If you want to understand how big money has corrupted our political system, check out what Alaska’s elected officials are doing right now.
As Tim Higginbotham writes in the People’s Policy Project, Alaskan Republicans and Democrats are fighting over which public department or service should be gutted the most in order to balance the state’s budget. Current targets are the state’s healthcare program, education system, senior/child/disabled services, and the enormously popular Permanent Fund Dividend which provides every person with a few thousand dollars a year because of (mostly oil) investments. But in the short term, the entire deficit could be plugged simply by ending sweetheart—and market-distorting! (for those who consider themselves market fundamentalists)—tax breaks to the oil companies, which would still be profitable without them. A single Democratic legislator proposed a bill to end the tax credits, and only one other legislator has co-sponsored it.
Instead of doing the most sensible (and easily defensible, from a capitalist standpoint!) measure, elected officials are falling over themselves to cut services that their constituents rely on, instead of ending an unnecessary tax credit to some of the most profitable companies on our planet. Money corrupts. And it has too much influence in our political system.