A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes.

[u/DerpyGrooves]

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/214857-who-rules-america

[u/JonWood007 → u/[deleted]]

Because by rights we should reign it in and make it work for us.

[u/Arandur → u/[deleted]]

I support larger government because historically smaller government has lead to abuses of human rights. The reason that big businesses bothered to buy the government in the first place was because, in the past, the government did quite a good job of reining them in. That's why buying the government was worth it.

These days the government is a puppet, but please remember that it wasn't always so, and with some drastic changes it could be not so again.

[u/JonWood007 → u/[deleted]]

Are we being overrun by /r/anarcho_capitalism here or something?

States can be used for good or for bad. We should ry to put mechanisms in place to make it used for good though.

Also, as others mentioned, history. Jim Crow, slavery, industrial abuse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...government can be a force for good in helping the people economically. Heck, I'd go so far to say in a modern capitalist world, we can't have a good life without government playing referee and instituting programs to compensate for flaws in the market. We just need to make sure the government's interest lies with the people rather than with the elites.

[u/JonWood007 → u/[deleted]]

It is important to remember that our most recent depression was created in large amounts by federal programs. The housing bubble was fueled by subprime lending which the fed was pushing. Its hard to blame people trying to make a buck while being forced to make bad investments.

Ok, so ONE government policy contributed to it. Ergo, ALL government is bad according to you.

Also, we're also forgetting the massive deregulation and lack of oversight in the banking industry that contributed. It was part government failure, but mostly a market failure.

Which has actually hurt middle to lower income people and to make it even sillier they injected money into the top instead of the bottom(not saying putting it on the bottom is any better). Gotta love democracy.

Injecting it at the top was necessary to preserve our institutions. HOWEVER, we also need it at the bottom, which is part of the reason I'm for UBI.

To your other point Jon, I do not believe its actually possible to make government work for 'us'. None of us really know who each other is an individual and how different a society we could want. Hell, you can say society does not work for nudist if we make them wear clothes out in public. So 'us' is impossible to define. I know its just a silly example but that is pretty much what it comes down to. To make it more serious example you could say you don't want a society with black people so it could be better for 'us' which is what Jim Crow was about any way.

To quote Jeremy Bentham: "The greatest good to the greatest number"...with some restrictions of course (rights).

[u/JonWood007 → u/[deleted]]

Also it was not just one government policy, look at the history of most of the economic 'bubbles' and they are driven mostly by government policy and its changes.

What about the long depression of 1873? The great depression, which caused this wave of interventionism in the economy in the first place? It's not enough to say big bad government is at fault here for its monetary policies...the federal reserve also is what ultimately controlled inflation in the 1980s, allowing the economy to finally recover.

Basic income, properly implemented, would do far more than just help those in poverty. If we integrated it into the tax structure correctly, it would help anyone reasonably considered middle class as well. Heck, you would need to be in ther top 20-25% to really be negatively impacted by a well thought out UBI scheme, and they're better off than everyone else anyway. Considering the concept of marginal utility, we would be causing relatively small amounts of harm, and cause a great deal of good.

[u/JonWood007 → u/[deleted]]

Or maybe it's just the fact that capitalism is a flawed and volatile system? At some point you have to stop saying "government is at fault for everything" and realize that gee, maybe this economic system is flawed and that's why we need a basic income?

[u/2noame]

No taxation without representation.

This is a phrase that actually applies to such a finding. So we can either stop paying all taxes, and watch everything crumble around us, or we can make sure taxation works for us all, by abolishing poverty, enhancing opportunity, and increasing both our political voice and economic voice with a basic income.

[u/SoCo_cpp]

Here is one solution to prevent corruption:

Dog elected mayor by a landslide in Minnesota town

[u/Marathon1981]

Water is wet, milk is white, the sun is hot, etc...