In a column published May 27 in The Baltimore Sun, Political Science Professor Thomas Schaller writes about increasing political campaign contributions from the country’s super wealthy and growing income inequality between members of Congress and those who they govern.
“Adjusted for inflation, a million dollars isn’t what it was a century or even a decade ago. So sure, at some point the Congress was bound to have a majority of millionaires,” Schaller wrote. “Yet, in a country where the 2012 median household income was $51,017 — and fell between 2011 and 2012 — there is something truly perverse about not only the rising inequality between the incomes and wealth of the masses and the elites who govern them, but the rising political inequality that follows.”
Schaller noted rising income inequality is becoming increasingly dwarfed by campaign contribution inequalities: “Last November, Americans celebrated the sesquicentennial of what is arguably the greatest political speech in our nation’s history: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. But President Lincoln’s closing line is increasingly obsolete. For we are fast transforming from a democracy that prides itself on a government of, by and for the people into a plutocracy based on government of, by and for rich people,” he wrote.
You can read the full column in The Baltimore Sun by clicking here.
Tags: CAHSS, PoliticalScience
