We're sorry the answer to "why can't we have nice things" wasn't [political party], it was lobbyists. Lobbyists is the answer to, "why can't we have nice things"!
Oh, that's easy. Lobbying is legal, bribery isn't.
If the government wanted to put a back door in encryption, who is it that tells them why that’s a bad idea? Quite often, lobbyists (in this case on Behalf of companies whose security would be compromised). Industries organize lobbyists to advocate for themselves because politicians can’t possibly understand all the ramifications of the laws they pass.
There are definitely issues with organized lobbying but the alternatives are lacking.
It isn't really - a lobbyist is just exercising the free speech available to all individuals - they just happen to be doing it on behalf of a group of individuals.
I'm purposefully ignoring the whole "corporations are people" aspect because that's a different discussion. But, what you seem to be arguing is that I cannot gather with my neighbors, select a person from the group, and send them to DC to talk to our Congressperson about whatever topic interests us. Instead, we all have to go individually?
Edit - I actually do find the current lobbying situation to be problematic, but it mostly relates to campaign donations. It's not as simple as lobbying (by itself) is bad.
This is comparing a gun to a nuke. Yes, you could kill just as many people with a gun, but the nuke is hyper efficient at the job. They're not the same.
Lobbyists may be akin to a policy nuke. They have an arsenal of tools from influence, to money, to unethical and sometimes illegal behavior. Their positions have become so effective that it drowns out most others.
edit: Another way to think about it is that Lobbyists have changed, i think, from the voice of a group of people to a voice instead of a group of people. Leaving many people voiceless in the face of insane capital and influence.
I'm not convinced this is true. If a lobbyist is not speaking on behalf of people, who are they speaking for? After all, corporations are just legal entities composed of people - with stockholders/owners, a BoD, employees, and customers.
The simple act of Joe Lobbyist meeting Congresswoman Schmidt for a coffee and chat about some topic isn't a problem. The problem is that with that cup of coffee comes an implied donation on behalf of the people Joe represents. The problem is campaign finance, not talking to our representatives.
Organizing millions of poor people to financially compete with lobbyist funds seems a losing battle.
In the UK unions run an entire political party and manage to have a lot of influence including often forming governments. It's not a losing battle.
Ordinary people are free to combine their voice via unions or their own lobbyists.
Communicating with your representatives is protected speech. The problem is campaign finance.
Employees are a cost center. The idea is to get as much as possible for as low a cost as possible. That's business and why employees can only win if they band together because they'd like to get as much as possible for as little work as possible. Those are diametrically opposed interests. You can change that equation a lot if the employees are the owners.
Like I said (in the edit), the problem is campaign financing, not lobbying. The two are related in the US, but we can probably fix financing without impeding free speech.
And lobbyists are free to far, far, far out-contribute your block, rendering it effectively powerless.
Why do you seem okay with that?
Right... but only one side of that operation is the problem!
It's like saying 'a glass of milk + cyanide capsule = death' and blaming the glass of milk!
Lobbying is a neccesary and healthy part of a functioning democracy. Do you want decisions about you and your life taken with no input from you apart from voting once every few years?
The lobbyist, who used to be that senator's chief of staff definitely does......
hence the amount of wealth that politicians, their family which usually means children, gain while they are in office is phenomenal and can lead to positions at state and city levels. the real one percent are these upper end politicians and bureaucrats who just operate with near impunity because its basically impossible to follow all the trails or because much of it has been made legal; usually by making laws that say one thing and do another.
As an example why can't I who don't live in your state go to your representative and get him to act in my best interests? Why would it be wrong for your representative to act in my interest instead of yours?
The US is currently permissive. Legalized corruption.
The 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law [...] abridging [...] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This is the core idea, but obviously the concept of "lobbying" embodies a lot more than just assembly and petitioning in current usage.
I do think it is important to realize that we do have a right to advocate for change. Laws that regulate or curtain "lobbying" need to be carefully crafted to avoid infringing on these rights.
It is illegal to bribe a cop. It doesn't seem like "a clever loophole" to buy the police department new equipment - it still seems like a bribe to me.
There's no legal reason we can't craft law to be different than it currently is, closing these "loopholes". Campaign finance reform (publicly financing campaigns and limiting campaign spending) would be a great step.
Of course. I didn't say differently. But lots of people don't understand the conceptual relationship to "lobbying" and the 1st amendment and I thought it was worth pointing that out.
As you noted by your statues example, protests can be quite effective.
Simple, easy, and free tax submission is pretty universally believed to be a good thing. Except from lobbyists... that's what I meant to convey.
There was also a subtle comment about Us vs Them politically being harmful, where Us vs Them (lobbyists) is likely helpful.
There are a lot of deductions a taxpayer can use that the IRS doesn't know about. Charity donations are probably the most common, but also business expenses and medical expenses. Teachers who spend their own money to buy class supplies could and should be able to submit those receipts and get a deduction.
That can't be easily simplified. The IRS could eliminate those deductions which would make a lot of people unhappy, or there could be some kind of complete retail overhaul where a teacher would be able to tag items as 'deductions' at the time of purchase, and the vendor would send all those tags to the IRS.
The IRS could just send out bills assuming no deductions, and teachers could then add supplemental information on business expense, but ( the argument goes ) teachers might not know they can, or they might not feel it's worth their effort, and so the end result is that a lot of taxpayers overpay.
Disclaimer - I have worked on tax software, but I wouldn't shed any tears if the industry went down. I'm relaying opinions I've gotten from coworkers at the time.
A turbo-tax like interface that covered say, 80% of the working public perfectly well and was free or really cheap is certainly in the realm of possibility.
No, they shouldn’t. The class supplies should be paid for by the government, not the teacher.
Deductions need to be completely removed, and replaced with cash. Government should have to account for whatever it wants to incentivize.
Also, I think few teachers probably get past the standard deduction amounts in order to make sense for them to itemize everything in order to get a deduction for classroom supplies.
A lot of the blame goes ( justifiably ) at private companies and their lobbyists, but even without these vested interests there's a lot of complexity that cannot be easily removed
There's nothing logistically difficult about removing the complexity of deductions/exemptions/credits, it's a few sentences typed into a law voted in by the legislature.
The difficult is all in the politics since costs of various subsidies and incentives granted via deductions/exemptions/credits become transparent and part of the government budget.
Then, why wouldn't the IRS be able to offer that same functionality? The whole idea that "the IRS can't know" about this type of deduction feels like a lie to me, but I don't know enough to be sure.
It's also the answer to why we have a lot of nice things. It's how experts can get their voices heard over popular beliefs when laws are created. Without this lobbying bills on complex issues would have little chance of being useful, since without experts lobbying for nuances those crafting the laws would not have the expertise to create good laws.
Lobbying groups include electoral reform groups, small business groups, human rights groups, child healthcare groups, and on and on.
The second biggest lobbiest by spending in 2019 [1] was lobbying for immigration, foreign relations, and disaster planning. These seems like reasonably good things for society.
Lumping all lobbying into one simple basket is terribly shortsighted.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders?cy...