Money in politics is a problem, but it’s not the amount, it’s where it’s coming from. Sometimes it seems like we should be getting money out of politics, but that’s actually the opposite of what most people should be doing:
- Total spending on the 2016 federal elections was $6.5 Billion
- Overwhelmingly that came from the richest Americans, over half from the richest 0.01% (the 1% of the 1%). And most of the rest from the rest of top 1-5%
- But $6.5 Billion dollars isn’t actually that much. If there’s 240 Million eligible voters in the US, and we all gave $5/month to any campaign, that would add up to 28 Billion dollars in campaign funding every two years. For pocket change we could swamp the campaign funding from the oligarchs by over 4-to-1
- That means that 5 times as many people could be running. Do you have any friends, family or co-workers who ran for office in 2016? Probably not. Do you know anyone who’s smart and honest and would make a good representative? If we all gave $5/month to anyone maybe that person would get enough to actually run.
- Let’s say $5/month from everyone is unrealistic. Let’s say that 75% of eligible voters don’t care, can’t afford or don’t think it’ll help. So only 25% of eligible voters give. That would mean we’d all have to give $5/week. Do you think you can afford $5 every week to help fix democracy? I could give up one beer a week when I go out and give that money to some politician that’s actually going to represent me instead.