<p>While it’s true that money politics are seen as particularly nefarious in the US, it’s by no means a US-only trend. Japan has many high profile money politics scandals to its name, as do most EU members. </p>
<p>Democracy’s biggest inherent flaw is the fact that most voting systems don’t provide minority constituents with enough of a say. The US, UK, and Japan, however, suffer a great deal thanks to majoritarianism. It’s not that EU states are inherently different by the nature of their voters, but it’s the fact that few of them have the same sort of first-past-the-post plurality systems that Westminster and similar systems have.</p>
<p>Look at New Zealand before the recent reforms, and you see the same thing, of course.</p>
<p>My point is that you can have a suburb full of upper class families and they aren’t all at the top 1% of money - but they are upperclass by any definition I can think of. I think that more than 1% of people in the U.S. should be considered upper class.</p>
<p>Actually the middle class always gets ****ed over. Let’s look at college aid for example.</p>
<p>The upper class has so much money they don’t NEED aid. They can afford to pay cash or on some type of installment plan.
The middle class has too much money to get full aid, but not enough money to pay cash for tuition or on an installment plan like the upper class. So they get very little financial aid and at the same time they can’t afford college.
The lower class has NO money; they get all the aid they need+more.</p>
<p>I say adjust the poverty level based on the COL index. $17k in new york city doesn’t take you much farther than rent.</p>