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A comment on Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age. Parent comment

Re:Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded... by bjhoops1 on Tuesday May 21, 2013 @03:51PM (#5746390)
> But they're all billionaires, so issues that don't affect billionaires personally... just don't get included in the debate.

I recently came across this fascinating statistical study[1] of U.S. Senators responsiveness to the political positions of their constituents, which found that both Republicans and (to a slightly lesser extent) Democrats were overwhelmingly responsive to the positions of the wealthiest 1/3 of their constituents, and entirely unresponsive to the positions of the lowest 1/3. Well worth a read.

[1] http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf

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Re:Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded... by bubbleRefuge on Tuesday May 21, 2013 @06:01PM (#5747213)
Can the lower 1/3 be expected engage on the political front when they are a bit preoccupied with finding the income to pay rent and put food on the table? Perhaps pursuing austerity policies on government programs that increase income to the lower 1/3 helps check the revolution. Case in point, the Republicans -supposedly mortally opposed to taxes - did nothing to prevent the payroll tax increase at the end of 2012 from taking effect. An overwhelmingly regressive tax.
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