Rich elites have a long history of oversized influence on public policy in the US. I'm not sure why exactly this is happening, but I think it's at least partly

Rich elites have a long history of oversized influence on public policy in the US. I'm not sure why exactly this is happening, but I think it's at least partly because of the relatively low involvement of the government in various social topics. If you think about it, having public policy being at least partially dictated by unelected and unaccountable individuals is not a good place to be. Hasan Minhaj had an episode on the Patriot Act about this topic and how: a) the huge sums of money and foundations these billionaires manage have less of an impact than one would think because of the staggered way that the money is handed out, organizational bureaucracy and the fact that most problems that they're trying to tackle don't really lend themselves to being quashed just by throwing money at them. Many pursue such philanthropy also in part to clean up their public image and as a tax reduction strategy. b) those huge sums distort the domains that they are injected in and could in some cases cause harm. The Gates Foundation is known for favoring high-impact project and sucking the air out of the room for other initiatives for example.