Democracy -- has it already ended?

This article by political scientist Larry Bartels makes fascinating, if depressing, reading. In brief, a forthcoming study shows that the political influence of the wealthy is an order of magnitude larger than that of the poor (with wealthy and poor, of course, defined in a particular way). Democracy isn't the fair and equitable system you might have thought it was (if you were naive enough to think it was.... as, apparently, most political scientists still are).

I've written a little more at Medium.