Comment on Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think. The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

AVincentInSpace@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

This study is bunk.

Researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594; there are 616 bills both groups oppose and 978 bills both groups favor. That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.

That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small. On average, the groups’ opinion gaps on the 185 bills is 10.9 percentage points; so, say, 45 percent of the middle class might support a bill while 55.9 percent of the rich support it.

Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time.

www.vox.com/2016/5/…/gilens-page-oligarchy-study

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