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Economic inequality leads to democratic erosion, a new study finds. (www.futurity.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

These leaders do so by finding different targets to blame for the inequality. Left-wing, populist backsliders, for example, will blame corporations and economic leaders. Right-wing, ethno-nationalist backsliders might nurture grievances by blaming outsiders or immigrants.

The difference is one of those groups is using facts and logic to correctly identify the problem...

Like, I couldn't get over the cognitive dissonance of the author that those two were equally bad.

Who the fuck else should we blame beside corporations and economic leaders for economic inequality?

You want me to go yell at the tooth fairy that poor kids get less under their pillow?

Ideally they would have gotten into campaign finance deregulation allowing the wealthy to buy both parties...

“It probably comes as a result, to some degree, of a period of globalization and deregulation, of neoliberalism in the 1990s and even earlier developments that have changed party systems—in a lot of countries—in the post-war period,” she says.

But I guess that's close enough. It's like they knew the answer but were too scared to say it

[–] assaultpotato -5 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

Buddy not everything is about the US. They studied multiple economies. Just because the US is devolving into a corporate hellscape doesn't mean other countries aren't devolving into an auth-right government hellscape.

It's not cognitive dissonance if they're discussing a situation other than your personal perspective and experience.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

They never even said US in their comment.....

[–] assaultpotato -2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's true. Perhaps my comment should read "not everything is about Western corporatocracies." Inequality can come in many forms, and pretending inequality cannot come from anything other than corporate control is misguided at best.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Absolutely. If it looks like, walks like, talks like duck. It's probably a duck.

Any cause of inequality should be nipped in the bud.

In this case they are highlighting corporate control since they found it is the duck of the inequality they are experiencing

[–] assaultpotato -1 points 2 weeks ago

I think this is where this thread is getting stuck - they did NOT just study "that duck". They studied multiple ducks. They found that no matter what kind of duck it is, it eats bread. The commentor above that I'm replying to said "why are they afraid to name the duck?". I said "it's about more than just that one type of duck, actually - the paper studies a bunch of ducks, and has found that all forms of ducks eat bread".

Somehow they've taken this to mean I think that duck doesn't eat bread.

We overcome this obstacle by building on recent developments in the measurement of democratic erosion. Doing so allows us to conduct a large, cross-national quantitative study of democratic erosion and economic distribution. Our key conclusion is that income inequality is a strong and highly robust predictor of democratic erosion. This basic result is stunningly robust. In all, we find a consistent, positive association between income or wealth gaps and democratic erosion across more than 100 distinct statistical models.

They studied multiple ducks. My point is that they studied multiple ducks, and getting mad at the paper for not focusing just on one duck is dumb.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Can you tell me if any nation's policies where wealth inequality doesn't benefit corporate interests?

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