Reddit reviews Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America

I'm not aware of any documentaries but there was a book published based on the research: Affluence and Influence

This looks very interesting! Have you read this book by the same author? I'll have to pick that one up as well. Thanks for the suggestion!

EDIT: I think I found a preprint of this article in case anyone else is interested.

> but corruption as we traditionally know it...

Maybe they do not mean corruption in the traditional "bribing" sense, but more subtle ways or just in the sense of decay, lack of integrity or honesty. In this sense there is a very good case for it I'd say. When hundreds of millions of dollars are poured over politics by big interest groups, you have to be quite optimistic or flat out naive to think that's all honest. Of course, the US are still a better place than China, Brasil, Russia or Mozambique... but that wouldn't unvalidate the criticism. I accept that a compared view should be taken to realize how well off most of us here are, but it shouldn't lead to us giving up standards. If it's true that normal citiziens have virtually no way to really affect politics, that the agenda basically dominated by affluent americans, it would be a big problem and just unacceptable. And from what I know, there is a pretty good case.

https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Influence-Economic-Inequality-Political/dp/0691162425