
Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy - robdoherty2
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/?source=newsletter
======
snowwrestler
> The MIT professor lays out how the majority of U.S. policies are opposed to
> what wide swaths of the public want

This is a feature of the design of the U.S. federal government. The framers of
the Constitution were very familiar with the history of governments and knew
that direct democracy was a disaster. It devolves into mob rule, and let's
face it, most people don't know much about most things.

Chomsky says that the lower 70% of the population has no effect on policy, but
there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. The U.S. system of income
taxation is progressive and refundable, meaning that there is substantial
transfer of wealth from the richest people to the poorest. The upper income
brackets pay a disproportionately large percentage of all income taxes.

U.S. states fund universal public education through high school; a policy that
benefits the poor and middle class far more than the rich, who can afford to
send their children to private schools. Health care funding like Medicare and
Medicaid

I'm not saying that these are bad! Just that they demonstrate the extent to
which U.S. policy does benefit a broader swath of the population than you
might think from reading this essay.

Ironically, some of the things that Noam Chomsky likes the least are in fact
popular with a majority of the U.S. population. Pew reports that 61% of
American citizens approve of the drone assassination program, for instance
[1].

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/25/big-
gender-g...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/25/big-gender-gap-
in-global-public-opinion-about-use-of-drones/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Chomsky says that the lower 70% of the population has no effect on policy,
> but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. The U.S. system of income
> taxation is progressive and refundable, meaning that there is substantial
> transfer of wealth from the richest people to the poorest.

No, it doesn't mean that, because income tax isn't the only tax (or even the
only tax _on incomes_ , as the payroll tax, which is regressive, also exists,
and, on top of that, forms of income that tend to be distributed more to the
richest -- long term cap gains -- have preferential tax treatment over other
income), and because while the nominal rates are progressive the distribution
of deductions and credits (including refundable credits) are not.

~~~
twoodfin
Even with preferential treatment of LTCG, high earners still pay a
disproportionate share of income taxes (which include capital gains taxes).

The real bias in the tax code is, perhaps unsurprisingly, around the median
income, where many expenses that the poor do not incur to the same degree
(home ownership, college tuition, IRAs) are highly subsidized, with most
credits and deductions dropping off as you hit a higher income level.

------
JonSkeptic
>The Federalist Papers were basically a propaganda effort to try to get the
public to go along with the system. But the debates in the Constitutional
Convention are much more revealing. And in fact the constitutional system was
created on that basis.

Does anyone have any insight into this? Is there truth to this claim?

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joshuahedlund
Chomsky's dogmatism and oversimplification of complicated factors weakens his
points ( _some selective polls I 'm not linking to show overwhelming support
for things the government doesn't do_ \- but compared to how many things with
overwhelming support that _is_ done by the government?). There are certainly
_plenty_ of examples of ways the US is not a perfect democracy, or even a
perfect democratic republic, but it is trivial to disprove that it behaves
_nothing_ like one.

~~~
illumen
If it is trivial, can you disprove it? Quacks like a plutocracy...

We need better democracies.

~~~
raverbashing
> We need better democracies.

Yes. But for that we need better people

~~~
contingencies
Or, perhaps less corrupt and more broad minded actions from
government/business. Positive change can begin with enforcing transparency and
social and environmental concerns that presently all but escape the first
world's de-facto economic rationalist system, which is rapidly infecting all
corners of the planet, crowding out any space for existing or proposed, often
functional and noteworthy alternatives. Recommended read:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)

------
JonSkeptic
>Yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat
after another. The left has replaced the right; the right has ousted the left.
Even the center-right trounced Communists (in Cyprus) – but the economic
policies have essentially remained the same: governments will continue to cut
spending and raise taxes.

I like his ability to cut to the truth of the matter. What the people vote for
and desire is quite secondary at the end of the day.

------
nefreat
> The reality is that there is massive state intervention in the productive
> economy and the free-trade agreements are anything but free-trade
> agreements. That should be obvious. Just to take one example: The
> information technology (IT) revolution, which is driving the economy, that
> was based on decades of work in effectively the state sector – hard, costly,
> creative work substantially in the state sector, no consumer choice at all,
> there was entrepreneurial initiative but it was largely limited to getting
> government grants or bailouts or procurement. Except by some economists,
> that’s underestimated but a very significant factor in corporate profit. If
> you can’t sell something, hand it over the government. They’ll buy it.

> After a long period – decades in fact – of hard, creative work, the primary
> research and development, the results are handed over to private enterprise
> for commercialization and profit. That’s Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and so
> on. It’s not quite that simple of course. But that’s a core part of the
> picture. The system goes way back to the origins of industrial economies,
> but it’s dramatically true since WWII that this ought to be the core of the
> study of the productive economy.

Can someone comment on this? I am of course aware of ARPA and DARPA but is it
really as one sided as he says?

~~~
hobs
The beginnings of computers being used for artillery projections and code
breaking and then transferred over to commercial enterprise almost wholesale
is documented fairly well in a book called Turing's Cathedral, but there were
all sorts of pissed off people when Von Neumann went ahead and commercialized
stuff that invented by others and was top secret. The british couldnt even
comment on the fact that they had computers for a good 30 years.

------
jaryd
This is a link to the transcript of the speech. If you'd prefer to listen (or
watch) the talk the recording is available on youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btlgQs0UDxY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btlgQs0UDxY)

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gyardley
Hey, original poster - this is a blatantly and thoroughly political article.

While it might very well be interesting and worthy of discussion _somewhere_ ,
that somewhere should be somewhere _else_.

~~~
davidw
The above comment is correct, according to the guidelines.

It's probably not worth complaining anymore though, this site really turned a
corner with the NSA stuff.

~~~
twoodfin
Seriously. Now Chomsky is working his way onto the front page with some
regularity?

Not to mention when I woke up this morning the top post was somebody writing
for an online magazine of "Art-activism, eco-anarchism, subversion and
sedition" positing a conspiracy by the plutocrats to put people in make-work
jobs.

Alas, I lost my flagging privileges around the time we had a front page with
half a dozen postings about a plane to Cuba that no one of interest was on.

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rogerthis
OK, Mr Chomsky. Why don't you go talk about democracy to your friend, Fidel
"Butcher" Castro?

~~~
droope
This has got to be the most stupid, ad hominem, ignorant comment of the whole
HN.

Congratulations!

