I don't think it's strange that professions with higher qualifications would be overrepresented in a parliament.
The interesting question, to me, would rather be class background. Can you come from a working class family, become a lawyer/CEO/whatever and then have a career?
Agreed, that's a much more interesting question. I would love to see some studies on that (would be fascinating to see how various Western countries compare).
Why?
Anyway, we have two variables here: income/wealth and education, which are not necessarily overlapping. The original question was about wealth as a (usual) requirement for a political career in the US, not educational background.
Secondly the general question about social mobility, that Gustav raised (becoming a CEO, lawyer etc.), is not necessarily related to access to parliament. By broadening the topic to general social mobility you get a much more blurred and unfocused discussion (which is also outside of the purpose of this thread).
If you guys wanna discuss social mobility in general you should create a separate thread for that.
Um, ok. But you realize that it's hard to imagine a system in which say a homeless crack addict would run a successful political campaign? That's an extreme example, but someone who has no resources, social or economic nor experience in say leading people or managing anything would be disadvantaged in the realm of politics. That is hardly strange. And I believe this tends to be true in most countries. The difference in Scandinavia is rather that we have more professional politicians who haven't had a private sector job since they were 14 or something.
