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> The key question is how much is "too much," and more importantly, if the proposed fixes for that are worse than the "problem."

Sure. Let's make a change to normalize wealth and measure the outcome. We'll tweak as necessary.

> I don't think the situation is as clear-cut as this, at least in the US. No matter how wealthy you are, you still have only one vote, and both sides have no shortage or rich benefactors.

There's plenty in the political arena that can be bought, such as votes, minds, and territory. That's the entire point of political advertising.

> I don't think it is, though. If someone has 1000x my assets but cannot use them to make his lifestyle notably better than mine, that in no way makes me "relatively impoverished." His additional zeroes in his bank account can only make me feel bad if I choose to feel bad about them (and many do).

Those 1000x assets can be used for loan collateral. Assets aren't really assets if they don't do anything. You are relatively impoverished.

> Sure. Let's make a change to normalize wealth and measure the outcome. We'll tweak as necessary.

Historical attempts at this have not worked well.

> There's plenty in the political arena that can be bought, such as votes, minds, and territory. That's the entire point of political advertising.

There is plenty that cannot be bought regardless of money. That's why political advertising isn't all it takes to win elections.

> Those 1000x assets can be used for loan collateral. Assets aren't really assets if they don't do anything. You are relatively impoverished.

I'll take being "relatively impoverished" (according to you) in the US than a top earner in Venezuela any day.

> [...] both sides have no shortage or rich benefactors.

I think the idea of "both sides" having rich benefactors grossly oversimplifies political alignment in the US. Perhaps you mean that there are both rich Democrats and rich Republicans. True! Unfortunately, this is a problem in itself if the most of the rich benefactors of both major parties have outsize influence over the direction of their party - which candidates it backs and funds, what policies it favors, etc. It can lead to bipartisan consensus among most of the politicians in each party that is not in alignment with what is desired by the non-rich majority.

That's absolutely true, and it's also self-reinforcing in that rich people pitted against each other with two parties helps ensure the lack of a third party.

I do think it's a far cry from money and power being interchangeable, though, as parent claimed.

> I don't think it is, though. If someone has 1000x my assets but cannot use them to make his lifestyle notably better than mine, that in no way makes me "relatively impoverished." His additional zeroes in his bank account can only make me feel bad if I choose to feel bad about them (and many do).

Adam Smith disagreed[1]:

> By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-laborer would be ashamed to appear in publick without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, no body can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England.

> The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in publick without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about bare-footed. In France, they are necessaries neither necessaries neither to men nor to women; the lowest rank of both sexes appear there publickly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes bare-footed. Under necessaries, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I shall call luxuries; without meaning by this appellation, to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life; and custom no where renders it indecent to live without them.

[1] The Wealth of Nations

I don't think the perspective from the quoted text disagrees with my claim.