Ancillary #4
After reading the 4 articles posted on populism and looking over the CQ researcher, I have found my ideals do not align with populism. The major idea of populism is to overthrow the elites, to take money away from the top 1%, and to give the power to the people. I see a few major issues with this strategy. First of all, who are “the people”. In Melissa De Witte’s article against populism, she says “because populists claim to represent “the people,” they have to define the people first and that often means excluding vulnerable and marginalized populations, such as religious or ethnic minorities and immigrants”(Stanford News). There are examples of this drawn all over the world, specifically in Hungary. This whole idea of populism seems somewhat hypocritical if minorities are being excluded and disadvantaged.
A second issue that comes to mind is, how informed is the common person? Most citizens don’t know what is best for their country, and this lack of knowledge on potentially revolutionary movements and changes can create serious collateral damage, and put society a few steps back. We must not forget that the average person can easily be swayed by emotion, which is also not a positive sign for “the people” having power and enacting certain laws.
Thirdly, how do we take money from the top 1% and put it into good use for the average american? We tax the rich! However, if we tax the rich, what is stopping them from moving to another country? If they move to a country where capitalism still thrives and exists, they will be able to maintain their wealth, and there is absolutely nothing stopping the top 1% from doing so.
When speaking to Colin in my group, who is in favor of populism, he brought up a counter claim that 1 billion dollars is simply too much for any single person to have, and that they should have it taken away from them so other people can benefit from it. On the other hand, I argue that many people are benefiting from generationally wealthy people who exceed net worths of 1 billion dollars. Look at Elon Musk for example. He used his wealth and his resources to create companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla popularized the electric car and somewhat revolutionized the future of the automobile industry, which is clearly shifting to electric. SpaceX has also made a clear impact, as it has and continues to popularize space travel.
