David Cole:

Increasingly, it's not clear that your vote matters unless you're also willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to support your preferences. This is a game played by, and for, the wealthy.

James Bessen:

Balance will be difficult to restore, given that money will likely remain a fixture of the U.S. political system. The cost of running for Congress has increased by more than 500 percent since 1984, and spending by registered Washington lobbyists has soared, more than doubling between 1998 and 2008. Efforts to curtail lobbying have largely failed, with the Supreme Court restricting legislation intended to rein in campaign spending.

David Cole:

According to the Brennan Center report, over the five years since these decisions, super PACs have spent more than one billion dollars on federal election campaigns. And because these organizations are free of any limits, they have proved to be magnets for those who have the resources to spend lavishly to further their interests. About 60 percent of that billion dollars has come from just 195 people. Those 195 individuals have only one vote each, but does anyone believe that their combined expenditure of over $600 million does not give them disproportionate influence on the politicians they have supported?

Jim Tankersley:

The median prime-age American male -- 25 to 54 years old -- earns less today than he did in 1966, adjusted for inflation. After decades of social and economic progress, the median prime-age woman earns less now than she did in 2000. The typical two-parent American family works nearly two more days per week, full time, than it did in 1979 -- but earns less per hour, in real dollars. The Federal Reserve calculates that the typical household has less wealth than it did in 1989. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman reported recently that 90 percent of U.S. households are worth less today than they were in 1987.

And yet America's total personal income nearly doubled over the past 25 years, and inflation-adjusted incomes nearly tripled for the top 5 percent of U.S. earners.