Who runs the United States? 1. The Defense Industry? Joe Biden's request was for a total of 715 Billion dollars, to compensate for inflation, maintaining the value of the FY 2021 budget. Despite a saving of 30 Billion dollars through leaving Afghanistan, Congress approved 768 Billion dollars. The Defense Industry spent 98.9 million dollars lobbying, and destroyed Biden's hopes for anything resembling a balanced budget.
The Very Rich The report made by Gilens and Page in 2014 concluded that public opinion and broad-based support had little clout in directing government policy, while the largest corporations and the very wealthiest individuals won nearly every time. Subsequent research has refined this result by noting that the very rich and powerful and the middle class are usually in agreement on issues, so the victories of the very rich are often due to support from the moderately rich. Over the last five years, the highest spending 200 corporations contributed 5.8 Billion dollars influencing government and received 4.4 Trillion dollars in taxpayer support; a return of 750 times the investment.
Who runs the United States? - Maybe nobody except the system. In the 2016 Democratic Primaries, a candidate with broad-based support had plans to fix the economy. To fix a problem often compared to the 'Wall St Crash of 1929,' Bernie Sanders proposed a plan he compared to the 'New Deal' of FDR. It was pretty sure to work, so why did the DNC torpedo his campaign? There are several possible reasons, but one is to think ahead to future elections. The Democratic Party wins some votes by always claiming to be about to do something about poverty. If Bernie Sanders had eliminated poverty, the Democratic Party would lose that support and be at a disadvantage in future elections. It follows a general rule that a politician who campaigns on an issue never wants to solve it because he would not be able to ride that issue to success in the future.
The Present tyrannizes the future. The previous time inflation was high was the 1970s to early 1980s, and the fix was to import cheap things from other countries and stop making them in the US. The imports progressively eliminated manufacturing jobs in the US, which affected the working class, but buying so much from other countries meant we ran a balance of trade deficit to pay in the future. The present benefited with a cost to pay in the future. US politics is short-sighted
