Where the money comes from

US Presidential elections have been known to use large amounts of cash, thankfully attributed largely to rich donors and seldom taxpayer’s money (probably except for the incumbent seeking a second term). The stunning yet nerve-calming fact about the 2010 campaign spending is that about a quarter of it came from 0.01% of the US population, and this is probably the trend for many campaigns, be it presidential, mid-term, senate, or congressional, to come.

Check out this post from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/meet-the-political-01percent–in-2-charts/2012/08/10/7698e39a-e257-11e1-a25e-15067bb31849_blog.html

Here is the original research document: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/12/13/the-political-one-percent-of-the-one-percent/

There have always been criticism and cynicism linked with the top 1% of American earners (the upper bracket of 3 million people who typically earn in excess of $500,000 a year). Yet, 30,000 individuals are now responsible for this large contribution, as put forth in the article:

When it comes to those who give to political campaigns, however, it’s not the one percent that matters but rather the .01 percent — that hundredth of one percent of Americans who gave 25 percent of all the money donated to federal campaigns in the 2010 election…

While the US Presidential elections mean a whole lot to the rest of the world for the policies the new elect that would implement on November 6 might have deep reaching impacts for other countries. Then again, many thinkers including Ian Bremmer, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Friedman have already created movements within their homeland to convince the masses that the 21st century no longer belongs to the US. Whoever is elected, the direction the world has to follow is collaboration, and no longer cooperation with the US.

The relevance for us, then, is that there are lessons to be learnt not just from this election, albeit every country being in totally different political landscapes. We shall look at the source of campaign money income – imagine millions of budget coming from just 30,000 people, and should these people default on the candidates or parties, a quarter of their budget would simply vanish. Candidates, on the bottom-line, ought to keep campaign expenditure at minimum – it is quite unbecoming for a potential politician to splurge en route to the House while many others are out there suffering.

The purpose of political campaigns is to reach out to the masses and inform them of one’s direction and potential policies he/she would take if elected to office, and not a self-marketing, brand-creating process in which there are segregated target groups. Although, yes, various groups have various concerns. But if the sole purpose of rallying and campaigning is to appease certain groups of voters, then a candidate has to think on running again.

On a side note, one Twitter account was quick to note that Mitt Romney’s VP-hopeful Paul Ryan has conspicuously only followed one other account. I’ll leave it up to the reader to discover it. (See http://twitter.com/DemPaulRyan)