Think you live in a democratic America? Think again.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded. 

The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system. 

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite. 

The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." 

Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it." 

Of course this accusation has been flying around for decades, but I think this is the first time that anybody launched a study which confirmed it.  

How to combat this is going to be incredibly challenging, and in the short run virtually impossible.

This realization does drive a number of grassroots organizations, but ultimately they have limited impact as the big money donors drive public policy in the directions that benefit them and their companies.

And of course all of this will now be exacerbated by the Citizens United and McClutchen Supreme Court decisions.

This does not bode well for the future of politics, or the future of this country, and it is definitely NOT what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

P.S. Before the Right Wing gets too excited about this, since they have been accusing President Obama of being an oligarch for years, they may want to pay attention to the fact that this study was based on data gathered from between 1981 and 2002.

You know, before the black guy made himself available to be blamed for everything.