The US Should Have 10,000 Members of Congress

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Mises:

The US Should Have 10,000 Members of Congress

16 HOURS AGO Ryan McMaken

Yesterday, we looked at how the European Union functions on a model of "democracy" that is based on very large constituency sizes, thus reducing access to policymakers, and reducing the ability of ordinary taxpayers to influence the lawmaking process. (The more residents there are for each elected official, the larger the constituency size.)

 

An analysis of constituency size showed that there are far, far more constituents per elected official in the EU Parliament than is typically the case for national legislatures in Western Europe.

 

Constituency size has been shown to correlate to government spending in many cases, as shown in research by Mark Thornton, George S. Ford, and Marc Ulrich. See here and here.

 

As Thornton et al conclude:

 

[T]he evidence is very suggestive that constituency size provides an explanation for much of the trend, or upward drift in government spending, because of the fixed-sized nature of most legislatures. Potentially, constituency size could be adjusted to control the growth of government.