Every year, various polling organizations put together a list of the most and least-trusted institutions in the United States, teasing out the results based on respondents’ political affiliations and other demographics.
Last year, for example, a Gallup poll found Americans trusted the military more than any other government institution. This year, the Baker Center for Leadership and Governance at Georgetown and the Knight Foundation put together a similar poll, the results of which were released today, with a list of both government institutions and the private company behemoths that rule our lives, and it turns out Democrats really, really like Amazon.
This uh...is bad.
Here’s the data in a slightly scrambled format (not ranked numerically), h/t to Georgetown professor Jonathan Ladd:
And here’s a different way of looking at the data:
You can see the same data for the Republicans here: In short, the military and local cops are the best, but they also really love Amazon, which they ranked as third on their list of the institutions they have the most confidence in. The press ranked dead last, which was predictable.
As for the Democrats, what’s up with this? Amazon...not good! Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post and has more or less let them get on with their work, which is nice, except for all the times he’s decided to fuck with their union. Amazon is making enormous profits and not paying taxes on a lot of it, while its workers are being driven to homelessness if they get injured and not infrequently living off of food stamps otherwise. So far, Bezos has donated from his vast personal fortune to a mostly useless, centrist PAC that supports a ton of awful candidates. His company sells facial recognition software to the police and he personally supports every tech company working with the military as much as possible, even as his employees ask him not to.
Google ranked number four on this list for Democrats, which is also wild. Google: also bad! Schools and universities (good) are number two, with the military is number three (come on).
You can go wild on the full study here—a lot of the data is pretty interesting, but boy, the Amazon thing. I dunno. Feels like there are better things out there to put your faith in than the company that makes people piss in bottles so you can get a new desk chair or something delivered for free in two days or less.