[EL] $2500 Contribution Limit to President? Effectively It is at Least $38, 500

[John Tanner]

These numbers raise a couple if interesting issues.
first, how large must a donation be before it has the potential to corrupt?
 My first thought is that it depends on the overall cost of a campaign, and
that even $38.500 is a trifle in the context of a billion dollar campaign.
What percentage would have the potential to corrupt?
second, how high does a contribution have to be to distort the political
process?  I see this as based less on the cost of the campaign that the
ability of individuals to make contributions at a given level.  I'm not
sure how much you need to make to feel comfortable giving $2500, but it
seems out of reach of the average household earning about $50,000 (and with
an alarmingly low net worth/retirement fund) - so $2500 contributions
distorts the process in favor of the small proportion of persons who can
give that sort of money, including most of us on the listserve
(I think that the top 1% makes about 350k/year, the top 5% around 155k, and
the top 10% around 110k.  I expect that wealth is even more mal-distributed)
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