations to an issue-focused PAC is indistinguishable to a single $1 billion donation. It’s a billion dollars available to conduct advertising for the issue.
100 million people motivated enough to contribute $10 each to a cause indicates a huge base of support. It's not just the money, it's a signal of engagement.
> We’re talking about PAC spend, which doesn’t go directly to candidates. A billion in small donations to an issue-focused PAC is indistinguishable to a single $1 billion donation. It’s a billion dollars available to conduct advertising for the issue.
Now, I could be 100% wrong because I'm not looking at any data to back up what I'm stating next but from what I remember what you say above is not 100% true.
From the time the campaign starts until the campaign ends and the election is complete the PAC's $ can not go directly to a candidate. The problem is what happens to / with that money after the campaign is over? From what I've heard that money can go directly to a candidate (or now official-elect) with no strings attached.
Of course, I do not have a citation handy, but I've never heard of leftover PAC $ being reimbursed to those donating nor have I ever heard of candidates or a PAC donating the leftover PAC $ to charity.
> Mostly, it’s up to the super PAC. “Super PACs have fairly broad discretion on what they can do with excess funds,” says Robert Kelner, chair of the Election and Political Law Practice Group at the law firm Covington & Burling. They can transfer them to a charitable organization, use them for wind-down expenses like clearing out offices or filing reports, or pay consulting fees. The main thing they can’t use leftover money for is to make contributions to a candidate for federal office.
I know you're just using rhetoric and not thinking about those numbers carefully, but I think that if 100 million people contributed $10 to a single cause, that cause would run the table in American politics.
A logical problem here is that a 100 million people would be far more than enough to decide any and all elections. They could put 'Mr. Cause' into office at every single level of government if there was ever anything like 100 million people willing to agree on something and put forth the modicum of effort required to show up at a polling place. No money necessary.
Maybe I got my numbers wrong. How about 1 million people donating $5 vs one person donating 5 dollars? Don't you think that the one person will get the opportunity to raise their issues to the people in power?
But so will the 1 million donating $5 each if they do it through any sort of organization. Have you ever donated to Planned Parenthood? Or the NRA? Or whatever political org you happen to align with?
Those organizations get heard because of the money and votes behind them.
For all the money the Adelsons poured into this House election, they didn't do so hot. They fought mostly for historically red districts, and from buys for CA-10, CA-39, CA-45, IL-12, IL-13, KS-2, MI-6, NC-2, NM-2, NY-19, NY-22, NV-3, VA-7, TX-7, and WI-1, they lost (or have probably lost) the CA-10, NM-2, NY-19, NY-22, NV-3, VA-7, and TX-7.
Similarly, this cycle was defined by an overwhelming fundraising advantage for Democrats. The Democrats did well, but they did not do well proportionately to their financial edge. There were races where we just dominated the GOP --- on the field, in the air, with endorsements, and all that backed by money --- and the GOP won anyways. Money helps, but it doesn't "decide" elections.
Did any of the candidates of the Great Slate win? I googled a few results shortly after your elections and didn't find any, but I think the count wasn't official yet in most states.
We're likely to take ME-2, but none of the other races. Which is fine; the Slate races were chosen specifically to be long shots that were underinvested by the party.
Proposition 10 in California lost because it was a horrible idea. Economists agree, at almost the scale of way they agree about climate change, from the left to the right, that rent control is the most effective way to destroy a city and is counterproductive to its goals. It is a simplistic solution designed by people that have flunked economics who think that just declaring that "rent shall be frozen" that that will make housing cheaper.
It was not because billionaires supported it. It failed because it was a terrible idea.
If you just look at it through the lens of supply and demand, of course rent control is bad. But the real issues are more nuanced than that.
For example, a recent study from Stanford found that rent control reduces supply of housing by 15% and raises the income you need to move into the city; on the other side, that same study found that rent control helps protect people that live in the city already, which disproportionately helps people of color and lower income people.
There’s a few similar studies. There are definitely tradeoffs here, which depend on your own values.
isn't that another way of saying its a way to create slums?
i.e. if wealthier people can't move in, I'd think there's a good chance the existing wealthy people will move out as well, leaving only the lower income people without any tax base to support the services needed for them.
When you apply rent control you are basically telling the landlord to not invest in the property any longer.
I would bet that you'd find that this only helps people of color and lower income people in the very short run and that eventually you'd find that these apartments turn into ghettos.
Almost everyone I’ve met in opposition to rent control is a landlord themselves. Purely anecdotal, but it’s been bulletproof so far. It’s true, rent control is terrible for landlords, but it doesn’t stop housing development. If anything, it encourages it — there’s no other way someone can make a sizable amount of money off of a new property.
This is one of the problems of allowing the accumulation of power. As an individual, I have little money to spend and the gains are distributed to all citizens. Billionaires have a lot of money to spend and they are rewarded quite directly from the policies that they affect.
The best option would have been to not get here in the first place. To have stopped it when it was easier. But now that power has accumulated so much there is more reason to work for wealth re-distribution.
I also interested to know how much relationship there is between the accumulation of wealth in a few and war. I see that the rise of the far right and the economic inequality are happening at the same time. But I do not know what is the relationship between them. Anyone has data on this?
If we logically extend your argument to include people in the rest of the world, then people in America will probably be as poor as them as well. Moreover, what would the environmental impact of such a policy be? Will we be consuming way more than what we are currently?
> If we logically extend your argument to include people in the rest of the world, then people in America will probably be as poor as them as well.
Why would you do that? The purpose of having countries is to have a limit on where the laws/policies apply to. In this case we're talking specifically about the US.
> Moreover, what would the environmental impact of such a policy be? Will we be consuming way more than what we are currently?
If anything, its likely to be better for the environment. I don't think income equality means that people will just be buying more stuff (although that is likely to happen to a certain extent, just not enough to have meaningful impact); the way it would look is access to better services like healthcare, education etc.
Picketty discussed the relationship between wealth inequality and the world wars. Specifically, he notes how these wars served the function of destroying wealth accumulation centers and effectively redistributing them. He cynically notes that if we don't do anything that we may end up seeing another war do it for us...
I'm skeptical that we'll see another world war. Or if we do, it'll be over really quick. Because whoever ends up being enemies of China will be cut off from access to advanced electronics, which are quickly becoming more and more important in warfare.
(I'm not saying that there are no fabs anywhere outside China, but if e.g. Germany decides to start WW3, they'll have a hard time producing enough electronic components given the existing foundries in the country.)
The article is terrible in more ways than just the title -- their claim that Prop 10 was voted down billionaires were against it has no evidence behind it. Correlation is not causation.
The "Establishment" loses all the time. Trump was "supposed" to finish last in Republican primaries and ended up President. At every step, he faced and beat the Establishment choice, up to beating the Wall St/Hollywood/Tech endorsed candidate for President.
> ...fight against Prop 10. Sadly, Californians bought the corporate propaganda hook, line and sinker, and voted it down by a whopping 61.7 percent, saying “no” to rent control.
Californian here. This statement is true only if 'corporate propaganda hook' means the recommendations of most reputable economists. There's ample evidence that rent control not only reduces housing stock but also fails to help people most in need of assistance. California has a serious housing crisis--there are people living under bridges in my town--but Prop 10 was not the answer. I hope the No vote will force some rethinking about a more comprehensive solution. I predict that proposition would pass by a large majority.
I think money in politics is certainly an issue, but there seems to be an increasing amount of evidence that this its influence seems to be diminishing, not increasing. One party's presidential candidate in 2016 achieved record breaking fund raising, and outspent their opponent by 2:1. In recent midterms one senatorial candidate raised $38 million in one quarter smashing all records and obviously outspending his opponent, also by about 2:1. Both candidates lost. According to WaPo [1] candidates from one party outspent the other party in 75% of 80 of the most competitive contests. But fewer than half of those candidates who outspent their opponent ended up winning their election.
This didn't used to be the case. Money spent used to be one of the most reliable methods of determining who'd win an election. Now voters seem to be voting in ways that are much less predictable.
46 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 98.6 ms ] threadMore than a billion dollars. Think about that.
It’s $5 per person of voting age, which is about Facebook’s ad revenue per user in a month. Think about that: has Facebook ever convinced you of anything? Because that’s 12x the advertising intensity of PAC funding.
The causal inference the article draws is insane. California voters rejected more rent control by a 60-40 margin. Facebook can’t convince more than 0.9% of users to even click on each ad, but somehow a fraction of the level of advertising changed peoples’ minds about rent control?
The difference between the two is one I can choose to avoid, the other is affecting who chooses my rights and laws with less focus on the people affected by those decisions and more on the affect to those funding their campaigns.
Put differently, corporate political advertising amounts to about 0.5% of advertising in the US. That tells you a lot about how unimportant it is to companies’ bottom lines. It’s basic arithmetic. These political decisions are worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. If corporations invest only a billion influencing them, that means the influence is very attenuated: it only affects votes at the margins.
There are ample reasons to be concerned about the effect of money on the American political system. Personally I am more focused on regulatory capture through lobbying than elections per se. In the current system it looks to me as if billionaires win regardless of who's in office.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Huffington [1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/05/the-koch-brother...
Now, I could be 100% wrong because I'm not looking at any data to back up what I'm stating next but from what I remember what you say above is not 100% true.
From the time the campaign starts until the campaign ends and the election is complete the PAC's $ can not go directly to a candidate. The problem is what happens to / with that money after the campaign is over? From what I've heard that money can go directly to a candidate (or now official-elect) with no strings attached.
Of course, I do not have a citation handy, but I've never heard of leftover PAC $ being reimbursed to those donating nor have I ever heard of candidates or a PAC donating the leftover PAC $ to charity.
> Mostly, it’s up to the super PAC. “Super PACs have fairly broad discretion on what they can do with excess funds,” says Robert Kelner, chair of the Election and Political Law Practice Group at the law firm Covington & Burling. They can transfer them to a charitable organization, use them for wind-down expenses like clearing out offices or filing reports, or pay consulting fees. The main thing they can’t use leftover money for is to make contributions to a candidate for federal office.
But so will the 1 million donating $5 each if they do it through any sort of organization. Have you ever donated to Planned Parenthood? Or the NRA? Or whatever political org you happen to align with?
Those organizations get heard because of the money and votes behind them.
Similarly, this cycle was defined by an overwhelming fundraising advantage for Democrats. The Democrats did well, but they did not do well proportionately to their financial edge. There were races where we just dominated the GOP --- on the field, in the air, with endorsements, and all that backed by money --- and the GOP won anyways. Money helps, but it doesn't "decide" elections.
It was not because billionaires supported it. It failed because it was a terrible idea.
* https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-18/yup-re...
rent control makes rent cheaper in montreal
If you just look at it through the lens of supply and demand, of course rent control is bad. But the real issues are more nuanced than that.
For example, a recent study from Stanford found that rent control reduces supply of housing by 15% and raises the income you need to move into the city; on the other side, that same study found that rent control helps protect people that live in the city already, which disproportionately helps people of color and lower income people.
There’s a few similar studies. There are definitely tradeoffs here, which depend on your own values.
https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/DMQ.pdf
i.e. if wealthier people can't move in, I'd think there's a good chance the existing wealthy people will move out as well, leaving only the lower income people without any tax base to support the services needed for them.
I would bet that you'd find that this only helps people of color and lower income people in the very short run and that eventually you'd find that these apartments turn into ghettos.
The best way we can help housing is more supply, which in the bay area at least, means higher and denser housing.
The best option would have been to not get here in the first place. To have stopped it when it was easier. But now that power has accumulated so much there is more reason to work for wealth re-distribution.
I also interested to know how much relationship there is between the accumulation of wealth in a few and war. I see that the rise of the far right and the economic inequality are happening at the same time. But I do not know what is the relationship between them. Anyone has data on this?
Why would you do that? The purpose of having countries is to have a limit on where the laws/policies apply to. In this case we're talking specifically about the US.
> Moreover, what would the environmental impact of such a policy be? Will we be consuming way more than what we are currently?
If anything, its likely to be better for the environment. I don't think income equality means that people will just be buying more stuff (although that is likely to happen to a certain extent, just not enough to have meaningful impact); the way it would look is access to better services like healthcare, education etc.
(I'm not saying that there are no fabs anywhere outside China, but if e.g. Germany decides to start WW3, they'll have a hard time producing enough electronic components given the existing foundries in the country.)
It's obvious from history that war is a way for powerful people to accumulate/consolidate power and money
Californian here. This statement is true only if 'corporate propaganda hook' means the recommendations of most reputable economists. There's ample evidence that rent control not only reduces housing stock but also fails to help people most in need of assistance. California has a serious housing crisis--there are people living under bridges in my town--but Prop 10 was not the answer. I hope the No vote will force some rethinking about a more comprehensive solution. I predict that proposition would pass by a large majority.
This didn't used to be the case. Money spent used to be one of the most reliable methods of determining who'd win an election. Now voters seem to be voting in ways that are much less predictable.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/despite-record-spend...
Rich people with a microphone and groupie followers seem more influential than just monetary donors.