We, the country, one way or another, just spent 12 billion dollars on an election. Of that, 10 billion dollars was spent on advertising. I’d like to focus on the advertising. Certainly, some media exposure is necessary to communicate candidate qualifications and priorities. I don’t know how much that is, but we could probably safely assume that the basics didn’t require the entire 10 billion dollars.
Who benefited? At one level or another, directly or indirectly, that money was contributed by individuals. Did they get a good return on investment? Power, access, a winning candidate? Was there a public good? A more informed electorate on the candidates and the issues?
Who made money on the transactions? The people being paid to run the political organizations? Sure. The advertising companies producing the advertising? Yeah. Political consultants? Television stations. It can’t hurt the profitability of a media company to get swamped by advertising revenue every other year.
To continue the thought, are there any other needs in America that might have benefited from that amount of spending? Healthcare? Housing? Child care? Education? Job opportunities? It doesn’t seem to me that the public gets commensurate value for the amount of money spent. I could see why a small segment of the population would like exactly how the process is working right now, though.
While we’re at it, let’s consider an economic question. Is this a positive thing for the economy? Even if money is spent that doesn’t produce results, it’s still money spent and pumped into the economy. If the people that got this money spend it, they buy goods and services that other people produced. The cash keeps churning, even if the original intent was not met. Does it matter to the economy whether money is spent well, or is all spending equally positive? My gut tells me that money spent on, say, investing in a child’s future or improving a neighborhood and opportunities for the people there, or even just building a necessary bridge between cities and people, produces more value than spending that doesn’t produce any lasting results.