Corporate America’s deal with the Devil

I suspect that when those people read about a bunch of multinational CEOs getting together to throw around their political weight, a good chunk of them would likely think something along the lines of: “It’s true! There is a cabal of wealthy and powerful people running the country and they have influence that I don’t. They are the ones thwarting democracy.”

Sadly, they wouldn’t be delusional to think so. Anyone with a pulse knows that in the US today the system is rigged in favour of the wealthy and powerful. One particularly illuminating paper published this month by the Institute for New Economic Thinking quantifies the problem. Building on a persuasive 2014 data set, it shows that when opinion shifts among the wealthiest top 10 per cent of the US population, changes in policy become far more likely.