Why People Don't Vote

Jill Lepore, in a recent NEW YORKER article, brought the veto theory to our attention. She was discussing why some advanced nations have much wider gaps between the rich and poor than others. In terms of income disparity, the two worst nations are the USA and Israel.  Experts have proposed a number of reasons for this, and we can assume that the gap is caused by a number of factors, not just one, but one factor did catch my eye.

You can rate a political system by how many institutions in it have a veto on change. Some advanced nations have one veto institution, usually a parliament that makes all decisions. In these nations income disparity is small. In countries with four vetoes, little that is good gets done and the income disparity gap is huge: see the Senate, the House, the President and the Supreme Court. 

It gets worse. Let's say that you live in California and you want to tax oil companies the way they do in Texas.  You face the following potential vetoes: the Assembly, the State Senate, the State Supreme Court, the Governor, the referendum process, and perhaps the federal four vetoes as well. Why bother to try? Many conclude there is no point in participating in a process that was designed, from the start, to frustrate commoners. That was and is deliberate. Faced with a system with nine ways to block change, most people will give up. But the swanky class can hire thousands of lobbyists and buy most of what they want. And half our population doesn't bother to vote in elections.