Because in the case of ballot access barriers -- it's CLEAR that power has been usurped in order to maintain the cozy 2 party monopoly. Can't blame wealth, or corporations or Wall Street there --- can we???
No, but I don't think I would blame ballot access, either. Our Constitution mandates something that almost requires a two-party system, which is the single-winner, by-district election of Representatives. When there can be only one winner in your district, it becomes sensible to vote for the lesser of two evils. Otherwise, you just contribute to the chance of the greater evil winning the election.
If you look at countries with strong multi-party political cultures, you'll find that they also all have proportional representation rather than single-winner elections. With proportional rep, your vote for a minor party actually counts provided they reach a certain threshold.
Anyway -- the idea that "redistributing wealth downward" is all that is required is still not logical or rational.
Yes it is, you're just not understanding the rationale behind it, and also I probably haven't made it clear exactly what I'm talking about.
It comes down, once again, to demand. All ideas that work at propping up any part of the supply side of the equation are wrong-headed, not because the supply side isn't important but because, in a market-driven economy, it takes care of itself. That's what a capitalist economy does well. The attention of government needs to go to where a capitalist economy doesn't do so well and tends to shoot itself in the foot. Or, to put it another way, government needs to do what the people can't do so well for themselves on an individual basis.
Where capitalism repeatedly screws the pooch is that it concentrates too much wealth into too few hands. It forms too much capital, leading to an imbalance between capital and consumption where they need to be balanced. Income gaps tend to become too high. Government needs to address this by adopting policies that promote full employment at high wages.
When that happens, people have more money to spend, and there is a better balance between capital and consumption so that more capital is invested in the production of goods and services and less in financial shell-games, rent-seeking, bubble-blowing, and economic strip-mining. All of that promotes economic health, as we can see from the four decades when such policies were actually in place.
We don't need to focus on HOW to "create high tech jobs for the 21st century." The ability exists to do so within a market economy. We just have to make sure the motivation is present, by keeping wages high and income gaps narrow.
By the way, if you want to consider a truly radical, cut-the-Gordian-knot solution to the corruption we find in today's politics, go to the link in my signature and check out that short e-book.
