Becoming?? It's been an oligarchy for decades. The wealthy have controlled public opinion through the media, and bought politicians long before Citizen's United.
ol·i·gar·chy
/ˈäləˌɡärkē/
noun
a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
"the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president"
a country governed by an oligarchy.
"the English aristocratic oligarchy of the 19th century"
government by an oligarchy.
Hmmmm we seem to meet the description.
1
Ask any elected official, particularly those in congress, about the percentage of time they spend requesting money from donors in order to be elected, remain in office, and run again, well....
Ethical campaign finance reform is a great place to start to get people elected who represent all of us, not just the wealthy.
Remember Robert Mercer, reportedly we have him to thank for steve bannon and kelly ann conway becoming part of rump's campaign.
Mercer has also been cited as a reason for brexit approval as a part own of cambridge analytica.
Money behind mayhem in the US and Britain.
it is unfortunate that we have reduced our discussion to a half dozen words, capitalism, socialism, oligarchy, kleptocracy, AOC and Bernie. This will go nowhere, sorry. Until people actually discuss issues and benefits, this fight will go on forever. Sad to say but I'm embarrassed to be an American, because I tried, nobody listened.
3
MAY ALL DEMOCRATS PUT THEIR ARMS AROUND THIS SIMPLE, WELL ARTICULATED IDEA.
1
We are evolving. The Founders profoundly anticipated that by trying to design the process. That doesn’t mean that their notions of democratic republic should orient us now.
Actually, democracy, in the literal sense, only works locally, where the distance from face-to-face deliberation to demophilic system of governance is relatively short.
At the high systemic level, genuine demophilic governance proves itself through fidelity to due process, institutional norms, transparency, etc.
So, ‘democratic’ is a trope for genuinely “democratical” or demophilic goverance.
Non-demophilic governance, controlled by brute Capitalism, caused the 19th century notion of “socialism.” Socialism is nothing more than a 19th century conception of republican democracy that isn't brute Capitalist. Yet, history has tragically proven that good society is not possible from the "commanding heights."
What we want is good government, which can’t be literally democratic at all levels, but can be genuinely demophilic in its fidelity to due process, etc. Good government works from “middle out,” as Obama put it, neither trickle-down nor wholly grassroots (purely democratic).
Good government is pragmatic: a balance of the whole (republicanism) and the ferment of all parts (democraticism), idealism made fruitful by realism (prudence, patience).
3
I'm aghast that you would question if we are BECOMING an oligarchy. We passed that goal post some time ago. Haven't you been paying attention?
4
The US is already an oligarchy.
4
The closest America will have ever come to oligarchy happened after Barack Hussein O became our leader who then almost handed the country off to an amoral user willing to do literally anything.
Mr. Obama spent more time and money paying off his promoters and partners than any national leader in Western history, and we came within a whisker of seeing national decisions sold off to the highest overseas bidder - as happened more than once through a political office posing as our State Department.
Corrupting the Department of Justice through two Attorneys General willing to forward corruption wherever needed was bad enough, and coming legal action will reveal more than our progressive media dares fear about AGs Holder and Lynch.
But really opening our country up to the control of outsiders requires a president without a whiff of love for this country, and may we never come as close to that disaster as we came in 2016.
Thank God we have a Pres. Trump who not only loves the county but demands a fair chance for each worker to succeed.
He is an ignorant con man, as is evident to anyone who listens to him for longer than five minutes.
5
I agree fully w/Mayor Pete and the author. 25 years ago as a Political Science undergraduate, I spoke with my grandfather about how the short-term drive to quarterly profits on Wall Street and a growing wealth gap with diminishing social safety nets would undermine our democracy. Wise as he was, he had come of age during the Great Depression and served as a young father during WWII - and he proclaimed me “far too young to be so cynical”. Not true - just prescient. A civil and free society requires a base level equality - of freedom of speech, pursuit of happiness, and economic opportunity above all. We need change now to protect the foundations on which this country is built.
2
@Lisa Gralnek
You lost your audience at one crucial point: the private business world is ALWAYS subject to the law.
But corrupted government can slam the door on justice without even a whimper from the media if the political tags all line up the same.
We still don't know tons of things the Obama administration did - and much money is being spent to keep secrets away from, for example, the Nationl Archives.
But not only did Obama take a lot of penalty funds from convicted (or simp[y accused) companies but put that sezied cash to political uses for one side - his.
We in a sense have gone beyond an oligarchy to a monarchy under trump. He clearly sees himself as a king one who has drawn from tyrant kings in the past who held their grip on power by manipulating the masses.With the current crop of congressman I see no hope for change.
6
I think the NYT editors perhaps buried this op ed for forty years. The American oligarchy has become firmly entrenched in that time.
12
Becoming?? It already is!
#Bernie2020
14
"Becoming?" You are late to acknowledge reality.
16
It is my estimation, that 70% of any of the American people could very effectively be mayor of South Bend, IN, and have. Rudimentary english and math skills, quite suffice.
2
Becoming? Really, Mr. Tomasky? Where have you been these past, oh, 40 or so years. America is ALREADY an oligarchy. Our political system is owned and operated by Big (fill in the industry) and the hidden infrastructure built by the Kochs and other crypto-fascists.
The real question is it too late to reverse the cancer represented by the con-man playing president on social media and his enabler, Mitch McConnell.
12
Why are you even asking this question? It was answered definitively back in 2014. Unless something new has happened to change it, this still holds true:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
4
If the economy was suffering from accumulated chronic underinvestment, shifting income from the non-rich to the rich would make sense. Underinvestment would mean there was a shortage of shopping centers, hotels, housing and factories were operating at 100% of capacity but still not able to produce as many cars and other goods as people needed. It might not seem fair, but the quickest way to build up capital is to take income away from the middle class who have a high propensity to consume and give to the rich who have a propensity to save (and invest). Except for periods in the 1950s and 1960s and possibly the 1990’s when tax rates on the rich just happened to be high enough to prevent overinvestment, the economy has generally suffered from periodic overinvestment cycles.
Since 1969 there has been a tremendous shift in the tax burdens away from the rich on onto the middle class. Corporate income tax receipts, whose incidence falls entirely on the owners of corporations, were 4% of GDP then and are now less than 1%. During that same period, payroll tax rates as percent of GDP have increased dramatically. The overinvestment problem caused by the reduction in taxes on the wealthy is exacerbated by the increased tax burden on the middle class. While overinvestment creates more factories, housing and shopping centers; higher payroll taxes reduces the purchasing power of middle-class consumers. ..."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1543642
5
No it's becoming an Idiocracy. Read any nytimes editorial you'll see what I mean.
3
Shakespeare wrote:
(Life) is a tale
Told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
We're all idiots if we believe that words are going to change anything. Words didn't work with the madness of King George. They aren't going to work with the madness of King Donald. We are double idiots if we believe our rich and powerful didn't love his majesty's tax cuts.
5
Equally breaking news. Trump lies.
9
Soviet Union was depicted as the symbol/prototype of Oligarchy. In Stalin's time as in today's Russia, it was about a de facto dictatorship. Stalin still feared the collective strength of Polit Bureau turning against him. He managed to intimidate all the (other) Polit Bureau members with his henchman Beria.
Now the 33-yr-old Steven Miller is Donald "Trump's Beria," as Barr is his "Roy Cohn."
However, unlike Stalin, Trump is too dumb & too undisciplined to organize an oligarchy, as much as he would like be the dictator of America. Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi wields enormous power, and would not let him to have an oligarchy. And if he isn't reelected, we will be okay.
2
@A.G.
"He managed to intimidate all the (other) Politburo members with his henchman Beria"
Yes exactly right, evil character Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, the proud member of Politburo, he use to pursue my mother who was born in Georgia Tbilisi and was a beautiful young lady.
He inspired fear in everyone who knew his sinister, vicious persona.
Many great people ended up in labor camps or were killed because of this diabolic personality.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs
Stalin introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "our Himmler."
Enough said.
3
@faivel1
You have more intimate knowledge, I appreciate your feedback.
You may know the story of Bukharin. His son grew up to hate his own father as an enemy of the state. But finally when he got to meet his mother as an adult, she corrected him. You can read that in NYT, some 30+ years ago.
2
The Founding Fathers we're all wealthy men...Democracy is in people hearts .. not their wallets..
- Wealth in itself is not undemocratic-
--If America becomes less democratic, then it is because American people have come to have less value for democracy...
2
Good article, in general. But capitalism needs to be called out for its inherently undemocratic principles. Competitive advantage occurs only for a minority of the participants, by definition. Competition directly benefits the few. The rest can only hope for trickle-down benefits.
South Bend and Notre Dame are more than just a time-zone away from Hammond and East Chicago. Let's see if Buttigieg can get a reception like Bernie on Indianapolis Blvd....
2
Is? Is becoming an oligarchy?
Terrible grammar or you have lost all perspective!
Has.
America has become an oligarchy.
A better title would be: "Is America's oligarchy entrenched beyond all repair?"
14
Given that the wealthiest 5% of Americans owns nearly two thirds of all wealth, and the wealthiest 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 95%, the headline you should have used is not Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?, but America Has Become an Oligarchy.
8
Our nation's Founders set up a such beautiful form of government. It's freaking amazingly Awesome! A
government that acknowledged and provided that -
"All men are created equal, they were endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that among those are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness" - Much Respect to those Men.
And even though they came up short of the stated
goals by acquiescing to the Slave states; they left
posterity the mechanisms, for each generation to
move the Republic closer to it's stated goals.
If those me had only re-read the line: "Endowed by
their Creator with unalienable Rights", Truth, would of
demanded that the Slave states to concede, yes, those
Rights belong to Everyone; not just white folks.
But, that was then, this is now. We Live & We Learn,
so we forgive them. We are a new Generation. One
that's quite capable, and inspired, to fix the areas of
the Republic that need shoring-up & adjusting, so that
the American Dream rolls on.
We were lax in guarding Our Democracy over the past
40 years, and didn't fully realize what was going on.
Naively assuming that Congress, the Judiciary, and
Executive branches had Our best interests at heart,
that they operated with a certain level of integrity;
now we know.
4
Already is.
5
Becoming?! LOL! America has been an oligarchy since at least July 5 1994.
1
Yes! Yes! And Yes!
1
No one is surprised America has become an oligarchy. This is inevitable when any population has becomes devolved and mongrelized beyond recognition. Unchecked immigration of illiterate lower order humanity has tragically deformed America to the point of no return. I guess this is what happens every two to three hundred years anywhere, anytime, every time. However, do not despair. From the ashes the Phoenix will arise, we will begin anew..
1
Becoming??? Where have you been. We are there. Jimmy Carter: U.S. Is an ‘Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery’ Rolling Stone Magazine July, 2015.
2
I trust Mr. Tomasky, whom I respect enormously, did not write his headline, because I had to laugh at the idea that there is any question about whether or not America is an oligarchy. (The establishment Times can be so-o-o polite sometimes.) Of course, the real issue is how to undo the oligarchy America has quite obviously already become. To wit, many Republicans insist on calling us a "constitutional republic" instead of a democratic one, for they see nothing un-American about oligarchy. In fact, they engage in outright voter suppression, as democracy is not one of their most highly prized values.
17
@Paul Theis: The New York Times is a multi-generational family-controlled enterprise.
2
Why does the article question whether this nation has become an Oligarchy when it's quite clear it has already become and oligarchy?
Is that to pre-empt discussion about what must happen to dismember the oligarchy from it's host?
2
I prefer to call it "Controlled Capitalism". Presently it is out of control. The essence of it is to bring back a more progressive income tax structure and be aggressive on breaking up monopolies. Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him..... https://lstrn.us/2CORkXF
1
I'm afraid, Michael Tomasky, that America is not "becoming an Oligarchy"; It has already long become one.
1
Is America becoming an oligarchy? What? You haven’t noticed already? Look behind you!
1
Good morning, Mr. Tomasky. Glad to see you are waking up. Here is your first cup of morning coffee.
Perhaps you'd like to read the paper and see what everyone else already knows?
1
Scroll down to see the 2nd graph at:
bit.ly/EPI-study
From 1945 to 1972 GNP grew 100% and the median wage grew in lock step with it. (So did all sub segments: poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, upper class)
Since 1972 GNP grew another 150% but the median wage has been flat.
That means the inflection point of 1972 is a hard inflection point.
The flat median wage is not sustainable without complicity from elites on both sides of the political isle, and definitely without complicity of economic elites. At best its failure of our elites, at worse, betrayal by our elites to the working class.
The flat median wage is not sustainable politically.
Since some workers (tech/healthcare) have seen gains, we know that most of the rest of workers are seeing declining wages. That's 47+ years of declining wages or hopelessness for millions of people. That gets you an opioid epidemic, proto-fascism, Trump, and with time worse.
In 1972 WE became an oligarchy.
It all there in black & white & color. Again, please see:
bit.ly/EPI-study
Oligarchy nonsense, Idiocracy definitely. re
_becoming_?!
As Tomasky notes, John Adams wrote, "The end of all government is the happiness of the People" and followed it with, "the greatest happiness of the greatest Number is the point to be obtained.” As others presciently have pointed out in this Comments section, as a people we largely lost our focus on these lofty objectives as we successively ceded control to the Robber barons, the scions of the Gilded Age and today's relatively young crop of dot-com and hi-tech billionaires.
Arguably, America's real glory years were during the post-war boom of the 1950s, when FDR's 1930s chicken-in-every-pot was superseded by Ike's two-cars-in-every-garage, and a two-week vacation for every family, well almost. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans suffered terribly then, and while progress has been made since, it's not nearly sufficient.
The big difference is previously, great wealth, while too often fostering great abuses, generally acknowledged great responsibilities. No longer. With a few notable exceptions such as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and some others, most of today's great wealth is concentrated among a small number of self-centered, self-serving egotists like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. Financial geniuses, yes; social duds, absolutely!
It's no small wonder that their conscious-less sycophants, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, to name but a few, have gathered to suck hind teat while delivering their goodies to the detriment of those who foolishly support them.
1
Becoming???
To end this oligarchy and crony capitalism, the government needs to raise taxes way up on rich people and big corporations. The individual tax rate should be at 70 max on income above 10 million and the corporate tax rate at 50% on all income. I'm tired of this.
2
Do the ultra-rich understand, on any level, that they are evil? That by hoarding so much wealth, they are causing untold human suffering?
3
This issue has to be taken directly to the electorate, with laser-like focus. Otherwise asking the Ruling Class and their minions in Congress (think Mitch McConnell) to-- in their view loosen their iron grip on society's riches-- is pure folly.
2
We ARE a plutocracy, and will only get moreso. The plutocrats have greater resources than the government, thanks to decades of undermining by the GOP. Attempts by the few in government to enforce the already overwhelmingly wealth-friendly tax, labor and antitrust laws face overwhelming legal force where no expense is spared on talented lawyers and the latest technology. The government has no chance, which means we in the 99% don't either.
And thanks to the Electoral College and the right of every state to two senators, that is unlikely to change unless progressives swarm into red states, which most of us find utterly unpalatable.
Yes, it started with Reagan, Clinton didn't help, but in the last decade the greatest miscreant, a man even more vile and evil than the Orange Excrescence, has been Mitch McConnell.
I see no hope that our country will return to justice, fairness, kindness or compassion at anything like their past peak levels. One minor benefit of my getting called to religion after fifty years of hard core atheism (Greek Orthodoxy, and I'm not Greek at all) is my belief in a Judgment Day, where Christ will duly reward all of us for how we've lived their lives. If I were a professed Christian Republican, I would be terrified, for my etrnal fate will almost certainly be very bad.
Short of that, and absent a truly bloody upheaval combining elements of revolution and civil war (which Russia and China would love), our inequality will only get worse.
Becoming? Think we are a little further along than that.....
Per Oxfam 26 billionaires have as much wealth as 3.8 billion people (half the population on the planet). The world has already become an oligarchy.
2
If the author concedes that Bernie is a socialist, and Bernie is more centrist than other candidates like Buttigieg, Booker, Warren, and Harris, what does it mean to distinguish them as "decmocratic capitalists" or some semantic squish? All these candidates are focusing on things like income inequality, the top one percent, and the like.
Another thing. It's one thing to be worried about income inequality when the lowest tier is poor on an absolute level. That was true in feudal England and on many a slave plantation in early America. If it were true today, we would not be having massive in-migration for economic reasons. There is plenty of income to be had today. This is not the Depression.
One interesting thing to consider is where the source of money comes from. I would argue a lot of this has to do with globalization. I make 90% of my money from business interests outside (mostly Mexico, China and Africa) the US. Apple, Amazon, Google, Boeing, make most of their profits outside America. This is the case for most of the very wealthy and the largest of corporations.
This must be considered when comparing American history. The amount of wealth one can accumulate from sources outside the border is both astounding and increasing. This means wealth is more mobile than ever.
Becoming? That ship has sailed. Democracy only exists now on the local level and in our sad hearts.
2
Anyone working with the homeless in our communities existentially knows something about inequality and that our economy is working for the few, not for all.
Since retiring, I do some volunteer work. One of the places I have worked the last few years, during the winter months, is a hypothermia program sponsored by several nonprofits in northern Virginia. Most of the 70 or so staying overnight for a week at the Catholic parish where I volunteered are working full time. One source says that 66% of the homeless in Fairfax County Virginia are employed.
In Fairfax County, where I have lived for some 27 years, it is impossible to pay for an apartment when earning minimum wage. A family must earn $33.58 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. (Sources: National Low Income Housing Coalition and Fairfax County Government/Homelessness).
If economic injustice in our society is not effectively addressed and our government continues to be solicitous for the well-heeled while neglecting the working poor, we should begin preparing for the violence that will surely ensue. As Pope Paul VI said in one of his New Year addresses: "If you want peace, work for justice." Our Founding Fathers understood this principle long before Pope Francis articulated it in our time.
4
"Is America becoming an oligarchy?"
Becoming? America already IS an oligarchy.
One would only ask this question if he/she had his/her head in the sand for the last 39 years (since Reagan and the GOP started waging their war on the middle and lower classes).
3
Capitalism needs a conscience.
3
Becoming? It already is.
2
"Becoming" an oligarchy?
2
YES.
Let's pray it doesn't become a theocracy as well.
3
What we have is a rigged democracy that founders hammered out as a compromise that gave small states more political power than large states. The will of the people doesn't prevail when a resident of Wyoming or Vermont gets two senators making Sanders, who represents all of 600,000+ or Barasso, who represents 575,000, politically equal to Harris and Feinstein who represent 40,000,000 Californians.
We also rig our political system by electing millionaires (even Sanders and Harris) who worry not about paying bills and getting by but how to invest their wealth so it grows, which includes minimizing taxes and maximizing corporate profits. Money into wealth is the taproot of political evil.
Another systemic corruption is that political campaigns are a half-trillion dollar business that TV, radio, Google, Facebook profit from. Disgraced CBS chief Moonves, notoriously hailed Trump as a profit bonanza for media owners. Media thrive during "interesting times" of conflict and crazy.
What free press -- the truth to power essential for political decisions and accountability -- bites the political hand feeding it?
Facebook and Google didn't even notice 100,000's of Russian anti-Clinton ads while giddily handing out bonuses to top management.
Restrict the Senate to foreign policy and treaties. Bar people who earn more than $1 million annually from elective office. Ban political ads. Limit campaigns to 3 months. Limit political giving to $500 a year.
There that's better.
1
Half the yearly national income going to on ten percent of our households is enough of a clue about what we are. The real answer we should ponder is how can we elect a government that can see the problems of the broken American Covenant of 'Work hard, play by the rules and grow with the country" (CPI is below GDP growth for at least the last 50 years) rather than the current "One for you, ten for me, one more for you, ten more for me..." of our rigged economy that we have created through our over-rewarding of money earned by money and over-taxing of people who actually work for their livings?
Since 'Star Wars' was released, the American economy has grown TEN TIMES in size, yet the number in poverty has grown fifty percent faster than the overall population. We meant for this to happen.
"When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it."
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
1
A thoughtful piece overall, but it's severely undermined by the big leap in logic required to support the closing "appeal to authority" rhetorical device:
"Bernie Sanders has proposed an inheritance tax that the founders would love, and Elizabeth Warren has proposed a wealth tax of which they’d surely approve."
How on earth does the author know this? How does he get from a vague (but probably correct) assertion about the founders' beliefs, to the point where he has them, by proxy, endorse *very* specific policy measures? Highly dubious!
1
The basic point: We're arguing syntax over semantics.
Whether you call it capitalism or socialism is largely irrelevant. Whatever Republicans have been pushing since Reagan is neither. The greatest trick conservatism ever pulled was redefining capitalism to mean Reaganomics. Reaganomics has almost nothing to do with capitalism. In fact, quite the opposite.
Reaganomics, and by extension Reaganism in general, is all about the consolidation of political power in sustained minority rule. You might call this outcome oligarchy. However, oligarchy is not the only possible noun to describe the driving impulses generating income disparities.
"Oligarchy" implies a natural economic response to the conditions of the market. Namely: consolidation, limited competition and scale.
Reaganomics however is not natural. We're talking about the active manipulation of markets that favor limited political control. Our current economic environment is the direct result of policies designed to disenfranchise Americans as a mean of power and coercion. The road was long but apparently successful.
I don't particularly care whether you favor Buttigieg's "capitalism" or Sanders' "socialism. They are both pointing out the same problem. We do not currently live capitalist democracy. We don't even live in a democracy at all. That's the central point that needs addressing: Republicans have successfully destroyed representative governance. Many Democrats are along for the ride.
2
I like Mayor Pete and I hope he goes far in the Democratic primaries for no other reason than that he articulates the complex into the understandable and he does it without using $10 dollar words. A quality that's been sorely lacking within the Democratic party for some time.
2
Becoming? Already is, in any way that matters.
Republican consolidation of all major industries has contributed to the creation of the “elite class,” which is enhanced by all the measures government has taken to enrich the wealthy and increase inequality, not only of income, but also opportunity and voice.
I cite the new, Trump tax gift to the wealthy which gilded the existing tax code’s provisions and loopholes designed to advantage the wealthy; the Citizens United ruling, giving voice to corporations at the expense of individuals’ political equality, the myriad PACs which represent the wealthy and promote their interests, the lobbying, the gerrymandering, the voter restrictions and suppression, all contributing to the purchase and control of Congress, which has for decades, especially under Republican majority, been a client of the wealthy.
Today’s system, a sick, tragic joke of crippling inequality, has the richest system of government welfare benefiting the wealthy and corporations, by far, as they pretend it isn’t even there and that everything they’ve amassed was due to their own work, insight and perseverance, when in fact public resources, paid by working people’s taxes, were imperative to their success, along with a good deal of luck.
Republican bootstrap-ism and the droll playback of its broken ideology belongs in the trash heap with “trickle-down economics.” That charade and the consequences for the government of the nation’s people must be ended for good.
7
The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all."
- G.K. Chesterton
You can’t have a stable healthy society without a solid healthy middle class. By whatever policy means necessary, the middle and lower middle classes must be accommodated to produce functional stability. Can you imagine if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid didn’t exist? The torches and pitchforks would be at the gated communities and there would be no peace for anybody, including the rich. Any financial business benefit produced by globalization and tech must simultaneously be analyzed for middle class impact, both immediate and future. It’s devastating for a local community to lose a Maytag factory to Mexico....but having this become a nationwide trend, with stagnate wages, rising costs, and rising inequality, is an order of magnitude worse. It’s one thing to have a job, and quite another to have affordable life basics the job will fund.
6
There are some pretty obvious steps: generously subsidized health, education, decent housing, parks, public safety and so on, with the goal that being poor won't be a sentence of misery.
But can we restructure the economy to reduce the structural inequalities? The very structure of Amazon or Walmart seems to naturally direct all the billions to a very few, and leave many struggling along, or left out altogether. The idea of everyone starting up their own startup doesn't really seem like a way forward: most start ups fail, and most people don't really want to invent a new app, or open an artisanal doughnut shop. The Green New Deal seems like an excellent plan: lots of stable, well-paying jobs will be generated if we commit to reinventing the infrastructure and energy system. We could look harder at how the notoriously successful countries of Scandinavia manage, but we have a long history of sectors of severe poverty built in to our system, along with the vast wealth. Will even the Green New Deal be sufficient? But the very first thing we could do is to alleviate the areas of misery we have gotten so accustomed to.
4
What do you mean "becoming" an oligarchy? We already are an oligarchy? The current president did not receive the most votes; the second time in this century. The tax codes have been written by and for the wealthy class. The Republican party now is owned and operated by a billionaire in the White House with no political experience or interest in democratic laws. America is an oligarchy. Our job must now be restore democracy.
4
The solutions being described in this article are not "democratic capitalism". They're just plain Socialism. Taking from the perceived haves class and giving it to the perceived have-nots class.
The middle class we, and other developed countries, have enjoyed is due to the Industrial Revolution that began over 300 years ago. The ability to mass produce products enabled a much wider consumption. Various political and social advances, education and labor, continued to expand the production and consumption. Population grew as well.
But all of that started to change back in the '60's. Increased foreign competition drove manufacturing overseas to lower costs. Coupled with the fact that many things, like roads and buildings, last decades. Those middle class type jobs started to evaporate. Being replaced with consumer (retail) jobs, so called information jobs, etc which are all low paying.
These Socialist proposals to use taxation will fail, just like they always have. There's not one single candidate that has even hinted at what really needs to happen. A fundamental change in the way businesses are run and how they employ people.
2
During the administrations of Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Obama income inequality increased. None of them were heroes of the people.
1
I appreciate the author's reminding us of our founding fathers' concern about the toxic effect of great wealth, especially inherited great wealth, on democracy. We usually remember them as wigged aristocrats, which many were, but they understood democracy. Ironically, one of our wealthiest presidents was Andrew Jackson, a rough-hewn populist who made a lot f money by acquiring and selling real estate in newly acquired territories.
In today's debate, the originals would be closer to AOC or Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump or AOC, while Jackson was a Trump prototype.
1
Turn American into Soviet Union? What junk thinking. This is how the rw makes progressives defensive, instead of the other way around.
We need comparisons of what has worked in real life for democracy and prosperity--in our own past.
Describe the fair and adequate tax rates and govt policies of our past generations when the middle class was getting stronger, not weaker.
When the govt build the US highway system under a GOP president Ike.
When our taxes subsidized state university tuition, so millions were the 1st in their family to get a degree, and then went into higher paying jobs---and paid back the taxes.
When 1/3 of workers were in unions, raising pay and security for all workers. Yet business was profitable.
When the marginal tax rate on the highest wealth was 91 percent, during GOP Ike's term. This needs big publicity.
There are many more examples in our past. If politicians and pundits would simply use these concrete policy role models to contrast with today's unfairness, inequality and rising resentments, then their arguments would become CENTRIST, instead of LEFTIST.
But most in the media are too cautious and cowed by the LEFTIST label the GOP and RW use to dismiss whatever reduces power/wealth for the big donors.
This is the crucial topic our media needs to deal with. Simply trace cause and effect.
2
The USA has always been an oligarchy. The lack of protections for workers, the media being in the hands of wealthy individuals and huge corporations, the way the rich buy elections with the almost unlimited spending on campaigns, etc., guarantees that the working and non-working classes have little say in the control of power. Sure, Trump times are even worse than usual, but don’t kid yourself into believing there has ever been a time when wealth didn’t exert undue influence in the public discourse of the USA.
Canada, btw, is only marginally better in this regard.
"Men of wealth and property" - yes, but "nobility"! - count them on one finger or sometimes two. And women? Neoliberal capitalism is causing social division - and the destruction of the planet. The US/UK and Europe need new a new progressive political movement - the two party system has ceased to function in the interest of society as a whole - both parties have supported the neoliberal cause - and the "liberal" media has failed in its duties. We need more articles like this one - and more objective journalists.
1
"Mere coincidence that he moved so quickly from writing the founding document of democracy to writing a bill abolishing inheritance laws brought over from England? Hardly. "
The inheritance laws of England are in fact those of France. Prior to the Battle of Hasting in 1066 the Britons inheritance laws required that all family members share in an estate, not the selected few. Women were protected. It's Norman influenced British law that the revolutionaries were fighting.
1
A study at Princeton concludes that it already is an oligarchy. Makes sense to me.
Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?
Without question.
Brought to you by the Republican Party, and more recently, Donald Trump.
2
Becoming? That horse left the barn a long time ago. America is now a Oligarch-limited-democracy.
They let the elected play their games as long as the elected don't interfere with the Oligarchic Agenda. When one crosses their line that ends their career. The job of the elected is to keep the focus away from the Oligarchs.
Watch what happens when Trump runs afoul of them.
1
Becoming an oligarchy? It became one long ago. It is now moving past that towards something even nastier. Remember all those people that love to crow pedantically that the US is a republic not a democracy? Republics are invariably oligarchies branded otherwise. This was once a perhaps somewhat benign and paternalistic oligarchy, not unlike the British one on which it was so closely based. While the model has tended towards ever-more democracy, the copy has tended towards ever greater restriction on broad power in favour of a fascistic control. From oligarchy to dictatorship is but a short hop.
1
"Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.” —
Rutherford B. Hayes,
President of the United States
(1877-1881)
2
After the shooting at Sandy Hook, 94% of the population wanted to increase regulation on guns - specifically take steps to keep them out of the hands of crazy people.
The measure was fully backed by President Obama.
The measure failed to make it through congress.
94%
When 94% doesn't carry the day you are a long stretch from being a democracy.
8
There is nothing inherently evil about money - it is a commodity. HOW IT IS EARNED and HOW IT IS SPENT determines the character of those who hold and use it.
In today's Trumpian Oligopoly, where he would be a Unitary President (Emperor, King, Beloved Leader, etc.), the inequities are endemic and disgusting. The rich, with more money than they know what to do with, seek even greater wealth, with notable exceptions however. All too often they do not earn their incomes fairly but rather on the backs of those that can least afford to be taken advantage of. Trump and his minions are just such a cabal of thieves and this must stop while we still have a Constitution to protect the rights for which generations of our ancestors died.
It would appear that the swearing, rich Republicans will never understand this, nor do they care.
3
Capitalism versus socialism is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as pure capitalism, or pure socialism. Demagogues use it as a blunt instrument to equate the entire Democratic party to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or worse, the National Socialist party of Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. Bernie Sanders is no more socialist than Elizabeth Warren, who proudly proclaims herself a capitalist. Nobody is proposing anything remotely resembling total government ownership of the means of production.
2
Is America Becoming an Oligarchy asks Mr. Tomasky. It is not becoming one, it already is one thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United. We have a rigged Department of Justice now that Barr is Trump's Roy Cohn. CEO's are making 300 times the average worker's pay.
The question is how do we get our democracy back?
2
Becoming?? Any European will tell you that America has been a de facto aristocracy for many decades.
2
Great article. Can the Democrats please run on this issue? Stop running campaigns that tell white, straight men they are privileged while most are being kept in economic shackles. Stop siding with groups that denigrate America instead of focusing on ushering in a new America that lives up to its promise of a meritocracy.
3
Hopefully America IS becoming an oligarchy. America was built upon great concentrations of wealth and it should continue to go forward based upon great concentrations of wealth. A capitalist and capitalistic society cannot be built without capital.
1
Oligarchy is the inevitable result of open-ended positive feedback applied to wealth concentration.
What is the largest source of new 0.1%'ers ? Look no further than new CEO's. Something is wrong.
1
Becoming an oligarchy? That rubicon was passed in the eighties.
2
Capitalism, an excellent tool but a terrible master. Several of our founders said we need to keep capitalism in check, Teddy Roosevelt said in many ways in his Kansas speech. What is happening now is obvious proof and an that can't see it are blind or being bribed.
2
This is a plutocracy.
1
Origins of the oligarchy: Citizens United. The party of Lincoln morphing into the party of money. Public vulgarity, misogyny, racism, and terrible manners being applauded (except, of course, you would kill your kid if they acted like this). Religion renouncing all claims to compassion, tolerance, humility, mercy, truth, and honesty in favor of zealotry (so much easier after all; no thinking required). Money, money, money.....it is indeed a rich man's world. No one else need apply.
As a country we get what we deserve, when we as citizens let,ourselves be led by the mob and swayed by stupid, meaningless slogans instead of acting and thinking for ourselves. And yes, I agree with all of these other comments none of this will end well.
Best be prepared to survive using your own resources going forward. Build strong relationships with your neighbors. I fear these are the only things we can depend on in the future. Only reason and a long term perspective for the good of everyone ( not the corporations) can possibly mitigate the socio-economic disaster unfolding ever so slowly in front of us.
1
It sure is an oligarchy and well on its way to being a kleptocracy.
1
Are you kidding me?
This article is a discussion about locking the barn door after the horse has left (or been stolen). Wonderful references, well-reasoned thoughts, but the process of change is well down the line.
Trump wants a Russian style oligarchy in the USA. His admiration for Putin is a reflection of his envy of what Putin has created. Trumps wants to pick the winners and reward them with the fruits of the new oligarchy. They, of course, will pay homage (and $$) to Trump. Putin may be the richest man in the world (sorry Jeff B) because his version of crony capitalism requires the kissing of the ring and the passing of the cash. Who doubts that ego and wealth are Trump's prime directive?
Let's pack the courts with people who believe the POTUS is above the law. The Justice Department too.
Many of the American oligarchs have been identified and others are lining up to audition before the oligarch in charge.
Why is Trump doing what he is doing? My theory makes as much sense as anybodys.
2
Any rich would answer “No, I don’t think so”. It’s just false.
Today, more then ever, there is no way to hide the fact that money and politics sleep in the same bed. If you are a billionaire you want any political connection possible to influence and indirectly to decide how the rest of the population would serve YOU.
It’s a disgrace because it should be the opposite.
2
Is becoming? Has long since been.
I heard a joke told by a stand-up comedian: "We're living in an Oligarchy, but with the humidity, it feels like a Dictatorship."
2
It has been since January 20, 1981.
1
Becoming? It already is!
Any fool can tell you that money equals power. Too much money in the hands of the few equals too much power in those same hands.
4
We'll continue to be an Oligarchy so long as half of our political polity deems it appropriate to remove all taxation for those in the stratosphere of economic gains.
The GOP should be ashamed of their craven, sickening greed.
Until then...
1
It has been an oligarchy for quite some time; and it is not the 'democracy' that the founding fathers had envisioned. *** The wealthy have created the pizza and beer economy. As long as the lower classes are able to afford their daily ration of 'pizza and beer', they will be sufficiently content to remain numb to the reality of the rapidly expanding wealth disparity.
2
America already is an oligarchy.
1
Before we crawl into bed with Massa Tom (who, when not otherwise occupied with matters of state was writing his overseer to whip up the slave-children making nails for his mansion), let us recall that the American Revolution was, essentially, a creation of men of wealth and property. The Constitution was constructed as a way of keeping the mob at arm's length (no property; no vote).
It took the Jackson presidency to loosen the grip of men of wealth and probity; throughout American history they have kept a lock on the power that counts (and it ain't, in most cases, centered in the White House). The Mayor of South Bend is not likely to undo that arrangement; nor will the Democratic party, which is in full-tilt civil war mode a year away from the actual election.
Does the average voter much care about these "angels on a head of a pin" arguments between leftists? Doubtful. If Trump doesn't overheat the economy and crash it (as every Democrat secretly prays for) then he will win. And, again, the Demos won't have a clue why.
Mr. Tomasky uses the Founding Fathers as examples to argue against wealth concentration.. but he fails to mention that the Founders themselves were all very wealthy men.
..Furthermore, he makes no compelling argument that wealth is inherently anti-democratic.. Is an impoverished country more democratic than a rich one?
... Does becoming a millionaire make you undemocratic??.. Ask Bernie Sanders..
--.. And what about the politicians who basically sell themselves to the highest bidder.. That's the real rot in our democracy..
Agree that inherited wealth is the issue to focus on for the good of society and what America great.
1
It's pretty ironic to feature a picture of a statue of Thomas Jefferson with this essay. Jefferson was a rich planter and a slave owner. The picture illustrates the misguided premise of this article. Money and politics have always mixed in America.
What's more, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The result of 220 years of government under out Constitution has been a tremendous success and the tremendous prosperity it has unleashed has raised the quality of life for all.
In plain Greek, the meaning of "plutocratic oligarchy", is that power of wealth-rule by the few. The original prescription for "democracy" power of the people, called for the individual citizens to have equality in speech, law and power. Wealth equality is not mentioned since ostracism was the remedy for the wealthy who did not spend their wealth for the benefit of the "Polis" which made their enrichment possible. By referendum, they could have their wealth confiscated and be send to a exile for ten years.
The proposed wealth taxation at 2% seems only a mild remedy.
2
In plain Greek, the meaning of "plutocratic oligarchy", is that power of wealth-rule by the few. The original prescription for "democracy" power of the people, called for the individual citizens to have equality in speech, law and power. Wealth equality is not mentioned since ostracism was the remedy for the wealthy who did not spend their wealth for the benefit of the "Polis" which made their enrichment possible. By referendum, they could have their wealth confiscated and be send to a exile for ten years.
The proposed wealth taxation at 2% seems only a mild remedy.
Bernie Sanders in the 2016 campaign said-- of course we want capitalism, but REGULATED capitalism. Yet Sanders was treated by the Times so negatively, as his ideas were hardly given respect of serious debate.
Now, after the worst president in our history and his courtiers have been abusing our democracy every day, other new candidates are grappling with our need for govt elected by we the people to assert our rights over corporate abuse of power.
Medicare for all is still treated as too radical for America in our media, and some candidates step cautiously. They are afraid to give Americans the same rights that dozens of other capitalist democracies have had for generations. Here, that's too taboo?
We see some progress for 2020. But we need to now assert the basic American right of our nation's founding --- Representation For Our Taxation.
This has to stop being labeled ' big govt socialism' by our media and our careful and timid politicians.
The 1st step is to reverse Citizens UNited, and use public financing of elections so that office holders will be able to work for citizens, instead of big donors.
But, where are the NYTimes op eds on that crucial basis of democracy? And why is it avoided on our TV cable news--24/7?
It's too too taboo!
This has to change.
8
Citizens United was merely the final step of a long legal process funded by corporations and oligarchs to turn previously free speech into a commodity for which one is now entitled to only as much speech as one can pay for. And, of course, it is overwhelmingly the oligarchs and corporations who can pay for it. Just two years after Citizens United, in the 2012 presidential race, contributions by the top 0.04% were about the same as those of the bottom 68%. Thus oligarchs and corporations have succeeded not only in purchasing a political party but also in purchasing sufficient influence on public opinion to get the government they want. This process is well described in the books We, the Corporations by Adam Winkler and Dark money by Jane Mayer.
7
Among the biggest beneficiaries of Citizen United were the dozens of PACs and billionares that funded the one billion dollar failed Presidential campaign of Hilllary Clinton. Hypocracy much?
1
America has been a plutocracy for a long time, now deregulation and redistribution of wealth by tax code has made it possible for billionaires and large corporations to create an oligarchy. I don't think this is what the founders intended.
2
“Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?” Rhetorical question, of course. The better question is: What kind of Oligarchy?
7
Urban & rural poor have too many obstacles in their way to get into the workforce. We offer a free job training program for high paying, un-outsourceable jobs at our community college (HVAC, Welding, Mechatronics...) and we can't get people to enroll because they don't have child care, health care, and transportation to get to class & attend consistently. Those things need to be fixed so that the people who live here can take advantage of the programs that are just sitting here empty. We also have to move into the 21st century and people need to understand the connection between technology and the workforce. Someone who's doing Auto Repair or HVAC have to be able to use a computer and do basic math, and those are places where our students really struggle. We offer the support classes, we have tutors, we have extra classes just for math for manufacturing outside of their vocational program, but they've been too beaten down in a school system that may have been under-resourced, underserved & unsupported. This is such a multifactorial and complex problem that no one wants to acknowledge or deal with. It has nothing to do with immigrants, and everything to do with a society that does not value education and training for jobs that provide a living wage. We have lost our center - which for the first 225 years of our country was that we all work for the common good. Until we get back to that philosophy that everything we do helps other people, we will never recover.
3
@Mara C: People need to stop having children before they grow up, and society needs to offer enough economic security to afford children before people are too old to have them. What does it take?
If citizens would vote their economic interests things would change in a democracy. They don't so oligarchy is the result
3
I don’t believe the term socialism was in existence at the time of Jefferson and Adams but I do not believe any of the founding fathers would have wanted the new country to be anti-social. They envisioned a new society, one which would (with a few horrendous exceptions) guarantee live, liberty and the pursuit of happiness buying, selling and trading were considered as necessary parts of this new society but never its purpose.
1
@Reino J Paaso: Liberty to enslave included buying and selling people.
Oddly, in the long run, I think the greater danger is that when the people that fell for Trump team up with the “soak the rich” crowd, they will do damage too.
A coherent well thought out deal that maximizes prosperity for most does not seem to be in the cards anytime soon.
@David Martin: Nihilists always want other people to feel their own pain. The extremes of right and left unite at nihilism.
America is largely an oligarchy and plutocracy. A nation controlled by the wealthy few. It's just a matter of how far it can go in that direction before 'we the people' demand change. Under FDR's programs and levels of taxation the middle class rose to a place not previously seen. That was when America was GREAT. Since Reagan's morning in America where he and guys like the newly proposed Fed member Stephen Moore and Art Laffer flipped the tax code on it's head so that that corps and those of extreme wealth saw their top tax rates cut by 50% or more.
Since then the middle class has largely stagnated government debt levels have skyrocketed. You can't continue spending over 600 bil on the pentagon take in less revenue and expect not to run debt. Since many middle class GOP voters unaware of this fact and have been convinced to be more worried about issues like guns,prayer in schools, abortion, brown ppl and other dumb red state concerns their lot in life hasn't improved. The GOP has successfully distracted them. They're convinced that the problem isn't that exorbitantly wealthy pay minuscule taxes but that programs for 'those ppl' are the problem
Jefferson wrote "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
Yet we too often hear the denigration of progressive inc. taxation. Picketty was rt post WWII US was an aberration
2
@CaptPike66: The US coasted on its wartime industrial buildup to rebuild what had been destroyed in warring nations. Competition took time to redevelop.
While the question is somewhat rhetorical, it is nonetheless The pivotal issue of our time.
It is noteworthy that the rise of oligarchy and the associated anti-democracy corruption of the parties and of the political process has made it to the mainstream pundit class. That suggests how extremely bad the problem is.
Progressives voters have understood this for quite a long time. Conservative voters have felt, but misapprehended, the problem for a while now. And unfortunately because of that have voted in a way to make the problem worse. Democratic party loyalists are in denial that their party establishment is also a serious part of the problem in their support of a corrupt system that cedes power to oligarchs and removes it from average American voters.
A Sanders or Warren presidency would be a good first step in restoring a legitimate representative democracy. They have been clear and explicit about this truly existential threat to our system of government.
3
America, to a certain extent, has always been an oligarchy.
A professed ignorance of class in our social discourse, along with waxing or waning civil rights, belief in meritocracy and economic considerations have held our imperfect republic together this long. This despite voter suppression, gerrymandering and corporate money in politics.
Many seem to agree that the only thing that has kept us from the kleptocracy that is Russia is our Constitution, the Bill of Rights and rule of law - however twisted all that has managed to becomen of late. What's worse is the abandonment of "truth" and science as guiding principles.
Fundamentally, it's about our freedoms, decency and justice. It's going to get ugly - and soon - unless our elected representatives and courts step up now.
2
Well written, but the headline writer did the opinion writer a disservice. The headline is nonsensical if you've been paying attention in recent decades.
Better to ask, "Now that it's more obvious to more people we live in an increasingly oligarchic country, how do we restore our democracy to represent all of the people, not just the rich and the corporations?"
Clearly, the Baby Boomers have utterly failed; it's past time for them to step aside in favor of a new generation of leaders.
3
Part One
This country has always been a reprehensible, oligarchic slave state that requires vast amounts of propaganda to shield the average person from that knowledge. We are the most evil force the world has ever seen-- stripmining cultures and countries and whole spectra of people as we install "the American System" the world over.
That we are now more oligarchic and plutocratic than the brief (less than 30 years!) post WWII period wherein we destroyed the productive capacity of nearly every other major, industrial nation (and then loaned them the money to rebuild it and then used our corporations to do the rebuilding) is an obvious effect of our oligarchy scheming and conniving behind the scenes (Powell Memo et al) since the New Deal to pull down any and all of the economically just mechanisms our grandparents helped put into place.
The ONLY mechanisms we have to reverse this are physical and economic action against the oligarchy and their means of production. They will never respond to the political process and our political process is so broken and demeaned that a century of hard work through the "normal channels" will have no effect but to give those seeking economic justice a hollow man to continue to fight against while gaining no actual ground. We will get nowhere without massive organization and unrest on a scale far beyond that which preceded the federal labor laws.
2
If we stop our stubborn habit of inheritance, then the Inequality of Opportunity will be nearly gone, the Social Inequality will become largely a thing of the past, and we’ll enjoy a stable world like history has never seen before. That’s what each and every one of us can do now.
Rectifying the source of the Despair – that is, the very real existence of a born-into, very nearly insurmountable Inequality of Opportunity. To bring about such true change, the redistribution of wealth is absolutely essential. It’s because the redistribution enables even a less-fortunate child to gain access to a good education, which opens up the gate to a world of opportunities. That will pave way toward a real chance of attaining desired jobs, sufficient income, comfortable living standards and wealth regardless of where we’re born.
When the Inequality of Opportunity is rectified, people are no longer trapped in the fixed pattern of Social Inequality. The freedom from stubborn poverty brings Hope – a liberating sensation that “Even I can be rewarded for my hard work.” And, the more Hope grows in our world, the less Despair obstructs our progress. That, in turn, nurtures a Stable Society.
Even after we leave this world, is our fixation to a Selfish Love so important to us? Is it so important to reserve our love only for our own child with little regard to others? Without truly facing those who are simply born into hardships through no fault of their own?
3
Ask the Koch Brothers. Their policy groups (Heritage Foundation, The Federalist, Americans for Prosperity, etc.) publish "editorial pieces" in hundreds of newspapers every day. Anti-science, anti-climate change, pro-business, anti-union articles that influence millions of people. Ask the Mercer family, who use their billions to buy votes in our Congress and hundreds of state legislatures. Another Koch group, ALEC, sends templates of laws they want passed in states where legislators simply put the state and their name and work to get it passed. True traitors to our country.
3
@markd: People can take tax deductions for donations to purportedly educational foundations that actually preach a political religion.
The U.S. is currently becoming an oligarchy and inheritance taxes play a major role.
Ben Franklin wrote that
"All Property except ... (that) absolutely necessary for Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents (inheritance) and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and Uses of it."
Franklin had seen the insane excesses of the rich when he was ambassador to the French court.
His fellow revolutionary was more specific. Thomas Paine advocated a 10% tax on ALL inheritance.
These men understood the practical side of inheritance taxes. Accumulated wealth generates interest and it generates power. If we do not tax intergenerational wealth, within a couple of generations a few people will own everything. I am told the Koch Brothers are halfway there already.
6
@Rich Fairbanks: In a leisure economy, with robots working and AI thinking, we humans are useful only to consume. People need income to consume. The obvious solution is widespread ownership of the means of production. That could be motivated by a rising marginal tax rate on wealth concentration.
It HAS BEEN an oligarchy for quite some time now. With the pace of capital accumulation increasing rapidly since 1981 and the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan. Please read the book, "Who Stole the American Dream" by Hedrick Smith. He lays out the whole story and timeline starting in the early 1970s. After reading it, the last 45 years of American political history will start making a lot more sense.
5
Elizabeth Warren said this in the summer of 2018. It’s a shame she’s getting less attention these days.
7
A view from a Red State. When we have family get togethers, discussion invariably turns to fundamentalist religion and right wing politics. Birthdays, holidays, and even funerals are an opportunity to rail against Obama, Hillary, immigrants,Muslims, gay rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, etc. What does this have to do with America's move toward oligarchy?
Without the Red State vote, the power brokers will struggle to maintain their power. What fuels the current state of public Red State venom? MONEY!
I grew up indoctrinated with the "us against them" way of looking at the world. This intense tribalism existed long before my time and will undoubtedly persist in the future. It elected Richard Nixon (Southern Strategy) and it elected Donald Trump. The flames of this tribalism have been successfully fanned by those with the money and intent to gain/maintain their power.
Success breeds more of the same political strategy. The solution? First and foremost control money flowing into our political system. Easily said but hard to do. Still until this happens, we will continue this "march toward oligarchy".
6
@Big Mike
Not really. Trump made his big gains in the rural midwest and urban rustbelt. Southern Republicans were among the last ones on the Trump train, not the first ones. He was/is especially popular among Independent and non-affiliated voters. Trump and Nixon were two very different phenomena.
1
The underlying reason behind the wealth tsunami in America and some other nations is the incredulous spike in government-induced debt since the recession. It's the new inflation, only it doesen't show up in price hikes at the wholesale and retail level but as asset - especially equities but spreading across the board - valuations. Loss-making Uber goes out the gate at $100 billion, a bunch of VC's and insiders capture most of that and the cycle continues. Take James Murdoch, as The Times recently noted, when he got sacked at Fox with a $2B+ payoff what did he do: start another venture capital company that will end up funding loss-making "disruptors" and keep the cycle going. Now that Trump has bridled the Fed it will only go from bad to worse. There's no way taxing the rich will address it as these types will have no issue with moving their citizenships and assets abroad.
1
There has always been "income inequality" and there will always be. The man who is now here turning on my in-ground sprinkler system, will never have the wealth of my neighbor who is a prominent attorney. And there is nothing wrong with that! One is highly educated, one is not. One does manual labor, one does not.
We often confuse "income inequality" with "standard of living". We have have people who are earring 3000 times greater than another, but how different is their standard of living? My cleaning woman and yardman both own smartphones. My yardman owns a car. My cleaning woman owns a computer. One rents a house, the other rents a Section 8 house. They both have food on the table and can keep their house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. One has health insurance through his job, one has Medicaid. Both take a vacation out of town. Their basic needs are met.
Even the truly "poor" in this country enjoy a standard of living that is the envy of most of the world. Public housing and Section 8 housing usually has air conditioning, something that was once a luxury even for the middle class. Many own cars - again, something that in the past, only middle class and above had.
I learned several years ago, that the "trades" ambition is to own a house with "nice finishes", a nice pick-up truck, a boat, and the ability to take their family on a vacation. If they can do this, they are happy and couldn't care less what Bill Gates does.
Basic needs are not met for many in this country. People forego medical care because they cannot afford copays and prescriptions. People eat junk because it is cheaper than healthy fresh food. People live on the street because there are no affordable rentals. Many people are just one paycheck away from destitute. This while a very few have more than enough for 1,000 lifetimes.
3
Yeah, there were times when people lived in caves and wear nothing but a loincloth. Compare to them, your servants live in unbelievable luxury, but on the other hand your neighbor lives in a paradise, and that were inequality come in play. If your yardman lose the job (got sick for example) he will be homeless and hungry in no time without air-conditioning or heating in the winter. I doubt that your neighbor will face such prospects even if he lose his job. I am not even talking about prospects of their kids. I really doubts that schools that your servant's kids attend is as good as the school attended by your neighbor. And although kids of your neighbor have all reasonable expectation to become attorneys, for kids of your servants such prospect is questionable. So don't try to tell that while we have inequality of income we have equality of living standards
1
"Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?"
Yes. Every Democratic candidate for president must promise to make rolling back the tax-cut-for-the-rich a high priority. That law is a transfer of the nation's wealth from the working class and the middle class to the very rich, that is, to the oligarch class. The Trump McConnell Republicans are using the massive deficits caused by the tax cut to attack Social Security, medical care, public education, you name it. These are important programs that the working and middle classes have paid for with their taxes.
5
Capitalism, or any economic system including socialism, cannot be democratic if there are extremes of wealth, because wealth gives power and power brings more wealth while power and wealth rob "the people" of the ability to control the direction of their country.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem to agree on this point. One calls himself a socialist, one a capitalist. But I have a hard time distinguishing their policies. Bernie is a big picture guy while Warren really digs into policy, but other than stylistically, I can't see the difference. Both seem to want a well regulated market- substitute the word market for militia in the second amendment and we'd have a great Bill of RIghts- and reduced inequality. as well as wanting some redistribution, during tax time and after death. Nobody has called for nationalization of industry which used to be what socialism meant (other than for conservatives, for whom social security, Medicare, etc. all meant socialism until they were implemented).
Is Sweden socialist? It has a market economy. It calls itself social democratic. Is China socialist. It is authoritarian, but what does that have to do with socialism. It has its stock markets and billionaires.
I suggest we retire the words capitalist and socialist and just describe economic systems as they actually are, or we wish them to be. And to liberty and justice for all, we have to steal from the French and add fraternity and equality.
12
USA has oligarchy government for some time. How many working class people make it into government as you need mega bucks to back your nomination for a government seat. There's the Bush family, The Clinton family, and who knows, The Trump family might just have another next of kin try for the Presidency some time in the future.
4
@CK RE; The Trump family might just have another next of kin try for the Presidency some time in the future.
that comment is just plain scary.
We need our own Frank Luntz, only a more ethical version. While the word "socialist" is losing some of it's pejorative ambience, especially with those born after the Cold War, it still has resonance with older folk. We need language, messaging, and strategy to link the values and desires of everyday Americans with the policies that have been effectively labeled "socialist" by Republicans ever since Reagan. And, at every opportunity, we must clearly differentiate between democratic socialism a la Scandanavian countries versus totalitarian socialism such as Venezuela and Russia. And yes, tying the Founding Fathers and patriotism (as much as I hate that misused buzzword) to policies that seek the greater good is probably also a winning strategy.
9
"Becoming"???
From its inception as a federal republic, not as a democracy, the US has been an oligarchy.
The Founding Fathers feared democracy and the hoi polloi as much as they feared the British. The FF were as class conscience as any nobility and just as defensive and possessive of their power and positions. The entire system for electing federal officials (president, senators and representatives) was designed and intended to put as little power as possible in the votes of the hoi polloi and as much power as possible in the votes of the 1% of the day.
As Benjamin Franklin feared might happen, we have lost our republic and now have a plutocratic oligarchy with possible theocratic overtones
10
Correct, correct, correct. Thank you!
The same old same old. Couldn't Tomasky have offered a few facts to support this rant?
I know Tomasky and his like have a hang-up about inequality. Maybe he periodically goes into convulsions of envy. But that is a problem for him to work out with his shrink. He should be ashamed for trying to turn it into a political issue. (And, no, oligarchy means rule by the few. It says nothing about whether they are rich or poor).
Inequality was greater in the gilded age than today -- and the Republic survived. Why does he have so little faith in democracy!
In his new book, Tyler Cowen argues that big business is actually losing influence over government. But that is hardly news. Almost 100 years ago, Joseph Schumpeter pointed out that people who can lead businesses to success are tongue-tied and clueless when it comes to politics -- they were incapable of even "say[ing] boo to a goose."
Face it. The truth is that big business's power has always been a fact-free slogan or bogeyman intended to seduce sophomores into becoming progressives and to energize the base by persuading it to believe the Big Lie that the rich are rich BECAUSE the poor are poor.
I think its incontrovertible that the American Founders thought of democracy as a counter force to oligarchy. Just one example - the age limits for being President and Senator, it has been argued, exist precisely to stop oligarchic control of government. In old world countries it was not uncommon for a young ruler to come to power simply because they came from the ruling class (think Queen Victoria etc.). But having such individuals wait to gain power until their 30s gave the public the chance to see if those individuals actually merited such power. And more importantly gave a chance to those who did not come from power to accrue public notoriety through their life's work and compete against the powerful for public office.
2
Although ignored by most who cite him, Adam Smith said that his "invisible hand" would only work if market participants behaved in a way that was righteous and just - only then would self-interest guide markets to create the most happiness for the largest number of citizens. Capitalism without accountability and regulation creates incentives that allow self-interest to operate at the expense of others - not in the service of society as Smith intended. I suggest that since deregulation accelerated during the 1980s, we have been moving past oligarchy and are well on our way to plutocracy and kleptocracy.
11
@gandhi102: The visible hand of government must collect for the hidden costs to maintain the commons, to make prices fully reflect the life cycle costs of products, including disposal. That is essential to the "efficient market theory" of Adam Smith.
This is Putin's and Trump's goal to make America an oligarchy forming an alliance to dominate the world with white nationalism. Of course when you are sitting on top of an oligarchy all is wonderful for the family and cronies of these two leaders, even McCOnnell likes being in on it. For the rest of us it may lead to facial recognition technology in the hands of AG Barr(Roy Cohn) being used to maintain the America oligarchy . Once in power dictators are hard to remove they don't leave peacefully as Trump reminded us with "his" military and biker gangs. Trump sounded like he regretted that our military under our democratic restraints cannot get "tough" with immigrants read shoot them like they do in other countries that have dictators. Sounds like his plea to rule as our dictator a goal Barr agrees with and many republicans as he would be their dictator. Let us hope he is too old and erratic to pull it off but has mentioned Ivanka as his heir apparent as dictators tend to do keep it in the family.
7
Most compelling, thought provoking, article I have read in ages.
4
What do you mean "becoming"? it's been an oligarchy of corporations ever since I can remember. Get with it. The corporations own the government and the government does what the corporations tell them to do. This "of the people for the people and by the people" fairy tale is sweet. But that's for school children. End of story.
14
The US just does not understand that preponderance of positive feedback almost always leads to chaos. Schemes like allowing Amazon to pay no tax on any profits for reinvesting them all into growth lead to economic cancer.
9
The CEO income really says it all-300 times (I would be shocked if it's not significantly much more by now) that of the lowest-paid worker today vs. a time when high taxes and infinitely higher sense of decency and compassion toward our fellow man (not necessarily women) kept the top salary to a tenth of that. Okay, the experience of WW2 may have resulted in a bump in compassion across the board because everyone experienced it. Today, who goes to war? Mostly the poor. For most of us, and certainly for almost all our politicians on both sides of the aisle, the experience of the soldiers is completely alien. This is but one small example of the alternate universes which now make up the American social landscape. We have become a nation which knows precious little about how the other side lives. No shared experience, no empathy.
I remember reading an article not terribly long ago about Kodak's CEO back in the day. I was amazed to read how decent, how human and un-full of himself he was, someone who treated his workers well and not like mushrooms. I don't know where people like him went but at a time when my local Walmart is fishing, AGAIN, for another round of tax breaks from the local municipality, it doesn't seem likely that that kind of CEO will ever return in any kind of significant numbers. I will say though that the Freshman political class is beyond wonderful. If anyone can address income inequality in this blighted country, it will be them. Go AOC and Co!
13
It would have been monumental had Jefferson also fought (and won) against our founders adoption of Britain’s Coverture laws which transformed women upon marriage from human beings (with rights and protections under the law) into the physical property of their husbands (without rights and very little protection under the law) (Note that’s what Abigail Adams was referring to with “Don’t forget the ladies” - if women were the property of their husbands, those husband’s would be “tyrants” - Her husband’s, John Adams,’response was to laugh). If our founders had been more inclusive then of their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, our system now might have had over two hundred years of less paternally favored policies and perspectives.
If one can rationalize one’s right to representation and in the same breath deny that right to the woman who did the work to put one on this planet, the self-centeredness and self aggrandizement, augmented by self-imposed blindness to the contributions of others to one’s own well being and success, become the foundational trough from which libertarian oligarchs (I am self-made, no one helped me and I have no responsibility to those lazy poor people) feed and grow.
5
There is no issue that cannot, with a bit of effort, be described in terms of identity politics. With a bit more effort, focus can be directed at the special identity of one's choosing.
And the oligarchs laugh all the way to the bank, via the corridors of power.
3
Not quite clear on the identity politics point, but it’s important to contribute multiple perspectives to the discussion of any issue. It broadens everyone’s perspective to see how others, many others, see and interpret an issue given their own backgrounds, life experiences, and knowledge (to include even and especially, conflicting viewpoints). Different viewpoints gathered together also help to flesh out complex issues in a more nuanced way. I mentioned Coverture laws and practices because of their extreme and long lasting effects on our laws, practices, and culture. And even, more importantly, because our founders’ choice to adopt Britain’s Coverture framework is rarely, if ever, included in discussions about power structures in this country, though that choice was fundamental (not the only choice that was, but one of the major ones) to the concentration of power and representation to a limited group, who felt it was their right to wield power (over themselves and others) while barring others from representation and agency over even their own lives.
2
Becoming? Wrong tense. America became an oligarchy long ago. Citizens United was just a symptom, not the disease. Ask yourself whether Sheldon Adelson or the Koch Brothers or Wall Street billionaires or corporate lobbyists have more influence on our government than the average working stiff. You know the answer.
21
Let me throw in the ideas of a once-famous Kansan, William Allen White, the editor of the Emporia Gazette, whose editorials were read from coast-to-coast in the years from McKinley to FDR. The "governing classes," he said, were hired by the "ruling classes" to protect their property and privileges. The world will never be entirely rid of such things, but a house-cleaning needs to happen every great once in awhile.
11
This colonialist country was founded by an oligarchy. Their purpose was not democratic freedom, but to change oligarchic rule from the British to Americans. They largely believed in oligarchy, and didn't want the "rabble" to have political power. Note there is nothing about a right to vote in the original Constitution, and still nothing to guarantee democratic processes (which largely do not exist here). Only 5.3% of the population voted in the first Presidential election, not due to apathy but due the severe limits on who could vote.
There has been some up and down over time on how oligarchic we are, and we clearly have been getting more oligarchic in the recent past. Just returning to the Eisenhower regarding taxation of the wealthy - both current income and inherited income - would be a big step forward. As our country has sped right since that era, that is now seen as something radical although accepted by conservatives back then. That would be a good first step, but there are also other steps needed - both directly economic and reforming our political system to become a democratic republic - to end oligarchic rule. These two aspects are closely tied as we have a system designed to preserve an undemocratic duopoly, which relies on big dollar donors and so inherently opposes the interests of ordinary Americans.
7
I am not rich. I just wrote a big check to the IRS today for my taxes. Why do I have the very strong impression that a whole lot of very rich people, not only paid a lot less than me as a percentage, but possibly paid less than me in actual dollars?
15
The current occupant of the White House said that avoiding paying his fair share of taxes meant that he was “smart.” Framing taxes as an”burden” (those with money get to frame the issues), makes taxes seem like some disconnected collection of money. They are not.
Taxes are a membership fee, one paid to be part of our country, its democratic institutions, rule of law, protections, safety net etc. If framed as fee to receive the benefits of living here, the focus becomes 1) are my dues being allocated correctly and 2) is everyone paying their fair share for the benefits they receive (eg an extremely business friendly system). If the person occupying the White House does not pay his share, we pay it - along with those who voted for him who also pay more in dues to cover the shortfall of what he “smartly” avoids.
The focus should not be on less or more taxes (though that may be the result), it should be on proper and transparent allocation of our membership fees and most importantly on holding any free riders (not those who are too poor; that’s not free riding, that’s poverty), no matter how wealthy and powerful, accountable (oligarchs, legally-approved tax avoiders).
No one should be allowed to play golf on our golf course and then smirk at us dunderheads because he thinks, and it seems rightly so, that we’re dumb enough to pay his golf club dues (cover his taxes) for him.
8
Yes, the U.S. is an oligarchy, following the old truism of, "he who has the most stuff wins".
Under Trump and elected Republicans, the U.S. is verging on dictatorship, a coup d'état right before Americans' unbelieving eyes. Every day, the Administration and it's "acting" lackeys ignore the law and the Constitution in favor of turning a profit, or just being despicable.
Stephen Miller is a tantrum-throwing immigrant hater in charge of immigration, who encourages border workers to break the law regarding asylum.
Fossil fuel-loving David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil industry, is acting Secretary of the Interior, and supposed steward of our Federal land. He will grant drilling and mining permits on Federal land, creating blight, destroying ancient rock formations, polluting river and ground water and adding few jobs.
Stephen Moore, who helped write the GOP-passed 2017 tax cut for the rich legislation, and pro-Trump PAC creator Herman Cain have been named to the Federal Reserve, qualified only in their desire to obey Trump.
Trump fires anyone who tells him what he wants to do is illegal. We have a sort of mafia Don and sycophants running the government. All but 4 Senate Republicans "forgot" their sworn responsibilities long ago, giving dictator Trump a pass on even the most dodgy use of executive power.
The wealthy profit in this oligarchy, the other 90% are ignored, seeing high taxes and rents, low wages and little safety net.
The GOP must go.
15
America has been an oligarchy all my lifetime. (I am 63.) Sometimes one policy wing of the oligarchy has more control, sometimes another, but always the richest of the elite reap the benefits. Obama might have chosen to shake things up after the financial near-collapse, but instead he put things back the way they were, because he, too, is a servant of the oligarchy. (So much for "Change You Can Believe In.") But some of us (like me) much further down the food chain benefit from the system, so I have little incentive to change it, despite my sympathy with those even further down the chain.
5
When hasn't the United States been effectively an oligarchy? We've pretty much always been ruled by the wealthy few, its just that the electorate is too stupid to realize it.
11
Tomasky addresses a critical issue. If you define oligarchy in the manner (roughly: undue influence of extremely wealthy citizens on government action) used by Professor Jeffrey Winters (Northwestern University) in his clearly titled book, "Oligarchy" (Cambridge University Press, 2011) the U.S. has arguably been an oligarchy for some time. The influence of a subset of those with massive amounts of money at their disposal on politics, economics, and culture is pervasive and frequently highly detrimental to the majority of American citizens. Meanwhile, some of the same individuals who control these extraordinary concentrations of wealth evade taxes in part through undue influence on legislators and the legislation they create.
8
Uh, haven't you noticed?
We are ALREADY an oligarchy.
It's been going that way rapidly since Reagan brought back Trickle-Down from the garbage dump of history, where FDR had properly ejected it. Now it's embedded in concrete by successive Republican Autocracies, two of them elected this century with less than half the actual popular vote under our "Electoral College" system, itself constructed to insure that Slave-holding states would join the Union. Thanks to it, effective tax rates for the richest of us are effectively less than 0% while the middle class, especially in States perceived as "Blue" or leaning Democratic, are paying MORE in taxes than they ever have. (I speak from direct personal experience here in California.)
Wake up, Tomasky. We're already there.
12
I am trying to remember three names. Three guys that visited France during the 18th century. Ah yes. They were:
(1) Czar Peter the Great
(2) Benjamin Franklin
(3) Dr. Samuel Johnson.
It was Dr. Johnson actually spoke the words. But he might have been speaking for the other two--'cause their eye fell upon the same thing:
"There seems to be no middle class of people in this country."
Dr. Johnson, of course, died four or five years before an angry Parisian mob seized the notorious Bastille--and relieved its commandant of his head.
But the phenomenon went back decades. Or should I say, centuries?
You had the aristocrats (which would really include bishops and cardinals and such)--living in those incomparably elegant chateaux. Decent, liberal-minded men many of them--but aristocrats all the same.
And you had poor people. REALLY poor people. "Ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed" as an American president put it years later. Famished. Ignorant. Downtrodden.
And angry. Very angry.
When (finally) they rose up, a tsunami swept over France. Old customs--old institutions--old laws--old norms--all of them! Swept away. Obliterated.
And the heads began to roll. LOTS of heads.
ANYBODY'S head.
Your concern, Mr. Tomasky, is well-founded. The O word--"oligarchy." I am surprised not to see it more often in New York Times op-ed pieces. Or hear it from various pundits and news commentators.
But the threat is real.
Very real.
9
@Susan Fitzwater
History nerds and democratic socialists, my son and I have long online chats comparing the USA to the Weimar Republic and ancien régime France. He often signs off with "Time for the guillotines."
Is America an oligarchy? This is a settled matter, thanks to some researchers at Princeton. This BBC article sums it up, but look to the study itself for the solid data: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
4
Socialism for the rich (think the Bank Bailouts) and raw capitalism for the poor. That, sadly, has become the American way. And yet people still vote Republicans into office. Vote, everyone!
10
Oligarchy - "A small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution." We are already there.
Now, how do we go back to a Democracy - "A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."
5
Seriously? You have to pose this? The US has always trended oligarchic and plutocratic. Just look at its history. Sure, “the people” vote and elect, it who do they choose?
No surprise there.
2
No, Mr. Tomasky, you're not a capitalist. Not unless you posses means of production on a large enough scale to make you many times richer than the rest of us. And - correct me if I'm wrong - I don't believe you are. That, I believe, is the usual definition of capitalism. Again, correct me if I'm wrong. And this possession by the few of these means of production is clearly incompatible with democracy. And we all know it. As the popular saying goes "money talks". And our political system listens.
The two, capitalism and democracy can, to some extent, co-exist, given free elections and free speech, but not comfortably; they must always be in conflict. As for Bernie Sanders, yes , I love the guy, but his "democratic socialism" looks more like a welfare state than straight, 100% socialism. Nothing wrong with that, but why scare the voters by calling it "socialism"?
1
Michael Tomasky’s explanation of democratic capitalism is nonsense. The author uses the example of the oligarchy in Russia as justification for his logic. The largest poverty alleviation program in the history of humankind occurred occurred in China between the 1990 and 2015 where more than 450 million were lifted out of abject poverty when the government introduced concepts of market economics and there is not one oligarch in sight. People who promote democratic capitalism are reluctant to admit that socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried.
@Samuel Taylor there are plenty of oligarchs in China you just don't follow the news within China carefully enough. Look up Chinese princelings and you will find a lot of oligarchs in China. They just hide their wealth and power from the rest of the world better than Russia.
6
Many readers and commentators here are probably too young to have experienced this, but back in th late 70's America was going through a withdrawal of sorts after our defeat in Vietnam and a broken White House, leading to the first presidential resignation, and a broken CIA, and all sorts of "scams" in Washington... which suddenly allowed us to dedicate th contemporary scene into th "ME DECADE."
The only problem in looking inward for some sort of personal solace at that time was that we were always broke. This wasn't only only due to a serious rise in unemployment beginning around th '73-'74 recession, an unemployment scene which continued on and off for th next decade, but it was INFLATION that constantly ate away at our wallets, especially in th late 70s.
At that time we also had a very decent and intelligent President who, despite us not having anyone being killed or injured in any military theater, he was bombarded from hypocritical voices on th right as not tough enough, weak to Labor, incapable... So, in 1979, this "weak" Exec in Chief appointed Paul Volker as th new chairman of the Fed to take care of th inflation mess. Which he did! But by then it was too late and Reagan was president.
Everything changed after that and legislature to weaken Unions was constantly being ascribed in Washington. And rarely did any of that legislation make it to the front page of any newspaper. Everyone wanted more $$$ and if it took making the plutocracy stronger then so be it.
2
As soon as I see the hit on Sanders at the end, I wash this nonsense out of my mind. America is not going to become socialist with a couple socialist programs any more than it became socialist because FDR started Social Securty. Germany had social welfare programs in the late 1800s, and it is not "socialist."
Whenever you are reading a reasonable essay and they wind up trying to torpedo a US Senator from ultra American Vermont, just throw the essay away, it's a Neoliberal hit piece. NYC is more socialist than Vermont. Donald Trump and his myriad web of minor companies structured to skirt taxes and hide income is more socialist than single payer insurance. So save me the tricky lectures, I've read history. The current American poltical debate is not about capitalism vs socialism. It's about a gamed capitalism vs a well managed capitalism.
5
Reparations must come to be seen as the antidote to oligarchy in America, and we can look to solutions posed by two tech entrepreneurs for a solution.
Bill Gates has proposed a progressive capital gains tax. This would easily provide the money for a reparations initiative that focused not on skin tone or blood line, but simply lifting all boats. Andrew Yang's proposal for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the perfect vehicle for this reparations initiative.
The melding of these two programs - a working, wealth-based taxation system and a basic income to all - will provide the economic redistribution necessary in a fair and open manner while giving a leg up to the living people whose chances in life are held back by economic disparity itself.
3
The Citizens United decision limiting campaign contributions in political campaigns is an illegal curtailment of free speech, in effect equating money and speech, is so disingenuous. Money can bribe, speech cannot. That the right wing Supreme Court Justices could pretend not understand this crucial difference just proves the point.
4
Becoming??? It's been that for awhile now. If nothing earlier confirmed this, the crash certainly did confirm that we are being "governed" at the will and wishes of the wealthy few. I might add that with the current admin, we are moving on to the next step: we are bordering on a dictatorship, or at best an authoritarian cabal of rulers. I find it difficult to understand how people are unable to recognize what is transpiring before their eyes.
4
Not sure if America is becoming an oligarchy. The data is not entirely convincing, in my view. But it is, certainly, a political freak show.
2
Former president Jimmy Carter said that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”
He said that years ago.
8
Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?
Becoming?! Is the Times kidding?!
11
It was recognized by wealthy right wingers like the Kochs and Mercers that a little bit of money goes a long way in local elections. The Roberts Court Citizens United decision opened the flood gates of dark corporate money.
REDMAP, was launched after the 2008 election by the Republicans under the leadership of Karl Rove. The plan involves systematic capture of state legislatures and governorship financed by Citizen's United dark money for the sole purpose of sophisticated computer-driven gerrymandering that suppresses voting by likely Democrats.
REDMAP's effect on the 2012 election is plain," reads a post-election RSLC report. "Pennsylvanians cast 83,000 more votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates . . . but elected a 13-5 Republican majority to represent them in Washington; Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”
Republicans cannot win in open and fair elections. Let us hope that massive voter turnout can overcome the distorted electoral process as conceived and deliberately executed by the Republican Party. This process has turned the Republican Congress into a service agency for the super-wealthy oligarchy that now own and control the GOP.
6
@Jefflz, great post, and massive turnout IS the only item that will potentially save us in 2020. But the democratic leadership needs to be looking at democracy with a longer view. The overturning of the Voting Rights Act by SCOTUS encouraged voter suppression, mostly in the confederate states. The Citizens United decision by same has allowed for the floodgates of corporate money to mostly right-wing candidates. Unregulated and manipulative social media influences voters in a very targeted and personal fashion. FOX news is a propaganda machine that is presently not in the control of the FCC. The upcoming census with potential manipulation may functionally reduce head counts in liberal states like CA, and reduce our number of reps. The ceiling of 435 members of the House is based in 1918 demographics and has not been adjusted since. The statehood of DC has been stalled for years, and disenfranchises a key population of the USA. Dems must reclaim the undemocratic Senate from the stranglehold it has enjoyed for over 30 years, if we are to have true power reflective of our numbers. Federal elections are left in the hands of partisan state governments, with very little standardization. The reply to every one of the 9 points I quickly presented is: "when is the democratic party going to speak about these systemic inequities and what is the plan to resolve them?" The answer so far is, not much.
1
On one hand, the other side -- "strict constructionists" that they are -- don't seem particularly interested in what the founders were *really* saying, any more than they seem to care about what Jesus was really saying. But I still think it's worth the effort, and potentially productive, to try to incorporate the Jeffersons, Madisons, et al. into our rationales. Personally I'm such not a big fan; they were privileged, flawed, slaveholding oligarchs themselves. But they also knew that egalitarianism was a crucial ingredient, needing to be baked into the recipe in order for it to work. And they were just dancing with who brung them, as far as that goes.
I do suggest that, in advancing these arguments, we should leave Deism out of it. Because that just goes nowhere ;-)
2
The line of reasoning that capitalism producing a rigid class structure in which elites use their economic power to upend democratic systems is somehow a deviation from the norm rather than the norm itself is something I will truly never understand. Capitalism as a system is not broken in its current iteration, in which global inequality reaches grotesque extremes. It is operating in exactly to do exactly what it was designed to do, and the reformist idea that you can regulate capital to do operate in contradiction to its natural tendencies is a fantasy. At best, you'll perhaps restore the conditions of the New Deal, which granted produced a functional welfare state, but still decayed in less than half a century into Reaganism. It's the equivalent of saying "we must keep a rabid dog as a pet, we just have to carefully ensure it doesn't bite anyone." What socialists are saying is just buy a cat instead.
2
Thank you for stating so clearly what I believe. I fear our democracy is fading quickly. The haves and the have nots. When I was a probate paralegal, the Estate Tax was everything over $600,000. The public does not understand there is no "death tax." Very few estates are subject to this tax. Rumor among many is whatever is left in your bank account will be taxed. Wealthy people call it double taxation. This may be true but so what? In order for the government to run, it needs income. Our national debt is frightening.
3
When was this country ever not an oligarchy?
3
America as a whole not so much. Conservative elitists as long as they can keep their minority lemmings fooled would love nothing more. No doubt Trump is pushing the desires of corporate rule where the wealthiest set the standards and design the rules to serve their ends.
3
This essay is much better than its title would leave one to expect. The country is already arguably an oligarchy and is merely becoming increasingly more so.
5
America has been an oligarchy since its founding.
5
1688, 1776, 1789, 1848. 1917, 1949, 1989
Sometimes there is only one solution possible.
4
Are the voters too dumb to understand the Constitution?
Would they instead believe the spin put on it by the wealthy party?
3
OMG! The Oligarchs are coming! Hide the kids! If they don’t eat our children, surely the Plutocrats will!
Oligarchs and Plutocrats—like characters from a Star Wars sequel, right?
The idea of Democrats that our representative form of government could turn into an oligarchy, necessarily rests on one belief—that the electorate is so stupid, gullible and uninformed, it can be convinced to vote against its own interests. After all, the only real way oligarchs can rule is by getting their politicians elected.
Only the Left looks down on voters—because Democrats believe they are smarter than the average bear. They believe the electorate is weak-minded, (especially when one of their candidates loses)—after all, a Liberal could never be talked out of being a Liberal, right?
I will ask all of you brilliant Liberals this one simple question; could I shut you in a room for a month, feed you an endless stream of Conservative messaging, and expect you’d emerge a rabid Trump fan 30 days later? Of course not. You’re just too smart to fall for that, right? So why might you imagine other voters are any different? Why would you imagine the average voter’s mind is a ball of clay, easily moldable into the shape of the last message it encountered? And if money is wins—Trump spent much less.
The truth is, Liberals are losing the battle of ideas. Because they can’t compete intellectually, they turn to emotion—class warfare, jealousy, identity politics—and big scary words.
1
"Because they can’t compete intellectually, they turn to emotion—class warfare, jealousy, identity politics—and big scary words." This can be said with more validity about the Trumpists. Good Lord, who appeals more to emotion (hate, fear, resentment, etc.) than our fire-breathing president and his toadies?
2
@Jesse The Conservative, Dems are not "losing the battle of ideas." Reliable polls show most people want (and need) the ideas of the Democratic party. The right to walk the streets, go to church, enter a school campus-- undeterred by the threat of a madman with an arsenal? Check. The right of women to control their own reproduction? check. Equal access to medical care, a living wage, and a decent retirement? Checkmate. I could go on and on. But the GOP is winning. As others point out, this is due to the outsized power and influence of the Oligarchy and the Corporations, and yes...by the concentration of low-information voters in the South and key "swing" states.
3
Since the cancelling of Bretton Woods in 1971, the curves of productivity vs. wages have diverged where they were once tightly correlated.
True progressive taxation and a Maximum Wage, rather than a Minimum wage. Tax all income as ordinary. Expand the Social Security tax window. Repeal Citizen's United.
Of course none of this will happen as the rich have hijacked the government and installed a pliable moron to do their bidding.
10
We all continue to support the national delusion that USA is a democracy. The changes occured during the 1930s and the Great Depression......
During this time, every advanced industrial nation went thru a fast transition into socialism of various forms or another.
Germany developed into Nazi Germany. Russia become most dictatorial version of communism. Britain, France built their own versions of socialism.....and the USA implemented the New Deal....later to become the Military/Industrial/Complex.....the most successful implementation of a Socialist State the world has ever seen.
And it is Socialism, not Democracy, that has....in every case......evolved into Oligarchy.
This seems to occur after enough Socialist Bureaucrats mass enough unchallenged authority, that they can begin ruling the domain with impunity.
As in the waning days of the earlier Chinese Empire, the Palace Eunuchs make the decisions, not the Emporer, and the highly educated Mandarins give it approval.
2
That horse is already out of the barn. America's religion has become its demise. Can you spell MONEY?
5
If you have to ask the question, you are part of the problem
2
Alarms about this situation went up immediately!!!!
Republicans want an autocratic oligarchy.
I am surprised!!!!
But not surprised !!!!!!
Pelosi and Schumer and essentially all old guard Dems in Congress have folded on every occasion of treason committed and laws ignored.
The newly elected Congress of Dems. And our black caucus and Hispanic caucus are not strident enough or supportive enough of Rep. Waters calls to impeach and arrest trump.
They are shoving many useless words down the electorates gullet of hate and confusion.
We the people ....... what about us????
No infrastructure on bridges and roads and tunnels started.
No safety net of healthcare
No educational improvements in public education
No student loan forgiveness
No mental health and criminal checks on gun owners
No gun laws protecting the public from the NRA
No policy ...just threats and retribution and spiteful ness and hate operating as policy
Using the military like a private army for useless expensive non policy at our southern border.
Allowing capitalism to destroy the middle class
Union leaders compromised by politics and greed.
Immigrating families treated like a pestilence.
I live in a sanctuary state.
Yes we want the immigrants.
We have had families torn apart by ICE.
Thriving communities decimated here. We want our immigrants back with their citizenship holding families.
And the new influx will be cared for with Agape Love by church groups and community agencies and donations by NGOs
3
After reading the comments it’s obvious that communism is alive and well among Times readers.
Among other Times readers, a total failure to understand "communism" prevails.
4
Mayor Pete is too smart to give a straight answer to the capitalism question. The only reason to ask it, BTW, is to catch someone off guard to make a headline.
Anyone who watched Congress side with tax preparers against free IRS tax programs already knows the answer.
We have grown a totalitarian capitalism that directs Congress to ignore public opinion on tax policy, gun control, environmental protection, jobs, business and bank regulation, wages, unions, global warming, student loans, paid family leave, trans people in the military and national universal health care, among other interests.
The fault is money in politics. We need mandatory public campaign financing and a Congress willing to stop cashing checks to get there.
5
What would be helpful here is a detailed description as to how America has become more plutocratic (i.e. increase of income and wealth concentration) since the 1960s, the projected effects of the proposed laws and the likelihood of passage if proposed. Like with climate change we need actual policies with teeth not abstract discussions on these points.
2
It amazes me that Mr. Tomasky can write a whole column about oligarchy and never mention the word "power".
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu
5
I agree with the thrust of this article but I would not advocate wealth or inheritance taxes (I would close loopholes though) but rather raise the wages, health and retirement benefits of workers through laws. I understand this will raise labor costs but it would not hurt domestic competitiveness as all employers would face the same costs, and countries like Germany and Australia have proved that you can be have a robust growing economy and pay workers well.
2
I have seen a graph that showed the income gains of all economic classes the last 70 years, although I couldn't find it this morning. It showed that when a democrat was in the White House and democrats had at least one house in congress everyone did well. The middle class share of wealth increased and in real dollars the top earners did better.
When republicans had the government the chart showed the middle class lost ground but the rich did far far better than everyone else. Even though the real dollars weren't as good for the top since they did so much better than anyone else they like it better.
My reasoning says that it isn't really the value of the dollar it is the value of doing do much better that the rest of US.
5
Never forget to steal a phrase. A good one. History repeats.
The underclass of which I am now a member are angry.
2008 was theft by Oligarchs as is the Fake Tax Cut.
Social Security is all I have now.
45 is not fooling all of us.
Nor is the NYT.
Hard times creat hard people.
5
America is now kakistocracy.
5
Becoming an Oligarchy? We are one. In fact as we dump arsenic in our water, chemicals into our ground, CO2 and methane into our skies, and money into our 1 percent of already over-the-top rich, we are an Oligarchy of the stupid. These are Oligarchs who are sacrificing their grandchildren for their own lavish lifestyle and temporary financial dominance.
9
"Oligarchy is the rule of the few ... men of wealth, property, nobility ..."
no... they have distinct names:
oligarchy — rule by men of wealth
timocracy — rule by men of property
aristocracy — rule by men of nobility
1
America is an oligarchy.
There, I fixed your title.
6
DearMichael, please confirm your facts. One, inequality in the USA (ranked 39) is higher than in India (ranked 95). The Gini coefficient by country is listed here (from the CIA World Factbook):-
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html
Second, the USA became a true democracy when all its adult citizens got the right to vote, after the Civil Rights Act in 1965. In India, all adults could vote in 1947.
"... Is America Becoming an Oligarchy? …"
For Tomasky to even ask this question renders this article idiotic. I'm not going to read this, I don't have time for this. I'm trying to teach myself tensor calculus, something that is immensely more interesting and useful by comparison.
Becoming? Where have you been for the last 30 years?
3
BECOMING an oligarchy? Initially, only white male property owners could vote. Mr. Jefferson's supposed desires notwithstanding.
2
You wonder we might be an oligarchy? Really? I thought we had evolved well beyond it... aren't we a kleptocracy or perhaps even a kakistocracy by now? Times, c'mon, let's keep abreast of who we've become. No more pussyfooting please. Let's be honest and take lessons of courage from the likes of Jordan Peele to present the naked truth. It's ugly, but The Times can handle it, no?
3
What's scary...but all too common now, esp. on the American right...is how these people turning it into an oligarchy are also the ones shrieking jingoistic patriotism and accusing the left of hating America, being traitors, etc. Like how the Republican Party declared itself the party of Christian, moral, family values, and 'character counts!"...and then promptly not only elected the absolute antithesis of all of those things, but proceeded to submit their souls and integrity, along with the country's soul, to him. Remember, in religious terms, the devil comes disguised as piety.
5
yes it is.
3
It's entertaining to read articles on "inevitabilities" facing the "most" democratic nation on Earth. The most advanced, the most prosperous, the most this, the most that....And yet, here we are, one step forward, two steps back. Maybe it is for the best that all the wisdom of the longest-lived democracy reached its apex with an idiot in the White House. Aristotle you say, Aristophanes I retort!
What do you mean, "...becoming..."?
It is.
1
I have news for you Sir:
America has been an oligarchy since its foundation.
Wake up please!
3
Becoming? Michael, you are 20 years late!
5
Republicans have Oligarch envy.
already is an oligarchy. On its way to an economic dictatorship.
2
It's an epidemic of sociopathy.
2
Been oil-garki since noon, 21 Jan 1981.
"Growing"?
Michael, it's been full grown for over 20 years!
2
What do you mean "becoming"?
2
Buttigieg's answer is pretty obvious. It's not binary, i.e. you are either a Republican, low-tax, low-regulation Republican or you are a Socialist.
I've maintained all along that when the MSM started parroting Trump's propaganda about Social Democrats and their social Democratic socialism the correct reply is exactly what Mayor Pete said here:
I'm a democratic capitalist.
That stops immediately all the idiots in the MSM who make up their own definitions of socialism as it pleases their talking points and whatever Trump is rage tweeting about it at the moment.
>>> "I'm a democratic capitalist."
Democracy and capitalism are incompatible and mutually exclusive. When one class in society owns and controls the economy, democracy is impossible.
I just wondered whether anyone would be so bold as make a defense of oligarchies.
Well, at least one person has, albeit with regard to Russia at a certain time.
https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/anders-aslund-speaks-in-defense-of-oligarchy
The nation, Mr. Tomasky, is far stronger and far more "democratic" than your narrow viewpoint will allow.
What's receding in the rear view mirror is the Democrats grip on the means to brainwash as tomorrow's youth, just like today's and yesterday's, realize that the types of dreams that you are peddling are not gained by government imposition but by people living lives that accept equality of the soul.
Have you, sir, significantly lowered your carbon footprint or tithed an extra 10% to your state and federal governments?
No?
Well then, sir, stand down lest you be called out as one telling others to do that which you, yourself, will not do.
“Becoming”?
1
Whaddya mean? Becoming?
1
"Becoming"? Where have you been since 1980?
Is this a rhetorical question?
1
Is it becoming an oligarchy? How out-of-touch can the New York Times be. We are and have been an oligarchy for some time now!9
1
Where have you been for the last 75 years?
2
What do you mean, NYT, "becoming" and oligarchy? We were there long ago.
1
Sometimes I read a headline and I think, what is going on at the best newspaper in America?
Is the sky blue? Has the sky always been blue? I guess this is still a question.
I apologize for my lack of awareness.
The answer to your headline is no.
Let me take care of everything.
It always was. It is. It will continue. I am old (post 65) and I will go as we all do. All my life whenever I went overseas the people there said "... you can always tell an American. They're stupid..." So very true. The folks here have had the wool pulled over their eyes and they love their TVs and they have ALWAYS been stupid and living under a system that is full of kapitalist lies and they love it. We have been told that old white men run things or that our God can beat up yours and that the internet is wonderful (here: want another targeted ad?). Now it's corporations and "big data" and algorithms and cellphones. Thinking? What's that? This device in my hand does it and aritificial intelligence is what they tell me should be the next big thing. Yawn.
"Becoming"? Seriously?
2
I thought everyone knew America is an Oligarchy. It's obvious to me. Is the NY Times just figuring this out?
1
Becoming? I think you missed the memo.....
1
Unfortunately, America has been an oligarchy to one extent or another for a long time. In effect, that is, if not in law. When campaign fundraising is done for over a year and a half of every two year period between major elections, and has enormous weight in who wins elections, we're effectively an oligarchy. When our laws are written by lobbyists, and now rammed through to a vote in days or even hours after presenting bills, we're effectively an oligarchy. When the rich can evade prosecution for transgressions, or be sentenced to country club prisons if not house arrest if they do get prosecuted and convicted (and when money determines the skill of your legal defense as well as limits the average skills of the prosecutors), we're effectively in an oligarchy.
But I think oligarchy is eventually at least a key facet of any presumed form of government, if not the controlling facet, and that may be unavoidably human. Even under communism, socialism, or religion, what's the difference from oligarchy if some citizens don't have direct personal wealth but live like princes anyway? Being able to buy the trappings of wealth and having absolute access to those same trappings are effectively the same thing.
In America, then, the question is: does the oligarchical bent of our society yet fully subsume the promise of our Law? You tell me. When the wealthy are much, much more often than not treated much better than the average citizen solely because they are wealthy...?
2
I’D SAY IT IS BECOMING, OR ALREADY IS, A PLUTOCRACY.
3
Thge word "becomng," is wrong. The words should be "has become." Especially since the Vietnam years beginning in the late 1950's and in fact WWII when big industries had the say on military contracts, it has been an oligopoly.
Military contracts, insurance (home, car, medical) is well cemented by billion dollar corporations. The gasoline business is an oligarchy. Retail is an oligarchy. Und so weiter.
Anmericans need to get the sleepy sand out of their eyes and smell the coffee. THIS IS A CORPORATE STATE with the big oligarchies control the Congress as well as many states. Big Money rules. Banking, Auto, Oil, Insurance, and so on. Smaller corporations are merging to fewer bigger corporations and the U.S. government has taken a pass.
In Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's felt that if they backed a particular person, they could control him. They couldn't. Koch Companies, which is a right-wing mega corporation is the only one who has seen the light and pulled out of backing many, if not most far right Republicans. As another group, the Evangelicals, have taken control of the social side of law. No, it is not becoming an oligarcy. It has been for decades. Many have thought since WWI, others since the Civil War. Andrew Jackson warned this in 1832. We never listened.
3
This is old news. Here is just one article citing a Princeton study published in 2014:
https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4
1
It’s too late for this kind of talk. What we need is a king who is God’s shadow on earth and the time is opportune to declare the current president, with his gilded and regal aspirations, king. A hedge fund manager bought a $328 million condo in NYC and another is building a swimming pool in his $100 million apartment. So why not a king? De Tocqueville is long dead and the king is already ensconced on his throne. Napoleon did it, and so should everyone suffering from the Napoleon complex. It will all go down smoothly and no one would have to suffer sitting through the phony modesty of Julius Caesar, nor anyone would have to breath the bad air.
CASCA:
I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it. It was mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither, ’twas one of these coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once—but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again, then he put it by again—but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time. He put it the third time by. And still, as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar—for he swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.
are you kidding me? it already is.
1
One of my favorite novelists, Russell Banks, writes of American life and poverty from first hand experience . His book of essays:
“Dreaming up America” ( 2008), describes America’s govrernance as a “Fascist Plutocracy “
I’ve never forgotten that truth and have never doubted it.
2
Trump is unpresidential because he is illegitimate, unelected by a majority with untold support from a hostile foreign power. He is a sham and a con, always has been and the GOP is a false front representing the worst collection of offshore interests in American history, the very people who supply its addictions and feed its madness. Yes, it's an oligarchy and will continue to be unless there is a broad awakening.
Which brings us to the awful stew American kids are in today: gun addicts, profiteers and warped fantasists who are willfully blind to the clear path to rational gun control that has been demonstrated by every civilized nation on earth; a party whose brand is fraud and enforced ignorance backed by the very suppliers of gun addiction; a public education system that has been gutted by the GOP; fraudulent, scavenging health care; climate change denial in the face of death and destruction; a traitorous con named Trump and his pathetic followers; racist, misogynistic cave dwellers running the show everywhere you look; a marketplace that rains mental illness and addiction upon them. The kids can’t help but think their country has gone mad.
It is time to bring down the Republican Party. It would be a service to the nation. Rally behind those kids.
3
Becoming? An oligarchy? Seriously?
Have been since the RR and Oil robber barons ruled. Our candidates (and thus), our laws are "picked" by our oligarchs. Our big media are all owned and/or reliant (ad moola) on the oligarchs.
If we were determined to have economic democracy we would eliminate the oligarch $$$ from our election process, first.
That's not going to happen by 2020. So, on to the bugaboo, a socialist hiding under every bed, out to turn all into red zombie slaves. The Trump strategy is to hang up Dems with one foot on the dock and one in the canoe; Trying to weasel out of defending the socialism behind much of what, on the civilian side of the budget, the federal government does.
Dems need someone to make a vigorous defense of socialism, including making the point socialism is a spectrum and that Trump is confounding all with COMMUNISM, total economic central planning.
That defense has to stress, if you hate socialism THEN SS, Medicare, national education funds, must be eliminated. Because, in origin and in current form, they are SOCIALISM. ERGO EVILEVILEVIL...
See, if that simple message can get through, who really wants that elimination action, which is and has been the GOP's position since the New Deal. (which was, also, a grab bag of socialisms, largely)
2
Buttigieg and Pelosi have both tossed off the 'of course I'm a capitalist, we are a capitalist country' comments as self-evident. Designed to be forthright, these comments are calculated dismissals. Tomasky's Good Capitalism proof is a tired Founders fable. 'The happiness of the people' referred only to Jefferson's People allowed to vote: white, male, property owners, slave owners', i.e. the oligarchy. If there were direct democracy In The Workplace, where we spend our lives, that would be socialism, wouldn't it? The workers would run business with their votes. As an average citizen, I hardly know any avowed Capitalists, we're mostly voiceless wage-slave rabble. BTW, when Tomasky drags out the classic NYT sandbag modifier ' the socialist Mr Sanders', he forgot to cut and paste 'rumpled' and 'angry'. Two qualities the polished Harvard/Oxford Buttigieg will never display.
Oligarchy is the inevitable outcome of the current US “robber-baron-baroque” economy.
America’s minimally regulated “free”-market system does not promote the common good. It is based on the assumption that each individual is an economic competitor within a context of limited resources and that each individual is the best evaluator of what is “good” for her-/himself. “Free”-market competition—within a context of “equal” opportunity—then supposedly separates the “deserving winners” from the “undeserving losers”.
This system makes no distinction between basic human needs and other desires. Hence, this system—absent efficacious institutions that promote the common good and foster “the moral sentiments” (Adam Smith)—is no longer neutral with respect to the commonweal. It is inimical to the communitarian spirit.
Religious and educational institutions, along with other civic organizations, too often become creatures of the “free”-market ethos. As politicized players within the system, they can no longer credibly criticize the system’s excesses. When the counter-forces to greed are neutered, many highly materialistic and manipulative individuals shamelessly amass great economic-political power.
With the blunting of “the moral sentiments”, spiritual values become irrelevant. American capitalism increasingly becomes a breeding ground for amoral oligarchs who exhibit nothing but disdain for the rule of law, for institutional norms and for the “losers” among us.
2
Wealth of any kind can, and often does, lead to corruption. Why? Because they can! The King owns everything, including YOU!
It’s not wrong to acquire wealth. That’s a natural propensity in the human race. It can and often does provide insurance against bad times. But when is enough, enough?
I always like to go back to what I call “unearned wealth!” The Lottery comes to mind. I seriously doubt if anyone except the very wealthy haven’t dreamed of buying a lottery ticket and winning “the prize!” Now, especially with some of the “MEGA” wins, you can do anything you want to. You never have to work again. You’ll be happy for life! Right! WRONG! They’ve done surveys on the winners, and most of them end up broke after a few years. Why? Because unearned wealth does that to people. With real “earned” wealth comes responsibility. How you disperse this wealth is the real question. The check on any of this extreme wealth has to be society. When is too much wealth too much? When society allows it to go on “unrestricted.”
3
Its always been one. Nothing new here.
1
".,,,when you have capitalism without democracy, It turns into crony capitalism, and that turns into oligarchy.”
I think Mr. Buttigieg's interpretation is right about this - I also think that we are seeing the beginnings of this with trumps grub worm like way of handling his presidency. He wants to make as much money for himself and his family, at the teat of our nation. If this is not clear to anyone, then I am disillusioned about being an American.
4
Becoming? Where has this dude been? Not in America.
3
Yes. USA is a third world oligarchy.
3
It’s already an oligarchy.
But they made a big mistake.
The little people are mad and we all have guns.
2
You are a couple of years behind the curve, hon. This project has been on record for decades and was weaponized by the Citizens United decision that has allowed money people and companies to buy their party. Proof? Of the majority Republican Senators you can scarcely get 4 votes in favor of a Resolution against Trump’s overreach “National Emergency”. . . . A vote that would have validated their Congressional Power of the purse! Now what kind of dumbkopf votes against their own Constitutional power? The kind that is “bought.”
5
For black African Americans and brown Native Americans America is and always has been a corrupt crony captilalist corporate plutotocrat oligarchy.
No Americans have ever worked harder and longer for less return than enslaved and separate and unequal while black African in America.
No Americans have ever had more of their lives, lands and natural resources than free, colonized and conquered brown Native American aboriginal pioneers.
Neither Africans nor Natives were white European Judeo-Christisian "explorers" or "immigrants".
4
We are not becoming an oligarchy. We are one ....
2
"Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?" I hope that Mr. Tomasky and/or NYT meant that in sarcastic jest. By every measure of the definition, the USA is nothing if not a fascist oligarchy. Citizens United all but guarantees that fact, of course without stating its objective.
1
"Grotesque concentration of wealth."
Now where have I heard that phrase before?
Oh, yes, the Bernie Sanders campaign. It's amazing how much more amenable to a concept the NY Times becomes when that concept emerges from the lips of ANYONE but Bernie.
I respect Buttigieg, but the Times is a day late and a dollar short.
2
Since the days of Ronald Reagan's dogwhistling campaign and presidency, Republicans have managed to smear those who have been unable to secure sustainable employment as dissolute wastrels. For women, people of color, or non heterosexual persuasion, there was added reproach: America is a level playing field, what's your problem? Morning in America (for white Christian males).
Still, give them credit for adjusting, even when they are telling us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. They are laughably reduced to crying socialist. Wasn't that one of St. Ronald's greatest hits? Will our children and grandchildren will be under the boot of socialized medicine?
How's that medicine part working out for them now?
4
Yes. Yes it is.
1
Not Sure. Oligarchists and/or Plutocrats?
2
A significant inheritance tax on great wealth has several advantages. First it raises revenue. More importantly it prevents capital stagnating in the hands of lucky imbeciles.
2
Ever notice that some of the most brutal income inequality is in major American cities run by Democrats? (ie, New York and San Francisco)
Hypocrites.
1
Until we finally realize who the real bad guys are; big biz, billionaires, police, health care we will remain a backwards nation.
Thank goodness we have honest Donald Trump, a man of the people, to save us. MAGA, indeed!
1
I read the article, but am responding to the headline: yes.
Our citizens are information deprived and without historical memory or imagination.
Anti-intellectualism in this country has deep roots, going back to the delusional religious cults in early colonial days to the founding of further cults by illiterate frontier and forest dwellers.
Defense of slavery, Joseph Smith the polygamist with his "looking stones" and golden book "discovered" in a cave, to the Great Revival to the extermination of native peoples, to the Know-Nothing Party, to institutionalized lynchings, to the Haymarket Square massacre, to Prohibition, to the U.S. Cavalry trampling the homeless impoverished veterans in their protest encampment, to Jim Jones, to the police violence against Civil Rights marchers, to David Karesh, and the slaughter of his followers by Federal agents, to the "Teabag Party" of 2010, and the insane worship of guns, to the hypercritical Koch brothers financing creationist textbooks while living in the wicked luxury of NYC and holding a seat on the board of the Museum of Natural History, the center of enlightenment. All of a piece with keeping the masses controlled by dark ignorance and violence.
"... becoming ..." Seriously? The US has been an oligarchy for centuries but most recently aggressive since the Lewis Powell memo in the early 1970s that got the oligarchs to pool their money and invest in an active state of treason against the federal government ... think GOP ... think the Supreme Court and Citizens United case. Don't be naive. Look it up!
2
“Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?” asks the headline.
Becoming? Where have you been the past 30 years, asks this reader?
2
Is the sky blue? Will the sun rise tomorrow?
2
Yes, we are.
It's been an oligarchy for years. Actually it's reached the point of being a fascist dictatorship
5
Amreica is not becoming an Oligarchy ~ It is an Oligarchy!
1
the only quibble I have with this story's headline is the word "becoming"... more like "fait accompli".
Dumb question. We've been an oligarchy from the beginning.
Citizens unite to overturn “Citizens United!”
The US has of course always been an oligarchy. Jefferson wasn't pushing for an estate tax, he just wanted rich parents to be able to distribute their wealth among their children. He was of course incredibly wealthy himself, though half his children (the African American ones who resulted from his rape of his slave Sally Hemmings) got nothing from his estates. Adams was almost certainly significantly more "democratic" than Jefferson in an equality of everyone sort of way, not being a slave owner and all. None of the founders had any interest in the rights of the poor particularly.
The oligarchs have partnered with the theocrats for a winning combination.
Napoleon said it best: "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich".
After all, religion teaches you'll be happy and fulfilled when you're dead, ("heaven", "paradise").
The good in religion is outweighed by what's bad about it.
We're gonna need a revolution!
2
David Stockman said that most of AIG should have been allowed to go under (except for the portion of the company that sold annuities and other policies to Mom and Pop investors). Its failure to pay on credit default insurance sold to Goldman Sachs and other large scale mortgage bond speculators would have caused them to go under as well. Stockman claimed that letting the speculators go under would not have caused the second Great Depression but the Bush and Obama administrations did not want to take the chance.
It seems the U.S. was pretty much an oligarchy when it was born, but many of the founding oligarchs, such as Jefferson (man-o-man he must have been hugely conflicted inside) believed it would work best if more inclusive, more democratic. They did come up with a system that has werked fairly well, with vestiges of oligarchy continuing to exist. Capitalism, if well regulated can be both inclusive and profitable. If unregulated it will morph into oligarchy.
If American isn't an Oligarchy (which it probably is) it is certainly dominated by Oligopolistic industries or sectors. It's not just about how little competition there is in many industries, it's also about their absolute size. If there are hundreds of U.S. corporations with revenues in excess of $100 Billion per year, how hard is it for them to turn the levers of Washington to their favor, compared to average households in the U.S. with annual incomes of $60,000? How often are the interests of these largest companies aligned with those of our average citizens? Ask yourself !
1
I am confused. The wealthy in America -- the oligarchs -- are all Democrats. Buffet, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Oprah, Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Jamie Diamond. Who are the Oligarchs that are standing in the way of the Democrats vision for income equality? The Koch Bothers? Those 2 guys are controlling the entire American electorate?
Income and wealth inequality are an issue -- no question. But don't blame the Oligarchs. Even Buffet has said "raise my taxes". Trump hasn't -- but neither did Obama in his first term when Democrats were in the White House, and had majorities in the Senate and House.
That terrible socialist FDR saved American capitalism in the 1930s by reforming it with his New Deal. Time to do it again.
1
Becoming?!?!? It already is.
1
To all the readers that say that the Republican party "wants" an oligarchy , and there are many saying this. I have to tell you that is just a knee jerk, mean spirited, and unintelligent statement. Do you know any Republicans? Nobody who does not strongly benefit from an oligarchy wants an oligarchy. You can reasonably say Republican policy results in oligarchy. But to attach bad motives to half the nation is really silly and unhelpful to put it mildly.
Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?
You're kidding! Right?
2
Nothing has contributed more to the “oligarchy” we have become via the Kochs, Mercers, Singers, Adelsons, to name just a few, than the “Citizens United” decision. Thanks a lot Supremes!
1
The Left uses identity politics to separate the populace, it is not economic inequality for all it is the "people of color" against the whites. Yeh, absolutely disgusting and cancerous on our nation. All the so called "economic" justice warrior happen to be well educated and well off, including Sanders.
Well, we are well on our way to a banana republic. A theorcracy. A nationalistic theocracy. Or some such. Oligarchy? We've been headed there since Reagan.
1
Wait... you just figured this out? This is America. We get to vote for our corporate overlords.
1
Pete Buttigieg, who’s shown an impressive knack for putting matters well in these early days of the 2020 presidential race, nailed it recently when Chuck Todd of NBC asked him about capitalism. Of course I’m a capitalist, he said; America “is a capitalist society.”
http://www.jobz.pk/jobs_in_usa/
Becoming? How about became long ago!
Read the books of David Cay Johnston and Chris Hedges to ascertain the awful reality.
Dude, becoming an oligarchy? Where have you been for the last two hundred plus years?
1
According to the Times our great leader inherited $400 millions from his father but far more important all the contact,I am certain, all millionaires like him.Students at Harvard don't get a better education than they would get at top state universities,however they do get to mingle with the right people
Let’s not forget personal unaccountability for
enabled, harmful, voiced or
written words. And
ummenschlich-done-deeds.
Also absented needed-words,
however transmitted. And
absented menschlich-actions,
which can,and do, abort fetal democracy.
As well as its post-born kin.
Globally.
"And the center will not hold."
THEN...
Democracy, as processes and outcomes, beyond joined letters
can't be seeded.
Grown. Cared for as it needs to be.
By ALL of US. Each person, accountable as best as s/he can.
Given who each of US is. IS Not (yet)
May never BE.
Democracy does not flourish in toxic WE-THEY environments.
Personal unaccountability harvests
uncivility. Divisiveness.
A lack of necessary mutual trust.
Between kin, ken, and strangers.
Decreasing mutual respect constrains caringness; undergirding equitable wellbeing for all, as
exclusions increase.
By enabled harming words and deeds.
By enabled stigmatization.
By enabled marginalization.
By enabled discrimination.
By dehumanization of soldiers,
demised for democracy.
Safe havens challenged.
In streets that are for more
than walking,
In sites for praying,
wherein faux-religionists now
prey, in certitudenous words and actions.
Personally-Unaccountable. PS!
Sustaining a toxic, WE-THEY culture and world.
With impunity.
Cancerous clemency, complacency and complicity rape menschlichkeit’s norms, values, and ethics in a
democracy-challenged
market economy.
Fed by willful blindness, deafness, and ignorance.
Brilliant. Particularly the reference to the misappropriation of Adam Smith.If you want more on that and on how extreme inequality carries the seed of it own destruction, read Capital in Any Century, at www.whatifwedontdie.com.
But, how is the lowest decile doing?
In 2018, the economy set ten all-time records for total combined Black and Hispanic employment.
And, median wages increased faster than any time since 2007.
But, maybe that's not what you are really talking about. Maybe, your superficial concern for the poor is, well, superficial.
Maybe, you aren't really interested in having 3.7 million people escape food stamp welfare as they did in the last two years.
Maybe, you aren't really interested in increasing the wages of the poor, the employment of the poor, the employment of women.
In 2018, 5.2 million people quit their jobs and moved to new jobs. And, wouldn't we expect them to? The data said that job dissatisfaction had been increasing every year for a decade. Now, evidently, they got some relief.
So, what are you really saying? What do you really intend to do?
Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. There is a big difference from that to a socialist-think Scandinavian countries. He has been saying the same thing for over forty years. Stop disparaging him in ways that are beneath you. He and Warren are champions of this and have explained their reasoning behind their thinking. More Sanders/Warren and less Buttigieg would be appropriate.
This just in: Mainstream elite newspaper figures out what rest of country has known for the past quarter century.
1
We're already there.
Without reading the essay; No, it already is and it always was.... Now I'll read what the author has to say.
Echoing others: what do you mean "becoming?"
You’re at least 15 years too late asking this question.
1
We're already there.
And then there's Noam Chomsky who says, simply, you cannot have a democracy with capitalism--ipso facto. Chew on that.
America is both and oligarchy and a kleptocracy rolled in to one, fueled by power, special-interests, greed and now hate. The fact that the man who sits in the Oval Office tweeting inflammatory comments at all and any detractors (unchallenged by his party) is all you need to know. And, my god, it gets more frigtening with each new day.
2
Yes, we are moving away from democracy, under Trumpism.
Is Tomasky is aware of Leonard Cohen's "Democracy" song?
Cohen sang, " Democracy is coming to the USA". (1992)
Perhaps the NY Times can comment on the words of this song.
Maybe Trump is forcing the nation to rebel against his rule,
toward a new democracy, as prophesized by Leonard Cohen:
"Democracy is coming to the USA"?
--------------------------------------------
Simple Answer: Yes.
BECOMING and oligarchy? Sir, you jest.
I have never seen an NYTimes comment section that is of such of one mind: "America is already an oligarchy." I really hope Mr. Tomasky reads these comments.
1
Becoming an oligarchy? How about you been sleeping. Look at Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Media, & Wall Street, they run this country.
Democrats should build this essay into the core of their party platform and candidates should put it under their pillows. Get rid of the rancid identity politics, race hatred, and attacks on "white privilege." (Plenty of poor whites out there who don't have a chance.) Also back off the Trump derangement syndrome. Restore the middle class and economic opportunity.
You actually have to ask this question?
1
The U.S. is an oligarchy. Full stop. "Freedom for the pike is tyranny for the minnow." R.H. Tawney
Unless you insist that votes can be purchased the answer is clearly NO. Trump spent less than Hillary yet he won. The idea that income or wealth inequality when actually earned is a problem is foolish. Sort of how having more opportunity and income is a bad thing.
J.G. Ballard shows the social effects of extreme inequality and stratification in his 1975 metaphorical novel, HIGH RISE. Life turns ugly inside the forty story building, a lot like America today.
https://www.sfreporter.com/columns/leeonliterature/2019/04/01/a-preview-of-american-social-collapse/
The United States is already an oligarchy.
The United States we knew is dead.
If you believe in resurrection, let us pray.
If not, let us work our tails off.
This article is 30 or 40 years late. The current question is whether we're becoming a fascist authoritarian dictatorship?
1
A first step in this direction will be to bring to light all the crimes involved with the Trump estate and inheritances. We must show our children that the rule of law is still the practice of our democracy and this name in oligarchs is not above it.
1
We know where we are today, faced with relearning lessons of history and morals of fairy tales.
In a fabled way Democracy is to Capitalism what the Goose is to the Golden Egg. The vitality of the goose ensured the daily production of the valuable egg. Likewise the benefits that ensue from a healthy democracy ensure "freedoms" required for a sustainable capitalism. Conventions of trust, mutual interest, responsibility, "rules" all contribute to an environment of wealth creation. Without restraint, capitalism -unfettered, amoral, unmoored to the consequences of excess - eventually kills the goose. If Aesop doesn't instruct, try Hobbs.
The famed quote, "...life is poor, nasty, brutish and short", is actually the conclusion of a passage that warns what happens when, "notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have no place". Where "force and fraud are virtues" and all that remains of society are "continuing fear and danger".
And yet, the better angels of the human spirit have always, and must always try to prevail.
Money is like fertilizer; pile too much of it up in one place and it becomes toxic- even explosive. Distribute it properly through society and it stimulates healthy growth that works for everyone.
The huge body of research summarized in “The Spirit Level” shows that developed societies do better by every quality of life measure when they reduce inequality. It’s telling that more people have heard of “ Atlas Shrugged”, a particularly bad fantasy posing as revealed truth than have heard of a work of science that could and should change our understanding of the effects of concentrated wealth.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/society-unequal-the-spirit-level
2
A progressive wealth tax would be a very good thing.
Over time, it would profoundly change our society by eleminating the very rich.
This would be a change for the better...no rich people, like the Koches, and Trump to influence public policy.
Don't just "soak the rich"; eleminate them.
Becoming ? Better late than never. We’ve been on THAT slippery slope since Saint Reagan.
Sad.
3
1. "Democracy" was de Tocqueville's word for US government--meaning "people power"--a contrast to Aristocracy --"power of the best"--the feudal noble landlords.
2. American mythology says the US government is OF/BY/For the people--meaning "common people" to contrast with nobles (Lincoln).
3. Ancient Athens' "deme-ocracy" meant power/authority to the 139 demes (like precincts or counties). Official deme membership was required for Athenian citizenship; demes elected reps for the central assembly. Deme-power was federalism--a decentralized hieracrchy of polities--somewhat autonomous. Athens was a constitutional (politeia)--that is bureaucratic--federation//democracy
3. So too the US. It is a constitutional bureaucratic (legislative/executive/judicial) liberal (Bill of rights) federation (hierarchy of polities cities/towns/counties/states--gerrymandered electoral districts) procedural (due process at each level) majoritarian (when the question is called at each level--it is decided by the majority--or plurality or unanimity.
It is NOT government BY the common people. After all Lincoln's famous myth celebrating the Union's civil war victory-- Confeds did not vote for it. Nor is voting ruling. Nor do minorities choose the outcomes.
4. "Common people rule" may have applied to town meetings--NOT to state and federal government. At that level it's corporate moneylord rule--the feudal landlord/nobles updated--aka oligarchs. Hardly news. Just look at the emperor's clothes.
We have had 50 years of neoliberal economic policy that funneled the profits of our collective labor into the pockets of a few. “Oligarchy” stands on three overlapping questions: what is the purpose of society? What is the purpose of an economy? What does it mean to be human?
Is the purpose of society to serve the economy (neoliberalism) or is the purpose of the economy to serve society (democracy)? In answering that that society serves the economy, neoliberalis redefine human beings as slaves, as tiny cogs in capitalism’s vast, relentless mechanism.
Neoliberalism wraps itself in the American flag, posing as the purest expression of “freedom” - the “free” market. Capitalism is “God’s work.” Like God, it’s a mysterious force that must not be tampered with because if left alone will raise all boats. That’s the trickle-down story – we just need to have FAITH.
But that’s cold meritocratic propaganda designed to raise just one boat – the oligarch’s yacht. To them society is a Darwinian jungle in which humans must engage in the risk of the marketplace. Choice is the ability to act upon ones’ own calculations. Therefore, calculating to your advantage also means calculating to someone else’s disadvantage.
Until we decide to change our answers to the fundamental questions – and to back our answers with economic reform - we are destined to live under the yoke of oligarchical capitalism.
Capitalism has no conscience except profit – democracy must impose one on it.
1
Becoming? Where has this guy been for the last half century?
1
Nothing to see here folks...wouldn't you really rather go watch Game of Thrones? Yes, everything is alright, the Trump administration is doing everything it can for YOU the average American. Really, if you think about this too much more you'll miss Game of Thrones! Or some new Kardashian thing. Yes everything is just fine.....pay no attention.
Congress requires a backbone.
America could use a decent Attorney General once in a while,
rather than a Sessions, Whitaker, Barr.
1
Mayor Pete definitely knows how to handle the media. He talks a good talk about democratic capitalism. Sadly, his recent comments praising Israel and their strategy of containment against the Palestinians leads me to believe that he is not yet mature enough to understand the nuances of oligarchies.
He and others need to view the films Killing Gaza and The Occupation of the American Mind.
A fine and necessary article. A correction on just one matter. You write: “'Happiness'” to the founders meant economic well-being...." To 18th-century thinkers "happiness" was understood as the general interest, the common good--that which was in the interest of society as a whole, or for most of those in society. That is what also made it "democratical". In this age of individualist thought, what is the common good for all of us has been lost to the pursuit of individual interest
1
Present participle? How optimistic, but untrue: America was founded in absolute moral corruption and has always, without interruption, been corrupt.
There is no, "growing inequality"; only your desire to be another Jamie Dimond.
Nothing is wrong with America, this is who we are.
That is why there is no hint of unrest.
50% of Americans are functionally illiterate: What's wrong with an oligarchy? The masses don't know what they're doing and are dangerous when left to their own devices. People like being ruled and told what to do.
How many independent people do you know? I don't mean how many people do you know with a loud mouth. I mean how many people do you know who are catholically educated and think for themselves based on their own research? Answer: None, including your mom.
Most people are undeserving of freedom and don't make good servants. The good news is that climate change is real, political upheaval is coming, and unchecked pandemics will sort things out nicely by reducing homo sapiens to its much needed wisdom.
BECOMING an oligarchy?
3
Louis Brandeis put it this way: We can have democracy, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.
"Democratic capitalism" -- that's just another name for socialism -- but since the S word is toxic, calling it Democratic Capitalism is a nice twist. That's the sort of labeling that Republicans have done so well (thanks to that Frank Luntz guy) for many years and that Democrats need to achieve. Mayor Pete may have coined a new term that will win the 2020 election for the Democrats!
3
I hate to be the "you're only finding this out now" guy, but you're only finding this out now? When it comes to questions of wealth and power, the mainstream media is generally the last to see the light. Maybe you guys ought to examine why that is?
I think most everyday Americans - even those unaware of the term oligarchy or its meaning - have had a pretty good idea that the America that we've been sold all our lives no longer exists. The one where hard work all but ensured upward mobility; the one where one could still count on government to serve the public interest; the one where corporations and the rich didn't wholly rule the system and rigged it for their own benefit and no one else's.
I'm not completely sold on Buttigieg just yet, but it's heartening to learn that he gets this. While Trump's election largely points to a distressing moral and educational rot in our county, it's also the result - as Buttegieg has mentioned in the past - of many Americans giving the proverbial middle finger to a system that they know to be rigged for the benefit of the rich and of corporate interests. In a country where civic engagement is weak, voting for the guy who promises to burn down the corrupt house has some appeal.
2
Becoming an oligarchy? Become. -But not just an American oligarchy, an international one, where billionaire Americans hold hands with Russian crime lords, sing Kumbaya, blackmail non members, murder journalists, and destroy the world for fun and profit. This is what one world government looks like, an international crime family contemptuous of democracy and the rule of law.
1
I think a reasonably simple way to start the conversation is to state that the pay of American workers should at a minimum keep pace with their productivity. Which it hasn't, it's not even close, see
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
1
I was mostly surprised this was posed as a question...
1
Becoming an oligarchy?
1
Yes! Indeed! Unequivocally.
Big Pharma is pumping out tens of millions of opioid pills addicting millions of Americans, killing hundreds of thousands while our elected officials take their bribes to stay silent.
Banks foreclosed on five million Americans with no paperwork or worse fraudulent paperwork stealing their homes and life savings. Tens of thousands committed suicide not being able to bare the shame while our elected officials took their bribes to let them off with no jail time.
We have been at war for seventeen years straight because the Military industrial complex bribes our elected officials to stay bloodthirsty.
You ain't paying attention if you think we are a Democracy.
3
People on the left have been throwing around the "o" word since George W. Bush was president. I was first introduced to the word back in the days of the now-defunct Air America. Once again, it seem the "dirty hippies" of the left were correct.
No, it is not becoming, it already is
2
As to the "Death tax," the dead neither complain nor vote. They are perfect taxpayers in every way.
It appears that Mayor Buttigieg is aiming for a vice-presidential slot under Bernie Sanders, if he is the nominee.
The problem is that he's also gunning for VP under a possible President Biden. Make up your mind dude.
"Becoming?" When wasn't it?
2
Hmmmmm, “is becoming” vs. “has become”. That’s a tough one.
1
Such a great article! Thank you!
I am starting to love this Butt-edge-edge guy. He gets this so right. Most voters don't believe in unregulated and oppressive capitalism - the kind that made us suffer through centuries of slavery, and then later - two devastating economic crashes and gilded age periods in which millions fell into poverty. Most voters don't believe in undemocratic socialism either; the type where government nationalizes industries and allegedly distributes goods and services equally (this never actually happens in reality).
Democracy is the system that mitigates the darkest outcomes of both economic systems, and since we have a mixed system anyways, we need a huge dose of direct democracy (a lot less oligarchic republicanism) right now to turn this ship around.
Our undemocratic capitalism gave us Trump. Like banana republics rife with crony capitalism, we have a professional scam artist for POTUS. But that's just a symptom. The reason we vomited up a figure like Trump, is because millions are dealing with homelessness; most families have seen their income drop over the last generations; millions in poverty; ecocide and ecocide that threatens our survival to enrich the oligarchy; oligarchic pharmaceuticals and healthcare promoting an epidemic of addiction; for profit human slavery and brutally abusive pornography; perpetual for profit war; For profit everything essentially.
Lets take our country back from this corrupt oligarchy.
1
It’s a simple answer. YES!
1
Economic disparity is the feature not the bug
of GOP policies. adopting the tactics of the
Segregationists, they convinced poor whites
that blacks were the enemy.
3
America is already an oligarchy and on its way to becoming a kleptocracy.
1
Be careful with your founders.
Adams, and for goodness sake Jefferson, couldn't possibly have founded something they couldn't possibly have anticipated.
Their oligarchy and their demos--Hamilton's "great beast"--dated back to classical antiquity.
1
Here in Quebec we are fifty years into liberal democracy and a shared prosperity. We are trying to erase the stain of centuries of European neoliberalism and a belief that our welfare is dependant on top down governance.
My fear is that nationalism will destroy all the good that liberal democracy has brought to Quebec and its citizens. The tribalism which marks oligarchy and plutocracy sends us into the abyss of despair and the social divisions that result in belief that we do not control our future and the future of our children and grandchildren.
I am alarmed at the success of conservatism in convincing us that tribalism is of any importance in our developing a society where language, race and culture has any importance in our personal discovery of what makes our lives fulfilling.
I know those who look to Meade, Atkinson and now Piketty, Saez and Zucman's answers to our greatest political problems of sociological isolation and the continued wealth inequality are few and far between. I know that Michael Dell's keynote address at Davos lead many of our wealthiest and most powerful to reconsider neoliberalism as a sound economic foundation because Mr Dell despite his wealth and power is totally disconnected to today's reality.
After decades of belief in corporations power to create wealth an outlier like Quebec where workers not jobs are what we need and it is now only our citizens and their governments that can fix the problems that threaten our very existence.
"Becoming"? This country has, unfortunately, been an oligarchy since the 1980s. We have moved so far from the republic for which we once stood that we may never get back there again.
1
"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
Louis Brandeis - Supreme Court Justice
2
I am one who thinks that unregulated capitalism becomes fascism which becomes oligarchy which becomes kleptocracy.
I think we are there. The president, most of Congress, and a majority of the Supreme Court demonstrate that we have reached that point.
6
Labels, labels, labels…
No, Mr.Buttigieg is not a capitalist, unless he owns a private company, which he does not.
Capitalism, in order to exist, needs capitalists (owners of the means of production) as a class, but it also needs uncouth masses of people who work for a wage. Calling them “capitalists” is a cruel irony – they are the cogs that make the capitalist machine run but they are definitely not capitalists themselves.
However, it is Democracy versus the Autocracy we need to be discussing, not Capitalism versus the Socialism. Let’s not forget - fascism is also a form of Capitalism, and so is the modern statism of Russia, Singapore and China. There can also be socialist elements in all societies - elements of sharing the burden, helping the unfortunate, protecting the weak, and leveling the field. Look no further than Scandinavian *Capitalist* countries.
There are plenty of examples to draw from and things one can do – from workers’ participation in the ownership, management and profit sharing, to stronger democratic institutions, affordable education, healthcare as a right - not consumer good, government funded elections, etc...
And when Trump yells that America will never be “Socialist”, what he actually wants to tell people is to forget all the above mentioned societal goodies, and to adjust to the idea of living in a Hobbesian man-eat-man country, towards which America today is slipping.
And may the Wall protect us all…
1
The answer is extremely and obviously simple: YES. And getting worse
2
Many comments will make the conceptual and semantic point that America already is an oligarchy. Moderates will blanche at this as typical hyperbole, almost always coming from the left.
However, political scientists Gilens and Page have done research to test this hypothesis and have found surprising results, clearing the BBC's rather high bar for publishing counter-establishment results.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Mind you this was 2014.
One reason questioning the reality of this thesis as the author does in the title is plausible is our inability as a society to grasp the economic status of most Americans.
This is from 2016
"Median Wage in United States
The median wage in the United States during 2016 is estimated to be $30,533 per year.
This is based on 163,520,606 workers.
70,075,212 people earned under $25,000 – 42.85% of the total
44,496,340 people earned between $20,000 and 50,000 – 27.21% of the total
34,098,312 people earned between $50,000 and $100,000 – 20.85% of the total
11,528,382 people earned between $100,000 and $200,000 -7.05% of the total
3,322,360 people earned over $200,000 – 2.03% of the total"
So over 70 percent of Americans live on 50k or less every year.
Crucial though, for the question of oligarchy is whether those 70% have their interests actively represented in Congress.
Guess what Gilens and Page found? They don't.
Source: https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2016
5
All of this country’s founders would be ashamed, as we should be, what we’ve done to America. Thomas Paine, the author of COMMON SENSE warned the colonists of an aristocratic economy. But what did they know in the 18th century? What we should know now!
2
The growing unrestrained wealth accumulation of the very rich and global warming are the two greatest threats facing the nation.
4
Democratic capitalism means one person one vote rather than the current one dollar of wealth equals one vote!
2
Thanks for a good laugh, writing a column that is 45-years late. I am sill rolling on the floor.
2
This challenge has recurred in the United States since its founding. For a good example that comes close to our times, look at Ohio in the 1810s-1820s (and some other states) - a huge land (real estate) bubble, dodgy unregulated banks, the "free market" in action until it all fell apart and there were huge numbers of homeless that spawned a "welfare" state. Sound familiar? That's because it is. This is the story of America up to the 1929 crash, after which strong financial regulation was put in place (the SEC, for example) to end the bubble-crash-welfare cycle. Inevitably, people learn their lesson again and again one way or the other - via poverty, war, misery and then decide to reinvent the wheel and put in stronger checks against fraud and corruption. But today's GOP, and some Dems, seem content to turn back the clock to the 1800s and let the "free" markets decide things, once again. We all know how that turns out.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Land_Act_of_1820
I love how I have to look words now and then from reading the NYT. Today’s word: primogeniture.
Why should any of us around now care? It is the children yet born who will be asked to pay the piper and so long as we underfund and privatize education they won't even know they are the slave class.
Stay glued to the phones and don't look up, just what the men in charge want. They don't pay any taxes now and when their kids take over, what was once the working class will pay for everything including maintenance of their master's motorized toys, divorce settlements, private highways, newest fashion designs and even the food they eat.
History in the form of that which we think of as Rome is repeating itself and, among others, I have been reading and writing about the same thing since Mr Reagan's scripted rhetoric took over and began to replace reason.
We just don't get it. There are pigs among us who wear bespoke suits, hold the highest offices and walk on two legs; why don't we see them? Why don't our moral leaders in the various religious establishments call them out?
I can only trust women who have always borne the brunt of man's folly have had enough and will not back down in any way, shape or form, as only they appear to have the wit, courage and most important understanding to bring about the absolutely necessary change.
We have been at this for several hundred years and it is no longer a guessing game. The next step is a fully functional dictatorship and it will be armed.
Becoming? We've been living in an oligarchy for a while now.
2
We already live in an oligarchy. Donald Trump fully grasps this. Its why he has such open contempt for government, and for members of his cabinet. It's why he admires dictators while alienating the leaders of our allies.
He knows that whether he is a one or two term president, this is his opportunity to affect his family's ability to amass wealth on a global scale, and affect the outcome of their international business affairs for generations to come. He knows who is in charge, and it is not the heads of state of other countries. It is oligarchs. It is those who in this country control who is allowed to run for office through campaign donations, PACS, and loopholes only for them. It is those who profit in Russia. He negotiates like an old time gangster, because that is where the power is across the globe.
He knows who rules. And he wants to be part of that circle, and have his family be part of that circle.
And we seem to like it that way. You know, swamp draining and all that. Republicans know better than to stand up to it.
This is the first op ed in a mainstream paper that has stated what I have said for many years - and of course I have been laughed at. Oh really, you worry about everything, you overreact.....
As Elizabeth Warren said, "Markets without rules is theft."
Until the press and ALL (Pelosi) of our Democratic representatives run with this narrative regarding our broken Capitalist/Democratic system loudly and often, the right will continue to control the narrative. They will continue to manipulate those in the Fox bubble with lies and propaganda. The right will continue to convince a huge number of people to vote against their best interests by feeding the hate and ignorance that results in an emotional voting choice over one cast based on truth and the needs of the masses.
This is not a massive shift to the left. This is fight to protect and return us to, a working capitalistic based Democracy. VOTE
“Becoming” an oligarchy?
I thought this was settled.
At least a year ago. Or more. It’s over.
America IS an oligarchy.
1
For the sake of your kids (if any) and mine (4 boys and 1 girl # 6 grand kids and counting), I hope this country NEVER sees another Obama or Clinton or their kind. If I wanted socialism, I wouldn't have come here 4 decades ago...This is still the land of opportunity; my friends, who landed here just 4 short years ago with a cool total of about $10K in their virtual pockets, just dent their oldest to Princeton (on full scholarship), and are successfully developing a small (now medium-size) business in manufacturing (PVC pipes and the like). Those who are willing to work hard and be smart/prudent always succeed here.
@Yulia Berkovitz
Your friends have sent one child to Princeton on a full scholarship. They are developing a small manufacturing business. Princeton is an expensive private university, affordable to those can pay the tuition, or obtain a scholarship. Your friends could not afford the tuition; they are still in the process of developing a small business. There are millions of Americans who work hard and send their children to public colleges and universities where education is as good as that provided by Princeton. Check out the UC higher education system which has produced a few Nobel recipients. There are millions of Americans who have succeeded in starting small businesses. Americans did very well under Clinton and the jobs he created. Americans were proud of Obama with his education, graciousness and dignity in the face of the hate you refer to. You and your friends have a lot of opinions about a society they have recently joined. FYI: It is possible to work very hard and not "succeed" due to illness, job loss, etc. America is a tolerant country; try to absorb some of that quality.
Is it even a question?
We're not becoming, we already an Oligarchy
Definition of oligarchy...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy
1.government by the few
2.a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes
3.an organization under oligarchic control
Our system fits this definition like a glove, so why ask the question, shouldn't we work more on the issues that would help our country to reverse this Banana Republic status.
It will take decades of the right policies, dedicated work on a part of government and american people rightful demand, to create dutiful, justifiable progressive agenda that would finally reverse this dangerous path and move us all in the 21st Century.
Mayor Pete is truly impressive!
1
"Becoming"?
We've been there for decades.
If you’re a laissez-faire (no government) capitalist, the only thing better than no government oversight or taxes is to invoke God’s will that it be so. This is the fundamental basis of “Prosperity Gospel” religious zealots, who trace their roots to John Calvin and his 17th-century theological writings. Except, as usual—just like with cherry-picking Bible verses to support the most atrocious acts like slavery, misogyny, and bigotry—they get it entirely wrong. This brilliant essay by George Monbiot provides a useful primer on the dynamics of Prosperity Gospel fanatics:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/09/
This closing statement nails it: “The enrichment of the elite and impoverishment of the lower classes requires a justifying ideology if it is to be sustained. In the US this ideology has to be a religious one.”
If Jesus were alive today, he’d overturn the plutocrats’ “tables in the temple” just as sure as he did in his own time.
2
We've already become a Dumbigarchy - well, 40%. Perfect fodder for an autocrat as president and becoming an oligarchy. I blame the electorate.
1
"Is America becoming an oligarchy?" Well, du-uh . . . unfortunately that boat has already sailed, friend.
1
Becoming?!!!! We Are, Blanche, we are......
As he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well Doctor what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the Doctor, "If you can keep it.”
(From the notes of Dr. James McHenry, Maryland delegate to the Convention, first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11, 1906.)
"If you can keep it," indeed.
With each day that has passed since 20 January 2017, it has become increasingly apparent that we could not.
And so, the words spoken that Thursday afternoon in November of 1863 in a little town in Pennsylvania have come to pass: government of the people, by the people, for the people has indeed perished, having been replaced instead with government of, by and for corporations and the obscenely wealthy — thus taking us past the brink of becoming an oligarchy, if not a kleptocracy (with far more than the whiff of a theocracy).
The twentieth century has often been referred to as "The American Century." That sun has fully set, and we have now reached that point beyond which the answer to the question, "What do you think of the United States of America?" will be, "It was a nice idea."
And we've done this to ourselves.
Sic transit gloria mundi — or at least that of the United States.
1
Corporate capitalism runs our country and along with it now our political system. The rules are rigged in this bias emboldened by decisions made over the decades by the Supreme Court to favor corporations.
Business and capitalism has been great, they have created jobs. But now we are in the middle of a national crisis....jobs are going away. Automation and other business efficiencies enabled by technologies are decimating our labor force. This started with lower paying service and retail jobs but soon driving jobs (automated vehicles) will go away and there close to 8 million people reliant on driving jobs. Next will be legal and other white collar jobs (including jobs in healthcare).
Point being, this is happening now and we need to talk about it to find some solutions.
One of the Presidential candidates, Andrew Yang, has talked about our country needing to change to a new type of Capitalism that leans more toward humans and less toward Corporations and he calls it Human Capitalism where success includes well being of the citizens and less on the antiquated metrics like the Gross Domestic Product. Check out interview from CNN Town Hall interview of his platform, https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/marianne-williamson-town-hall/index.html
The stresses in our country I believe is more to do with people not being gainfully employed and the policy makers and voters need to wake up to what is really happening.
It has already become one.
“Becoming” an oligarchy? Have you not been paying attention, for many many generations now? Hello?
I think the more appropriate word to describe the situation is "plutocracy."
Definition: plutocracy | plo͞oˈtäkrəsē |
noun (plural plutocracies)
government by the wealthy.
• a country or society governed by the wealthy.
• an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth.
Unfortunately the American oligarchs purchased their own political party and are quickly using every trick and device to solidify their hold on political power. They have remodeled the Republican party into something more like the John Birch Society. They have perfected the use of wedge issues to trick large numbers of voters to vote against their own self-interest. Their political servants in the Republican party are perfecting techniques to corrupt the Constitution and the judiciary that interprets it by installing party operatives at the highest levels to do their bidding. American oligarchs are exceptionally greedy and are willing to go to great lengths to maintain the oligarchy. This will not end well.
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@Glenn W. I agree with every word you wrote except the last sentence. I remain optimistic that the American people can indeed take back our democracy if we were to elect honorable politicians and perhaps put a true populist in the White House. The Middle-Class can take back the country as soon as we have a would-be leader adept enough to get a majority of us on the same page.
Actually, Ms. Clinton did win the popular vote by more than 3 million. We can do it.
9
@Glenn W. Unfortunately the American oligarchs purchased their own political parties, BOTH the Democrats AND Republicans. There, fixed it for you!
6
@Glenn W.: This all goes back to the early 1950s. The law that inserted :under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance was their breakthrough.
10
Jeffrey Winters has a useful definition of oligarchy in his book of the same name, “Oligarchy”. It is that an oligarch is a person who has enough income to dedicate a portion of that income to the protection of their income and wealth.
In the past, oligarchs hired mercenaries for protection from other oligarchs. But that changed with the emergence of the modern state. The creators of modern states persuaded oligarchs to give up their private armies by ensuring that their property rights would be protected, by force if necessary, by the state. But that only changed the nature of the mercenaries employed by oligarchs, not their objective. The modern day mercenaries are the accountants, lawyers and lobbyists that constitute the present day wealth protection industry.
The spear-point for these new mercenaries is the Supreme Court’s ruling defining money as equivalent to speech. That ensured that oligarchs can buy politicians, who in turn sponsor and pass legislation written by the wealth industry mercenaries - the end-game being the protect of the oligarch’s incomes from taxation and his or her enterprises from free market competition.
Inheritance is a part, but only a small part of the causes for the concentrated wealth. The far greater causes are the body of rules protecting the legal fiction known as a “corporation”and the unfathomable complexity of the 74,608-page-long federal tax code in which the notion of the greater good died a death of a thousand cuts.
To my mind, the root of the problem with too much wealth in the hands of the few originates from three areas: unfair elections (the electoral college, the lack of universal voting laws and gerrymandering), money in political campaigns and finally, the power of the presidency (it needs to be more limited).
3
We stopped being capitalist when we bailed out the Goldman Sachs of the world after the last financial crises. They should have been allowed to fail due to poor risk management and the next generation of companies allowed to take their place. Instead, we socialized their losses and concentrated the gains.
287
That wouldn’t have helped the millions out of work as we entered a second Great Depression.
12
@John F
Not to mention the loss of all of our pensions. I’m living comfortably in my retirement now and I’m so grateful for Obama’s steady hand as he pulled us out of the ditch. I can’t imagine Trump being in office during that period. TARP would have been Trump Asset Recovery at the expense of the rest of us.
38
@Jason You should educate yourself, Goldman was forced to take government funds, they didn't ask for them and nor did they need them to stay solvent, but while we are at it take a look at this table: https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/index
It shows that the US Treasury MADE over $1.4bn profit on the "bailout" of Goldman Sachs. In fact the treasury netted profit from every one of the so-called evil big banks. Meanwhile the union bailouts for GM and Chrysler, which were essentially buy outs of the totally unsustainable union Healthcare and Pension contracts that the UAW forced the companies in to through political meddling, lost huge sums of money and it will never be repaid. Ever. Over $11bn for GM alone! So that give-away is ok? But all the bankers should have been fired? Get your facts straight if you are going to lip off in a public forum.
16
Oligarchy is HERE.
Maybe we should label it the "Conspiracy of Davos"; A group of 27 filthy rich individuals and their immediate families (aka as the "Donor Class") have control of the Republican Party.
The other factor is the "Mercantilist Capitalist" effect of China. People love to talk about how globalization has lifted millions (billions?) out of extreme poverty, without acknowledging that it is due to the impoverishment of the American (and British) Working class. Visit ANY retail sector, and see how much of the merchandize is "Made in China" (I was in a fancy toy store yesterday...). Or the story last week about the problems of Honduran Coffee farmers. They don't have the capital resources to reinvent themselves.
Current "Western" toxic politics is largely a product of a small number of Enormous$ Fortune$ and the media they control who block honest knowledge of the problem.
4
Thirty years ago a CEO made 30 times a line worker's wages. Today that multiple is 300 times or more, as senior management and Boards dictate astronomical salary, bonus, and equity increases - while keeping line worker wages as low as possible. And adding insult to injury, they not only keep wages oppressed, they deploy scheduling software that makes workers' days and hours so unpredictable, they can't work a second job or go to school or plan childcare beyond a few days in advance. And then they raid schools and circulate propaganda to convince low income people that home schooling and religious schooling without science is better for them. And then they refuse them healthcare - running them bankrupt when catastrophe, or even a basic surgery, upends their lives.
This isn't just the wealthy refusing to give a ladder up, or yanking up the ladder behind them - it's throwing boulders down on people trying to climb, so that they finally stop trying.
Capitalism needs smart, compassionate hands at the wheel - as Mayor Pete says - not monstrously greedy hands in the till.
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@common sense advocate
You are entirely correct. The greed is so excessive that CEOs expect these obscene levels of compensation far beyond what they ever can spend in their lifetimes.
51
@common sense advocate
"The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all."
- G.K. Chesterton
41
Absolutely right, keep them poor and cheap. We are heading towards a medieval society.
7
Citizens United. Money has always bought power, but it was a less direct connection. Citizens United removed the middleman.
Note, the one thing that the Republican party managed with both houses and White House was a tax give away to the rich. If that doesn't shout oligarchy don't know what does.
491
@Vicki Ralls: "Citizens United removed the middleman. Note, the one thing that the Republican party managed with both houses and White House was a tax give away to the rich."
Do you think there are no rich Democrats out there? Have you heard them complain about the tax cuts?
8
@Vicki Ralls While Citizens United further enabled the growth of corporate donations, do NOT think for a minute that this could not have been overturned, or clarified, by the Dems when they controlled Congress. All of Congress have become elitists, thinking they can do what they like with impunity. And please do NOT pretend it was Citizens United that influenced Congress and legislation over the last 30 years.
5
@hm1342
yes, i have.
18
Obviously the US is. Looking at the dismal economic mobility scores makes that transparently clear.
2
We always were an oligarchy and are pretty much back to that point. The brief period of egalitarianism existed only with Roosevelt's "New Deal". Anyone care to remember the literal blood spilled in the birth of America's labor movement, the "Gilded Age", the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Harrimans, the Astors, and hundreds of others across the country. The steel industry, railroads, oil and coal - all made the billionaires of their day. The tech billionaires of the gilded age built their summer palaces in Hamptons and Newport, Rhode Island. The New Deal, followed by WW2 and the GI Bill put a real dent in that world and has been enemy number 1 for the 1% ever since. In 1960 under Dwight Eisenhower the highest tax bracket was 90% and the middle-class had single income families that could afford homes, vacations and cars. That's a fond memory isn't it. In the scheme of things that age of middle class prosperity was a mere blink of the eye.
609
@AnObserver. I hope but doubt that Democrats can restore sound American government without another 1929-caliber Great Depression during a Republican presidency. The Top 1 Percent had to bide their time during the Roosevelt presidency and well into the 1960s, but the super-rich gradually reasserted themselves as the Roosevelt-Era Democrats gradually died off.
Along the way, Democrats prepared the stage for arch-conservatives to regain power through well-intenned compromises such as the Kennedy Era tax reductions on the superrich, which boosted the economy in the short-term while giving the oligarchs extra money for lobbying and supporting rightwing Republicans. Also, passing badly needed Civil Rights legislation that, predictably, set the stage for Nixon's Southern strategy. Sometimes it hurts to do the right thing, despite the consequences.
Timing is everything in politics. The Second Gilded Age will eventually come crashing down, and whichever party is in power when that happens will cease to exist within four years. I just hope the Democratic Party and the country both survive.
18
@AnObserver. 1000x yes! I have been saying this for years. In my family, barely 2 generations got to experience the security of well-paying unionized jobs. My grandfathers enjoyed decent pensions and SS benefits that sustained them in retirement. My grandmothers were not so fortunate and both died in relative poverty. Same thing with my husbands parents. His father lives in a big family home he inherited with his second wife and a substantial pension. My husband and his siblings help support their mother, whose SS barely covers rent and food, let alone medical expenses.
This middle class utopia everyone keeps waxing nostalgically for never existed for many. especially us African Americans and women. I've never been on a job where there weren't several older women Beyond retirement age still forced to work in order to support themselves and pay for health insurance.
33
@AnObserver: Yes, and a lot of the great success of the New-Deal-based middle class was based on the unique events of WWII, and on the burgeoning of an unsustainable oil-based industry. (And in this country, on the one-time only infusion of wealth from stolen land and stolen labor.) How we will move into the future of global equality and sustainable economies remains to be seen. Even aside from global warming, we can't keep depleting the forests and oceans forever. And there is no "aside from global warming".
6
When three American men--Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates--are as wealthy as the bottom half of the country, the answer is self-evident. Income inequality is a worldwide problem and the greatest domestic threat to economic and social stability here. With Donald Trump as president the process toward an authoritarian Russian-style kleptocracy of oligarchs has accelerated to the point where our very democracy is in imminent danger. The Republican tax cuts for the wealthy that began under Ronald Reagan and have continued under George W. Bush and now Trump must be reversed to begin to address income inequality. We have as John Edwards said almost 20 years ago, two Americas--one rich, one poor. And it has only gotten worse. We have too many loopholes for the wealthy like capital gains and estate taxes and too lax enforcement of antitrust laws. We have regressed to the late 19th century of the Robber Barons and desperately need a Teddy Roosevelt to redress the immense imbalance of wealth that threatens our democratic institutions and our very democracy. It's time to rein in the "malefactors of great wealth" and not let them buy our politicians through dark money donations and distract us with wedge issues like abortion and immigration while they make our economic well-being even worse.
653
@Paul Wortman well I like Pete Buttigieg but Id also consider voting for you.
22
@Paul Wortman
You nailed it on all counts very succinctly, Mr. Wortman!!
Capital begets capital and breeds corruption in order to maintain the status quo. The corruption takes many forms: monopolies, political donations, corporations writing laws for congress, gerrymandering, alumni donations, etc... America is corrupt to it’s core.
58
@Paul Wortman: "Income inequality is a worldwide problem and the greatest domestic threat to economic and social stability here."
Do you have some "income equality" plan in mind? How would that work?
7
Well, breaking up 18th century estates might break up an effectual ruling clique for good.
But nowadays we have people who tho born rich have only joined the super-rich ruling class during their lives, owing to the new habits of hyper-capitalism, which speed up the concentration of wealth. The richer you are, the richer you can become really fast -- & endlessly.
And they use this wealth to further speed up the concentration of wealth overall via lobbying & helping to vote in conservatives.
In my opinion, increasing the death tax would not be nearly enough.
Our economy seems to have become a kind of poker game of Wall Street super rich corporate owners who relate to on the ground economic activity as tho they're playing Monopoly among themselves -- with us & our piddling activities as the pieces.
As long as we think of the economy as a game whose sole goal is to maximize the book-value of corporate shares -- CEOs tell us it's their sacred "fiduciary duty" -- , we can never have general prosperity.
This enriches the richest the most & impoverishes everyone else in the process.
Because all the "goods & services": jobs & pay (except top execs), products, stability, choice, customer service, tax contribution to local economies, obeying laws & regs etc etc -- all MUST be avoided to cut costs & increase 'growth'.
And the richest owners benefit the most. And they use their wealth to continue & intensify the process.
Death tax can't solve this.
Is America Becoming an Oligarchy? Ask anyone in the 99% if they think our federal government represents us. The obvious answer is no. Pick any issue: supply side taxation, global climate change, gun control, reproductive rights, the list goes on and on. Most of the population is being ignored so that income inequality can grow. Just keep enough citizens uneducated and entertained and the oligarchs can get away with anything.
746
@Ken
"Most of the population is being ignored..."
Maybe, maybe a few got attention. In 2018, ten all-time records were set for combined Black and Hispanic employment driving their unemployment rates down to the lowest levels ever recorded and driving their degree of equality to the highest level ever recorded.
Also, 3.1 million full-time jobs were created, an 100% improvement over 2016.
This combination drove real disposable personal income up by $597 billion, up from $244 billion in 2016.
(These are full-time job stats, not the combined part-time/full-time stats reported every month.)
1
@John Huppenthal
Employment is just continuing the trends started in 2011.
The big difference is that under Obama, the deficit was coming down.
With the 2017 tax cut, the deficit will go from $600 Billion to over $1 Trillion by 2020.
The projected ten year increase in the debt is $12 Trillion which is $80,000 per tax payer.
It is projected we will be paying more for interest on the debt than we pay for defense.
All to be paid for by our children and grandchildren.
And this is after 8 years of Republicans relentlessly railing against the debt under Obama.
Every Republican senator voted for the tax cut. Not one Democratic senator voted for the tax cut.
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@Ken
One of the most powerful pillars of this plight is the prevalence of truly uninformed voters. Civics classes, and all that implies, are rare rather than required and we've all seen the examples of citizenship tests that we know are beyond too many of the natural-born rather than naturalized.
21
"He believed, as the founders did generally, that excess inherited wealth was fundamentally incompatible with democracy."
And what do we see in the Senate and House of Representatives and, alas in the presidency today: a large concentration of fairly rich people, many of whom have no idea how most of us live from day to day. We have people who no longer understand that the forcible impoverishment of many so that a few can have enormous wealth is counterproductive in ensuring a democratic society. We have economic elites blaming 99% of us for not being born rich, or hustling enough to be rich, or worse.
We have people entrusted with running our country who do not see it as their duty to ensure our welfare, our well being as it were. They appear to view us as open wallets to raid at will. Speaking strictly for myself here, I don't object to paying taxes. I object to having my tax dollars paying the salaries of elected and appointed officials who seek to destroy the government that pays them. I object to subsidizing the richest on a permanent basis when I know of others who need far more assistance than the richest will ever need.
Trump did not start this. Reagan did. Clinton continued it with his welfare reforms which are hurting people. The discussion we've never had in America is about racism and how it has affected our social safety net. That's the discussion we need to have and soon.
1019
@hen3ry
I'm not so sure they don't understand (that the impoverishment of many is counterproductive for democracy). Their priorities are different. Their goals are summed up as greed and many of them find democracy a hindrance.
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@hen3ry
There is a big difference between Reagan and Clinton.
Reagan cut taxes for the wealthy, increased the deficit and tripled the debt.
It is the reason they put the debt clock in Manhattan.
Clinton put back taxes on the wealthy and balanced the budget after 4 years, zero deficit.
And while Reagan got 16 million jobs, Clinton got 23 million jobs, almost 50% more than Reagan.
Reagan also set the stage for Republicans to continue pushing Reaganomics.
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@hen3ry
Before Reagan (and Thatcher in Britain) the annual percentage increase in income for the wealthy and the workers was virtually the same. A graph in NYT some time ago showed that the increases for the wealthy continued at the same percentage rate after Reagan but increases for workers dropped to zero. The graph took inflation into account.
60
The America that gave my dad the opportunity to buy a home and raise five kids is the America I long for. We didn't have luxury goods, but we all had healthcare and enough food to eat. We went to good schools and had decent transportation. We took two weeks off every summer to camp, and had a week to celebrate Christmas with my dad. I want an America where families can live a decent life unburdened by enormous student loan debt and high housing costs. I want an American where medical bills are paid for by all of us so that when one of us needs help, he or she can get it. I want an American where hard work and business acumen results in a good life, but not the life of a billionaire. I want an America where people take pride in their accomplishments, where families have time to be together, and where the resources of this great, vast country are used in a way that spreads around the benefits. I want an America where it doesn't matter if you have a disability, it doesn't matter what the color of your skin is, and it doesn't matter what your God dictates...we lift each other up, we raise our kids to be good people and citizens, and we live out our lives in peace. Is that too much to ask?
1521
@Kathy That America gave your dad, but not your mom, the opportunity to support a family of seven. Your appeal sounds kind of MAGA. Oh yeah, and back then, it DID matter what the color of your skin was, just like today. Perhaps you didn't notice because yours (like mine) is white.
69
@mdieri
An unfair comment and frankly is the type of sentiment that keeps people down and not moving forward.
Kathy’s hopes and desires for our FUTURE represent what kind, hard working, fair minded and color blind people aspire to — and you should too.
310
@Kathy
"Is that too much to ask?"
By my estimate, it has almost certainly now become too much to ask -- unless a great deal changes, and pretty quickly, about how, for whom, the country is run.
114
Democracy = one person one vote
Capitalism = one dollar one vote
Democracy cannot be effective if the gov't is starved of the revenue needed to provide for the common good and general welfare and enforce its regulations.
Today's conservatives are in the mold of those from the earlly 20th century. The same ones who opposed the Roosevelt and everthing that came afterwards.
The progressive agenda, like the measles vaccine has become a victim of its own success. People have been lulled into a false sense of security and don't understand that the Republicans under Donald Trump are planning to pull the rug out from under them.
5
Whether in the Robber Baron Age or today it is the 'capitalists" who don't really believe in capitalistism. Over and over they endeavor to do away with competition and then redefine what a capitalist society means. It is why the Roosevelts and Wilson used government power to lean against the capitalists. Markets aren't created by God but by man for the benefit of man. When power accrues so that the rich can skew the market it is time for democratic power to weigh in.
4
In free-market capitalism, capital generates income for the owners of the capital which in turn is used to create additional capital. This is very good. Sometimes, it can be actually too good. As capital continues to accumulate, its owners find it more and more difficult to deploy it efficiently. The business sector generally must interact with the household sector by selling goods and services or lending to them.
The capitalists, or if you prefer, job creators use their increasing wealth and income to reinvest, thus increasing the productive capacity of the business they own. They also lend their accumulated wealth to other business as well as other entities after they have exhausted opportunities within business they own. As they seek to deploy ever more capital, excess factories, housing and shopping centers are built and more and more dubious loans are made. This is overinvestment.
It is not just a coincidence that tax cuts for the rich have preceded both the 1929 and 2007 depressions. The Revenue acts of 1926 and 1928 worked exactly as the Republican Congresses that pushed them through promised. The dramatic reductions in taxes on the upper income brackets and estates of the wealthy did indeed result in increases in savings and investment. However, overinvestment caused the depression that made the rich, and most everyone else, ultimately much poorer. ..
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1543642
2
I grew up in the USSR...Need I say more? Most, if not all, Soviets, once they moved here, are Republicans. We ve experienced in practice what the Democrat Party wants in theory: supremacy of the State over every aspect of our lives. I am pro-guns, pro-private medical industry/insurance, pro-capitalism. What Tomasky is wishing for is hell, pure and simple. It sounds nice in theory but it deteriorates into oppression quickly. What's worse, socialism breeds inaction, lack of individual striving, lack of enthusiasm, even lack of patriotism, really. The liberal Left does not know what it is asking for, much like the the SRs and the KDs of the fateful Russian Duma cir. 1916... Those who do not study history are bound to repeat.
3
Yulia Berkovitz needs to read Lance Bronfman's comment (above). Steeped in her own sad experience of the Soviet Union, she overstates the case against a capitalistic democracy whose free enterprise is regulated by reasonable controls that can only be supplied by government.
In the US, as in other Western democracies, "socialism" means a robust social safety net, to counteract the inevitable concentration of more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands, until the whole scheme crashes in a terminal depression.
Under the Czars, Russia's wealth was concentrated in a small aristocratic elite and a relatively small business class, along with a large bureaucracy. The vast majority of people were poor and miserable. The stresses of the First World War brought about the breakdown of the Czarist regime, and a revolution in which a new cadre of bureaucracy eventually established a much more efficient control over a vast, chaotic empire. This was at the cost of free enterprise, and a great many other freedoms, but at least most of the people were fed.
It did ultimately produce the effects Berkovitz lists, but to equate government-funded universal health care and day-care, an estate tax, a living wage, and other social reforms with totalitarian oppression is sheer ideological blindness.
Berkovitz knows whereof she speaks when she writes about her experience under Soviet rule, but she bends way too far in the other direction when she warns against the US becoming the USSR.
2
President Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism while fending off the capitalist who were trapped in their failed paradigm. FDR Socialistic ideas to give hope to the masses and fend off the nationalistic hoard, which saw nativism as the answer.
A true reply to those who try to make Socialism a smear, as the Republicans are now doing, is to ask if they want to do away with every socialistic idea that created our once great middle class:regulating commerce and creating monetary policies; regulations to keep our food chain;water and air clean and safe;and privatize all public schools, to name but a few.
We can't have a civil and equitable country without socialism. These protections have been eroding through a series of Republican presidents, beginning with Reagan. It will be complete now that Trump and his minions have gained control of the country. It's doubtful that we get any relief ever,given the saturation of neanderthals on the federal courts orchestrated by McConnell and Trump!.
5
@TMS On the contrary, socialism is the most uncivil and inequitable society ever. Cases in point: Cuba. Venezuella, the USSR and its sattelites cir. 1989, etc, etc. Must we (the human race) step on the same rake over and over?!
Becoming?! e have been since Reagan! The disparities are just finally big enough. People are just now starting to speak up and notice. I have faith that the Millennials and Gen Z'ers will save us in this next election and bring us back to a Democratic Republic. Vote y'all, it's all we have.
9
*Becoming* an oligarchy? Sorry - it already is.
6
@Roy Wilsker
I'd rather proudly be an oligarchy, then Socialist.
Sadly, we've nearly exhausted the democratic approach. Now only Populist voices are an anchor to democratic expression.
When I visited Warshngton, it was still widely known as Washington -- albeit clinging. I then thought the Jefferson Memorial ostentation only second to the Zeus like Lincoln Memorial. Both better suited for the mythologies of America today.
@Jabin
Jeffersonian democracy is alive and well in towns and cities throughout the country. Town Hall meetings were still active in New England when I lived there. We still have the right to vote. Lincoln waged a civil war to abolish slavery; the North won. That is why Lincoln and Jefferson are democratic icons. Populism has not gained the audience here, as it has in Hungary et al. Trump lost the popular vote. The gerrymandered Electoral College does not represent the majority vote. There are many voices raised against Trump's populist rants and his greedy family. The U.S. is a mix of capitalism and social programs, e.g. Social Security and Medicare.
Democracy and Capitalism, taken together, seem to naturally lead to oligarchy, unless they are checked by organized labor. This can be shown by the history of the distribution of wealth in the united States. Wealth distribution was most uneven around 1900, when nearly all of the wealth belong to around 5% of the population. Wealth distribution then became progressively more even until the 1950s and has been gradually moving back toward the 1900 status quo ever since. The 1950s were the halcyon years for organized labor in the United States and, during that decade, wealth distribution was more even in the United States than anywhere else in the world. However, that even distribution was fueled by two evils. First, the United States had virtually no economic competition in the 1950s because its major trading partners had lost most of their means of production during the Second World War. This meant that the U.S. had to make virtually everything for itself. The second evil was the rampant racism and sexism of the era which meant that for many purposes, the work force consisted only of white males. The smallness of the workforce empowered the labor movement because there were simply not enough available white male workers to allow employers to break strikes. Today, with foreign competition and a large diversified workforce, organized labor is dying. If we really do not want to be an oligarchy, what we need are not new taxes but a return to strong organized labor.
2
Endorsing programs proposed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Michael Tomasky might want to mention that both politicians' income and wealth exceeds that of the Average Americans.
Neither politician would limit government officials' incomes, wealth and power to that of the Average Americans. Neither Warren and Sanders, nor other Democratic politicians, will achieve an equal distribution of income and wealth in four year, nor ensure completely equal political power for each person in four years, let alone our lifetimes.
Tomasky deserves credit for writing about inequality of wealth, income and political power, but his proposals fall quite short of solving this crisis or achieving social justice.
4
We have lost, through a digressive process of forgetfulness and neglect, the noble sentiments and high ideals pursued by our founders. There are many reasons. One is that we have forgotten that we are a nation born in revolution, intent from earliest times to throw off oppressive forces. Another derives from a perversion of the ideals of the founders; you can find almost anything you want in their writings and then proclaim, "Here, this is it. This is what they intended."
The overarching reason we have castaway our heritage is that the teaching of our history has been ravaged by emphasis on our failures, not the grand success of the experiment in democracy. Is our Constitution a wonder because it helped to force us to move toward equality for all citizens or is it ignoble because it originally excused and codified the evils of slavery? If we look at only one side of the rich picture, we see white men intensely focused on oppressive action. If we broaden our view, we see a nation committed from the start to a new level of human freedom, a nation where the state is the subject of the citizens, where citizens are decidedly not subjects of the state (a totally new idea in human history at the time of our founding). In other words, we own it, it does not own us.
In the darkest prospective, we have lost our democracy to control by the few, the wealthy. Money rules. We can only regain it fully if we act now when there is still opportunity. In 10 or 20 yrs., it might be too late.
“Is America Becoming an Oligarchy?” That question should have been asked decades ago. What we really need to address is this— while we were distracted and being lazy, The United States of America became an Oligarchy. Are we going to do anything about it?
9
Never in the history of the US have the poor been better off. Never has the middle class had more buying power. Which ultimately is what matters. What can you afford to buy? Is it more than before? Unquestionably yes. That others can buy more than you doesn’t affect you other than make you jealous. Wealth is not a finite pie regardless of what some people say. That guy’s big house doesn’t take wealth from anyone.
3
@Shamrock
Most Americans with mortgages are three payments away from bankruptcy. Economic literacy is clearly not your strong suit. While the average U.S. savings account contains $16,420, the median savings account balance across American households is $4,830. And when you have a median that's considerably lower than the average, it means that most people have less than the average.
4
@Shamrock:
Have you actually read ANYTHING about income levels of the lower & middle classes over the last 50 years?
They had More buying power in the 60’s than now.
2
@FiveNoteChord 1) let's not insult people, which it seems has become the trademark of a certain wing of the Demorat Prty; 2) Three payments away is normal, it is a choice that people made by getting a mortgage they can afford; 3) objectively, this is the best time to live in the US for an average Jane/Joe. It is simply a fact. The Left it seems cannot win this argument, hence the slender.
There are are two sides to this coin. A stratified society is not good as this article points out. We have millions of poor citizens already yet the same voices who decry growing wealth disparities seem to encourage a every increasing number of unskilled uneducated poor immigrants. With a strong economy low unemployment we should focus on getting urban and rural poor into the work force and let wages raise naturally though high demand. Attacking the issue at the top only while encouraging more poor to enter in uncontrolled numbers is disingenuous.
2
@Lane. Right on the money. How a rational non-schitzophrenic person can decry the plight of the American poor AND advocate more legal and illegal immigration is beyond my comprehension.
1
For some years I've considered the USA a Capitalist Oligarchy not a democracy. The last element of our politics that is democratic is our VOT; unfortunately the gerrymandering of our House districts has largely been destroying our voting system.
5
To even out economic inequality will take more than a tax increase for the wealthy, it must be combined with a substantial tax cut for the middle class.
And, due to the vast differences in the cost of living (moslty housing) the "middle class" income range needs to vary from region to region.
Example: a person making $120K in San Francisco is just getting by (barely), whereas $120K in Kermit, Texas would be a-OK.
The trouble with the tax the rich politicians is that they won't use it to solve economic inequality, they'll just use it to stoke their socialist ideals.
1
Good to see that you've awakened Rip Van Winkle!
America has been moving down the path to oligarchy since the Reagan tax cuts back in the early 80s.
Thank you for writing something that many of us already know!
6
It would be more accurate to ask if has never been an oligarchy, since George and the redcoats got the boot. It was founded upon the express exclusion of its indigenous people and slaves brought in chains. Not to mention also excluding the female population, albeit that was a common enough position at the time, so gets framed against that back drop.
Ever since, despite best efforts to incrementally expand suffrage, the power has always, always, vested in the few.
2
Yes, capitalists are too often their worst enemy and are sowing the seeds for what would be a disastrous move to socialism.
2
Endorsing programs proposed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Michael Tomasky might want to mention that the politicians' income and wealth exceeds that of the Average Americans.
Neither politician would limit government officials' income, wealth and power to that of the Average Americans. Neither Warren and Sanders, nor other Democratic politicians, will achieve an equal distribution of income and wealth in four year, nor ensure completely equal political power for each person in four years, let alone our lifetimes.
Tomasky deserves credit for writing about inequality of wealth, income and political power, but his proposals fall quite short of solving this crisis or achieving social justice.
@Judy M. FYI, and average Fed's income is a cool $69K/anum plus untold benefits. A small fortune, right?
This growing volcano is going to blow and spew out in all directions regardless of who gets hurt. With political term limits, more women in office, and redefining the all mighty dollar maybe our grandchildren will live to see another day. Also don’t know if mayor Pete will get the nod but would pay money just to see him debate Trump
5
Ever since Washington became president, we’ve been a oligarchy . Slave owning Washington was also the richest man in the colonies .
It was unseemly for the framers to pick a king ( Washington ) , they just defeated the English monarchy .
Rich rule is what we got !
4
To answer your question - you bet! America is becoming "A tale of Two Cities".
1
"Becoming?"
And maybe "kleptocracy" hits the mark more closely.
4
A more apt title for this piece:
American IS an Oligarchy.
It already accomplished that distinction. Many reputed economists think that USA already showing many signs of a typical 3rd world developing country which is one of the consequences of oligarchy. Here is one example by Peter Temin (Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT) in his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-is-regressing-into-a-developing-nation-for-most-people
3
The simple answer is no, America is not becoming an oligarchy, America has become an oligarchy. The question now is how to wrest it back.
4
Both parties have spent the last, nearly 40 years, bidding to get corporate money. To satisfy their benefactors issues most often a priority for citizens were not even discussed. The story of who we are has been handed to us. In 2016 many many previously non voters came out and voted. They voted for a charlatan, a con and thug, so they wont benefit, but they got up and voted to punish the system that has punished them. If they get that much at least it something.
1
Oligarchy status was attained years ago.
1
Aren't we past the threat? Didn't we pass it a long time ago? isn't it too late to be Paul Revere?
No, America already is an oligarchy.
2
The oligarchy has already arrived, covered in a very thin veil of red, white and blue patriotism, shouting ,hard work’ at the struggling middle class, and flogging any questioners with a whip called ,socialism’.
America is no different today than ancient Rome, medieval France or today’s Russia - except for more tech and better teeth for the few.
6
Thank you, Mr. Tomasky. By failing to acknowledge the virtues of a market economy shaped by humanitarian priciples, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be branded as socialists by Republicans.
In fact, many affluent Democrats who are self-employed professionals more accurately fit the free-market ideals of the founding fathers than corporate-world Republicans.
Regulating fair trade has always been a legitimate role of government. This includes setting regulations that protect the common good from pollution, dangerous products and unfair business practices.
But in our current state of affairs, if the government finds an industry is violating the public good, instead of assigning teams of engineers to solve the problem, the industry sends teams of lawyers to Washington to change the regulation.
That short-sighted approach has greatly contributed to our growing inequality -- and does not bode well for our future well-being or stability as a nation.
3
“Is becoming”? More like “is” and has been for two decades now.
6
The sad part is that so many of the Trump supporters are getting fleeced by the Republican Party they vote for.
They just don't know it.
I wouldn't mind if they got fleeced but I am getting fleeced, too.
7
Among industrial nations, the United States is by far the most inequal with much greater shares of national wealth and income going to the richest 1 percent than any other country.
The staggering levels of extreme poverty among our citizens should open the eyes of everyone.
9
@Bob
I find that way to many people are either litteraly asleep or expressing hollow and valueless thoughts...
You are already living in "sleepy Hollow".
Be afraid or wake-up and act accordingly...
The individual as constituted by Liberal Democracy was one of inherent worth and therefore worthy of the same considerations as anyone else. That being the case, a government constituted to provide for the common good as opposed to one that benefitted a few (Monarchy) was considered an ideal. This is in direct contradiction to the individual as constituted by the Capitalist enterprise, at least as it is defined in the United States, that only values those few who amass wealth. For at least the past 40 years the project of US Capitalism has been to replace or conflate this extremist definition of the individual onto the Democratic experiment to the detriment of all.
2
America is already an oligarchy. The rich set policy through lobbying, and super PACs thanks to Citizens United. The IRS isn't even powerful enough to collect the taxes the rich owe. Even the justice system doesn't treat rich and poor in the same way. https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits
8
I believe you should pay for what you get. Inheritance is immoral and inefficient.
1
Trump calls the Democrats socialists and haters of capitalism. Very effective strategy. The average American loves capitalism, because one day he believes he can also be rich and wealthy and he does not want his illusionary gains taxed at a higher rate. Never mind that for most of us that has as much chance of happening as winning the lottery.
The income inequality gap keeps growing and growing. It's like playing in Vegas and never realizing the house odds will always get you.
What a nation of suckers we are.
10
We're already there. In case you haven't noticed, we're being run by a gangster, as are many countries. He breaks the law on an almost daily basis with impunity. No one does anything except grouse a bit, and his supporters don't care about the rule of law as long as his law breaking favors them. About the only recousre we have left is the vote, and the gangsters are busy tearing that right away too. Money is the true religion of the USA, and the measure of success and respectability. References to the Founding Fathers is nothing but rose-colored memories of a glorious past. Until this POTUS and the republican party have their power attenuated in a meaningful way we are in no way a functioning democracy.
12
The Nancy DiTomaso comment is very well put. It's a good summary of the past 50 years. This article's title should have been: "America's 50-year Journey to Complete Oligarchy."
5
America has been an oligarchy from the beginning.
1
No kidding. I've been preaching this for years.
1
Want economic change? Starve the consumerist beast. Stop using credit cards and demand a wage that meets your needs.
Employers fire union activists
Oligarchy? Does anyone even have to ask?
Oligarchy thrives when the masses are ignorant. Solution: tax the rich.
“The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.” Thomas Jefferson
4
Well done. I doubt that we'll ever be able to turn this around. They have all the power, and then there is the Electoral College with all the ignorant voters playing right into the oligarchs hands. Will there ever be a Democratic President again, and will Democrats ever be able to take the Senate again? I can't see how that could happen with the changes wrought by the cruel and greedy GOP while the Democrats sat on their hands (Oh, my!) and didn't vote. We're all culpable here.
4
@M.S. Shackley for the sake of your kids (if any) and mine (4 boys and 1 girl # 6 grandkids and counting), I hope this country NEVER sees another Obama or Clinton or their kind. If I wanted socialism, I wouldn't have come here 4 decades ago...
America has been an oligarchy for decades. How do you know? Look at the biographies of prominent people in law, business, media, government. Again and again you see the same families, over and over. If you just looked at the backgrounds of America's elite, you'd think the country is about 1/10 its actual size.
1
One of the truly horrific results of this process is watching the wealthy denigrate the government which provides the infrastructure that allows there accumulation of wealth then removing that wealth from the system thus putting the burden back on the only taxpayers left, the ones who were left on the wrong side of the economic divide.
6
Why yes, yes we have been an oligarchy since Reagan.
1
What’s the most outrageous privilege that the ultra-wealthy have?
They don’t have to pay capital-gains taxes. They sell their stocks that lose value and pass on to their heirs their stocks that gain value. At death, the tax-basis value of those stocks is reset to market value with no tax on the gain.
When we were a nation of farmers, we had pitchforks with which to poke politicians in their rears when they enabled such outrages. Where are our pitchforks when we need them most?
4
I think the gist of Mayor Pete's cited response is that all who participate in the US economy are capitalists. There's no debate that we are founded on capitalist principles. But it's time we moved past that term if we want to describe our economy more meaningfully. "Capitalism" and "socialism" are also such loaded terms that they're rendered meaningless by misuse.
"Mixed economy" is a start, tho I wouldn't say "democratic" economy is bad either. It's essential, as history proves, that governments regulate markets toward the freedom of access that's needed to allow all to participate in our economy in a somewhat democratic way. "Free markets" that are free because they are unregulated, however, have no sanctity. They are only an arcane ideological leftover from the gilded age that Republicans seemingly want to hang onto. "Mixed" is a good referential term because it forces us to deal with an appropriate level of government fetters in the economy.
1
The US is well past oligarchy and is well on its way to feudal. The 2020 election is the tipping point.
5
The truth is, most Americans are doomed to a life of wage slavery. The capitalists control the system--including the phoney "democratic" elections. History shows that no oligarchy ever gave up power to democracy peacefully or without violence. . . . The re-birth of Socialism in America is both the greatest fear of the rich and the only hope for the working people. If the capitalists were intelligent, they would support the reformist Sanders now, and head off the real Marxist revolutionaries who will rise up after him.
4
Becoming? It's already here. And we are one national emergency from becoming a dictatorship.
6
This is all semantics. Define your terms. What do you mean by "democracy"? We've never been a democracy, not for one day in our history. We were founded by elites for the benefit and protection of elites (especially their private property), with the rest of us playing the role of willing vassals. We've played it well and occasionally been rewarded. That makes us a plutocracy. But we're also an oligarchy, because a relative few (those pesky elites) have been calling the shots for a long time now. If the point of this op-ed is to say that inequality and corruption have gotten even worse than they were, well, hey, stop the presses.
4
Becoming? No, it has become. Accomplished fact, fait accompli.
4
Democratic socialists and democratic capitalists are largely the same thing. We're all heading in the same direction but taking slightly different routes. Scandinavian countries in particular have proven that capitalism and socialism can not only co-exist but be mutually beneficial.
The Soviet Union was an example of socialism taken to an extreme. And the United States is a glaring example of capitalism taken to a similar extreme. Both systems have led to right wing oligarchies that take us back to a time when humanity was ruled by kings and queens.
History shows that republicans have become the party of oligarchs. They were once very coy about who they were until Ronald Reagan declared government to be "the "problem". And democrats meanwhile have been the party of stagnation and status quo for the most part. Ironically, as the oligarchs have become more extreme, democrats (until recently) have become ever more "centrist" and thus ineffective and irrelevant.
Perhaps we all need to consider voting for those candidates who spew the least ideological or political rhetoric and instead portray honesty and a willingness to at least explore new avenues without committing prematurely for the sake of getting votes.
2
@LH
In this discussion of relatively long term trends, its simply amazing to me how quickly people have forgotten that Obama was President. It’s just 3 years ago. He was President for 8. Nobody mentions his name at all. If he is not remembered now, he never will be.
In a sense, capitalism, socialism, and even communism are all government neutral. They represent different concepts of how to best organize the means of production. The government represents different concepts of how to organize the power of decision making in the creation of rules to be followed. The strength of democracy in this regard should be that those who are chosen to lead have the well being of all the people at heart. Lose this, and you have lost the major kingpin of democracy. Mayor Pete seems to be highlighting a development in the US that perhaps defines the bottom line of what ails our country. And know that we have been here before. Revisit the US in the late 1800’s, and then take a look at Theodore Roosevelt.
1
A significant portion of great wealth accumulated by the talented, well-born, lucky and extremely hard-working must be given back to the society that makes such accumulation possible: The schools that educate the workers, the roads that transport the goods and workers, the consumers that also need the schools and roads and other infrastructure that makes civilization function. I always get the sense that the super-rich feel like they are victimized or robbed by the taxman. When elites don't pay their fair share, we get revolution: Not a pleasant solution to gross inequality.
8
Money , whether in excess or suffering from a lack of , means one major thing. It provides choice. Don't have much..limited choices. In this country ,since Reagan, it also defines us. First question asked when you meet someone is what do you do ? in other words the ability to make money answers the question am I worth knowing.
5
I believe that, with Trump as the "permission slip," we are already just inches away from becoming a full-blown oligarchy on its way to a fascist dictatorship. "The People" put up with his nauseating reign because he shows "success" on the surface: the continuing success of national employment (reminder: started and greater under President Obama, who deserves equal or more credit); the tax slash, only token for all but the wealthiest; and the base-appealing court packing and anti-abortion full-on press.
All it will take to close the deal for a Trump "emperorship" and secure the oligarchy is either a Republican victory in 2020 or some kind of declaration of martial law before that, possibly based on some trumped-up (pun intended) self-made crisis such as immigration, a once value-neutral term (like "family values") that has become politicized and poisoned.
I believe that the only way to curb the oligarchy is with concentrated activism, early and often. We must focus on quickly figuring out who will lead the Democratic charge in 2020 and create a broad and deep foundation on which to build and run the campaign. And don't wait for 2020; there are hundreds of local elections this year which can turn the tide back toward democracy. There are no "off year" elections, just elections for different offices. Together we can create a rising tide that lifts all boats.
10
Conservatives have won the message game, and have been winning it since the late seventies. They did this by means of one simple idea: great personal wealth is the expression of LIBERTY. If a few people are vastly more wealthy than everyone else, that is a function of FREEDOM. Anyone who wants to spread wealth more equally wants to take AWAY your freedom. The corollary, that ANY corporate regulation is theft of PERSONAL LIBERTY, has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by what is now a majority of Americans.
With this simple message, presented in myriad forms and iterations, repeated thousands of times a day, the Conservative Revolution of the last 40 years has raised the income of a very few to unimaginable sums, while the rest struggle. It must be conceded that it has also lifted much of the world out of abject poverty.
The Mayor with the unspellable, unpronounceable name is on the right track. He will never defeat Trump, who is the biggest superstar of our era and will be re-elected in a landslide. But his voice is the beginning of a turn back in the other direction. It is the trumpet at dawn.
5
@Mr. Little
I live in a state who are obviously too ignorant or lazy to understand that they always vote against their own ;ives...Trump in a landslide?? I would not be too sure of that one
1
This is also why the founding fathers would be for some form of universal healthcare. Healthy people fit within that definition of happiness. It's also good for business and progress.
5
A tax on inherited wealth? Good idea. Higher tax rates on the incomes of the richest? Yes. But there is another essential reform. Bring back trust-busting, a long-lost American tradition.
Private capital accumulation, over time, concentrates wealth at the top and market share among fewer corporations. This is why deregulated 'free market capitalism' becomes less competitive, and this trend, in turn, promotes higher prices and larger profits on the sale of consumer goods.
Take pharmaceutical drugs, for example. WHO reports pharmaceutical expenditures per capita in 2016: US was $1,208, Denmark, $335, UK, $476, etc. Why do Americans pay so much more than the citizens of other developed capitalist countries? Big pharma, with monopolies over most drugs and the suppression of generic alternatives.
Democratic capitalism requires bold, determined, government trust busting to prevent the 'free market' trend to oligopoly among businesses and the very rich.
7
@Wally
Agree completely. We have been in a poorly controlled positive feedback loop where money begets more power and power begets more money. The rubber hits the road with corporate lobbying money, political contributions, and capture of regulatory agencies by revolving door hiring practices. Now the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve are under threat as well. The public doesn't see how our near-monopolies quietly have their hand in our pockets every time we pay for insurance, medical care, drugs, homes, taxes, utilities, cable TV, internet, and much else. Give us another Ida Tarbell or Teddy Roosevelt.
1
Looking at the influence that large corporations and the uber-rich individuals have over our legislature through political contributions and lobbying, we are there now! The questions is
how much more influence will we as voters allow? I fear is what I as a middle income retiree, who both served in the military and served my community see changing our democracy.
1
Dear Michael Tomasky,
I liked what you had to say today but I'm also concerned that you view of capitalism is not updated with respect to CHINA and global economies. What about subsidized businesses in CHINA? These will win over capitalism and are winning. the democracy must go further and likely incorporate this same subsidy of American business to equalize the playing field. Tariffs are absolutely NOT the solution.
3
During Jefferson's time, there were a few men that owned most everything. In the early 1900s' - same thing.
The real difference is that we now live in a global economy. Many of the companies people think of as 'American' are majority owned outside the US. The very, very rich are not just in the US.
Taking a step back, we've not had open markets for decades. The Federal government has been enacting laws and policies that try to pick winners and losers, subsidizing select groups and limiting others. This was and is done in order to socially re-engineer society. It hasn't been working for some time.
We pay more for education, like healthcare, than any other country. But, most of that can be tied to the government's interference. Yes, we need 'regulations' and those must be clear and concise to avoid unintended consequences. Neither are happening. Just look at the length of legislative bills and how they have grown since the early nineties! Does anyone in Congress ever even read their own legislation? Nope. Do our elected representatives even write them? Nope, staffers do.
Then, once signed into law, they pass them off to multiple agencies for implementation. But they are so poorly written, that the agencies can really do what they want.
We are not becoming an Oligarchy, we are becoming a Socialist country, where the government controls the means of production via poorly written and poorly implemented legislation.
5
@Ma Our laws are written by lobbyists, regulation is really none existent when it comes to financing and paying for health care, the economy is capitalism gone amok. We can't be sure if the laws, the social contracts between government and voters will be the same next year. Trump came in and repealed and repealed without regard of consequences what Obama and others had worked for. To think about all the hick and hack concerning health care. Something as vital as national health care gets kicked around like a soccer ball. Education is all about privatizing and profits. SS is another issue people can't depend on, as little as it is. Medicare rules keep changing what is covered today may not be covered a few months from now.
We need a dependable and stable government. Trump is demolishing the government, all he has to do is snap his fingers and shut down the government for weeks like some little dictator in a failed little country. And the Republicans support him, no matter what.
The nation is at his disposal, he can do as he pleases, Trump's self-service filling station.
I'm coming to the conclusion that Americans do not really want equality. We want to always be "better" or have more that someone else.
The only difference is that, unlike old days in Europe, when you were born into certain classes, and by law sometimes you couldn't advance, we don't want any laws that say overtly that Americans cannot change their socio/ecomomic standing.
Instead, laws are passed stealthily to advantage those already well-off---all they while throwing crumbs to everyone else.
It's time to give up the pretense that we value equality.
14
And let's not forget the current, shining example of Russia.
In order for an Oligarchy to function the wealthy few must stay in high favor with the Leader, King or Boss who doesn't by definition care about anything except retaining power.
Does this remind you of someone we all know?
19
As the ‘stakes’ get higher, as the times become more fraught with uncertainty, as resources become increasingly scarce, power becomes more concentrated.
Economic power equals money and since the 1970’s the Republican Party has turned the election cycle into a winner-take-all affair. The corruption of the Republican Party is now well-nigh universal. They ‘own’ the local districts through gerrymandering, they ‘own’ the Polls through voter suppression, and through Mitch McConnell, they have ‘packed’ the Courts. The Republicans ‘own’ the Courts, especially the Supreme.
The packing of the Courts, in particular, is most insidious. While the Senate or House may flip every so often, challenges of any sort are ultimately handled through the Courts. McConnell of course, knows this.
Expect power and privilege to become more concentrated. America is just like Rome. Probably much worse.
Certainly dire times are ahead. Very dire. And I haven’t even touched on Climate, which thankfully, spares no man or Party.
20
Lets blame it all on the 14th amendment. The law surrounding the 14th amendment needs to be rethought. Perhaps "person" has to be redefined to exclude corporations. By extending full constitutional privileges to corporations, elevating the corporation to the status of a person, there has been an extraordinary level of protection afforded to corporation for all manner of economic actions and outcomes. And more recently those protections extend to religious and speech rights.
Capitalism 101 states that any business will internalize profits and externalize cost and losses. The government has a role in regulating both. To create efficient and fair tax policy for the former and to maintain strong legal means of redress for the latter. Our current government regime is too interested in allowing corporations to externalize cost and losses and force society to bear the load. Some balance is needed. But that balance is difficult to get in the present interpretation of the 14th amendment.
13
@Matthew Kostura Or we the people could insist in reversing through court challenges the truly insane construct of a society that insists that money is speech and that corporations are imbued with human rights.
7
@Songsfrown Court challenges won’t work to reverse that, since it was a Supreme Court ruling that established the money = speech and corporations = people principals that now guide our country. Maybe a Constitutional Convention, but nothing will ever pass given the strength of the Republican Party. It is just too late to solve this problem; the time to fix it was the 2000 election and that’s long gone.
1
@Matthew Kostura Where in the 14th amendment does it define person to INCLUDE corporations? NOWHERE. It was the Supreme Court that extended SOME coverage of rights to corporations; first in 1886 by granting some protections and more recently in 2014 in the Hobby Lobby case vis a vis religious freedoms. However it was the Citizens United case in 2010 that virtually granted corporations the same status of people in electioneering and $$ expenditures which it likened to as the means of disseminating free speech. Ironically it was Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 which indirectly led to this.
I do agree that a legal definition of person should exclude corporations, while still granting some protections (in court) to them.
1
Many smart thinkers of today see the fact that America is now an oligarchy. Check out Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff to name a few.
There is plenty of data from sociologists and political scientists that our government is so corrupted with money from the wealthy that most of the significant policies instituted affecting our economics favor the wealthy. Just think quickly of the multi-trillion dollar Trump tax break for the rich. It was not only huge for the rich, small for the rest of us and also last "forever" for the rich but cuts off after a few years for the rest of us.
We are currently no doubt the most corrupt, non-democratic, oligarchic country in the history of mankind.
18
@Frank
Ok smart thinkers...
So what's the plan to "make America great again" for your people, and a beacon light again for your used to be world allies ??
2
America already is an oligarchy and it has been for a long time. During normal times, the ruling class rules. It is only during an extreme time such as the Great Depression when the voters will lay aside their class and racial biases to vote on the basis of economic policies.
The economy was in such desperate straits during the 1930's that FDR was elected and he had such a large majority in the Congress (House and Senate were both about 60-70% Democratic) that he could enact whatever he wanted in the areas of economics and finance. Situations like that don't arise very often.
There is much economic stress now but many of the voters are easily distracted and divided by racial/cultural/religious antagonism. They go and vote for the very people who are working to make their economic lives difficult. Plus, we don't have a politician on the Democratic side that is any ways close to the caliber of FDR.
8
@Aubrey
We don't have a world wide Depression with breadlines. FDR was opposed by the GOP; he managed to get Social Security as a global war was in the offing. Truman was not able to get Medicare legislated; he did fight for it. It was LBJ who finally got it passed. Now we have Trump wanting to mess with both. The fight against tax paid for "entitlements" never ends. Thank goodness SS is in a lockbox; Bush tried to use it to fund his Iraq War. That war was funded off the books; it left a trillion dollar debt.
I am so glad Mayor Pete is running because he articulates core issues that actually mean something to people and he is connecting to people in a big way.
We still, at least on paper, have the greatest democracy and the greatest economy in the world. We have the raw material--our Constitution--to make both work for ALL the people.
Right now only about 60% of Americans vote in national elections and only 40% in midterms.
Democrats, tell us your goal is 100% and that is is you--NOT the GOP-- that is fighting to return ownership of the U.S.A. to the People--by protecting this sacred right from foreign interference, hacked voting machines, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the false equivalence of corporations = people.
Second, Democrats should fight for ALL Americans to participate in our great capitalist system instead of letting workers "settle" for a raise in the minimum wage.
Only 54% of Americans invest in the market, down 11% since the Great Recession. Most Americans are grossly uneducated about the very economic system on which they depend, and many don't even understand the basics, like the time value of money.
This is plain wrong on both counts. Why aren't our children learning basic civics and basic economics (including how to save money for investment) in grade school?
These are core American values that apply to everyone, everywhere, of every political affiliation. Every Democrat should be able to support these two hugely empowering ideas.
9
@Jan Agree 100%. Except for your expectation that kids in grade school (I'm a teacher) should be taught basic economics and civics. In my district, they are, to the extent that time allows. Please don't add MORE content to a school day that is already filled with too much content. And as a parent myself, I taught my kids the basics of economics. Parents need to be the role models here.
4
I have some differences with Tomasky documented in my 2018 Palgrave book, "The Oligarch: rewriting Machiavelli's 'The Prince' for our Time". The history of America's founding by large land owners is crucial to their bias toward oligarchy. Democracy is undermined in several parts of the Constitution. The New Deal seems now a brief respite.
5
Several comments preceding this one mentioned Jimmy Carter's longstanding pronouncement that this is an oligarchy.
I wonder, are op-eds of this type a device used by the ruling class, to make us worry that, "someday," we'll be co-opted? At least it's been years since I heard anyone use the phrase, "It's a free country." That used to be the retort whenever I wanted to do something others didn't agree with. These days, they just put you in prison and skip the pious lies.
3
In the past 40 years, which corresponds directly with the widening of the wealth gap, there has been a pervasive change of narrative. At one time the health of society was looked upon with favor and pride, greed was seen as sin, and equal justice for all was something to aspire to. This narrative was usurped with false ideas like welfare queens, takers and makers, greed is good, socialism is evil, the wealthy are job creators, government is the problem, the liberal elite, fly-over country, money is speech... (I could go on). By consolidating media outlets and manipulation, the wealthy control the narrative and with it now control our government by convincing people to vote against their economic interests by focusing on wedge social issues. The wealth disparity is not naturally occurring and was only achieved through design and planning.
Nothing written in the Declaration of Independence or our Constitution was in favor of our current perversion. It is more than time to take back the narrative and be clear that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which defined the goals of our government) did not mean that some should be so powerful that they essentially become kings. Without knowing it we have become enslaved in a system where the few decide for the many and we the people have been divided against each other. I hope at this time where so much corruption has been laid bare that we can choose a new direction back to what was hoped for by our founders.
13
@Lucas Lynch - Just want to say excellent and right on point. Editors should feature.
"Becoming?" Every day lobbyists crowd the offices of Congress, solely there to advance the interests of the very, very rich.
If that doesn't scare you, it should.
We need Elizabeth Warren's policies. She knows her stuff regarding the power of the billionaires over our government. However, we need a charismatic and inspiring leader to implement those policies, and she's not it.
18
@The Poet McTeagle - Warren would make an excellent Cabinet secretary - Commerce or Treasury?
1
@The Poet McTeagle Maybe if we started voting with our brain using reason and logic.
1
The ability of the wealthy to determine the direction and policies of this country make America a plutocracy not an oligarchy. If you doubt this then consider the Citizens United decision, the election of Mr. Trump (our richest president), the recent tax "cut" and the continuing acceleration of wealth inequality.
6
Many of the super wealthy would be perfectly fine with returning to the days when slaves were considered 3/5ths of a person and not entitled to the same Constitutional rights and privileges of the non-slaves. The modern slaves would be anyone not super wealthy.
The tools of the plutocracy are evident: voter suppression, elimination of democratic principles in Congress, elimination of ethics, especially conflicts of interest for public officials, hesitation to address public corruption, packing the courts, etc.
There is something admirable about the earning wealth because one invented some new, beneficial technology, wrote books, made films, or even mastered a sport. What is admirable about someone who has wealth only by accident of birth, squanders it only to be bailed out by his daddy, squanders it again only to be bailed out by his daddy’s bequest, cheats on his taxes, cheats on his own charity?
We can do better. And we should promote better.
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Adam Smith, as a Scot, saw up close the way that inherited wealth limited opportunity. To this day, most of the land in Scotland belongs to a relatively small number of owners, many of them traditional aristocrats. This both was and is true even more in Scotland than in England. When we combine the dangers of inherited landed wealth with unregulated capitalism's tendency to produce monopolies or cartels (and in our own economy, large areas are dominated now by cartels because of weak regulation--the U.S. absolutely does not have free markets), every democratic country, ours included, faces an ongoing need to place limits on the accumulation of wealth, or its democratic institutions will be entirely coopted by the wealthy and will lose their meaning. The Republican Party doesn't object to describing the United States as a "democracy" only because of that word's relationship to the name of the Democratic Party. Republican donors know that, historically, most republics (such as Rome, Venice, Hamburg and so on) were oligarchic, and they're fine with that. What they hate is anything that places limits on them.
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Already is an oligarchy. Now the question is can it return to a democratic capitalist government.
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@Random
It's all in the hands of "the people".
Anything is possible with the will of the people. We've seen it in your history books and again elsewhere today around the globe.
It probably depends on how deep you are willing to go in muck before rising again...
Founding philosophy and daily practice might be two sides of the hundred-dollar bill -- but they are also a billion dollars apart. That is: those with wealth and privilege are the ones who get to establish vision, mission, and purpose, all of which can be admirable -- a democratic republic with a capitalist economy.
Yet, those who govern typically rise to power because of wealth and the support of the wealthy behind them. Inherited wealth, as Thomas Piketty says in "Capital in the Twenty-first Century," continues to allow exponential growth of dollars for those who have possessed it, separating them increasingly from those who don't. Thus, the American oligarchy.
It is unlikely that a socialist democracy will overtake this entrenched model -- power, as we know, is rarely granted. It is taken. And the ballot box in America has been corrupted, with the consent of a 'presidential' oligarch of psychopathic dimensions. Democracy might still be alive, but it's on life support.
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@SGK
From my point of view, I am watching a patient slowly sinking into a deep coma. Maybe a good and painful slap in the face is needed to wake him up just in time... Who is going to administer it ?
Genius Frank Luntz coined the epithet of the Death Tax. The Republicans invented the fantasy of family farms and small businesses being decimated by an unaffordable inheritance tax, something that virtually never happened. The vast majority of wealth does not derive from already taxed salaries, but from appreciated real estate and securities that held until death have never been taxed. And now they never will. Donald Trump is the perfect choice as leader for the Republicans, a lifelong grifter and conman heading a party of them.
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America has always been an oligarchy. Wealth always dominated American government. And the concentration of wealth today is really not too much different from the situation at the end of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th, although there was a more robust middle class and greater possibilities for advancement in that era.
As the historian Ronald Syme (1903-1989) wrote:
"In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade . . . ."
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@Bill Good quote from Syme. Our democracy chooses which oligarchic group to vote into power.
It's already happened. There's no debate and it's displayed in plain sight, with impunity.
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As a corollary, in his campaign launch speech yesterday, Pete Buttigieg pointed out that government is not the only entity that can take away freedom. Private Internet service providers, banks, credit card companies, credit reporting agencies, payday lenders, etc. can take away individuals' ability to pay for what they need for their own and their families' wellbeing. The corporations can do this because they are so much wealthier and more powerful than their victims.
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It is commonly believed that great wealth is created by intelligence and hard work. I have known some of those cases, but they are offset by great wealth handed down through generations, with no input of intelligence or hard work on the part of the wealthy, and too often the results are sloth, waste, and overindulgence in destructive habits.
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"It is old, mainstream and as American as Thomas Jefferson."
Actually it goes back as far as Aristotle and Socrates. The Greek democracies were unable to deal with it, and it is part of the reason why they failed.
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This has been a 50-year project of what became the New Right, namely, to prevent democracy from working so that the accumulation of wealth and rule by the few could be unabated. Especially with the demographic changes that have suggested new likely voters for the Democratic Party, the efforts have been accelerated to restrict the vote of those who might vote for progressive policies, to fudge the vote count, and to put in place ways to manipulate the vote by creating false emergencies to divide people across the country. It is truly a dangerous time unless we recapture democracy. The existing and would-be oligarchs will do what they can to keep democracy from working.
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The idea is proposed here that democracy means "that the end of all government is the happiness of the People: and in this other, that the greatest happiness of the greatest Number is the point to be obtained" is that the happiness referred to is based on economic well being. Economic well being means that people are happy based on what they have.
Inequality however means that there are a tiny percent of people who have immensely more than those who qualify as having economic well being. So if enough money was taken from that small percent so that they would no longer have immensely more then there would no longer be inequality.
And taking enough money from the 1% so that they lose substantial amounts of their wealth, such as with an inheritance tax, will not make anyone else richer. It will merely reduce the amount of money the 1% have.
So the issue some have with inequality has nothing to do with more people having economic well being. It is simply that they do not like a small percent having so much money and they would be just as happy if the wealth possessed by the super rich would simply disappear regardless of whether is went into the coffers of the government or went to provide aid to the people of Africa. So the issue of inequality has nothing to do with making the rest of America wealthier.
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@Michael Stavsen Yes, the rest of the people will be richer. Rather than stockpile their riches for future generations, the 1% could decide to spread their wealth to workers their companies hire. The government will benefit from taxing estates, thereby reducing the federal debt and giving more benefits or reducing taxes for those at the lower end of wealth. They in turn will buy goods increasing the number of jobs to produce those items. Higher taxes on the wealthy will ultimately provide these same benefits. What single individual really needs 1 Billion dollars?
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@Michael Stavsen
"It will merely reduce the amount of money the 1% have."
And prevent them from passing laws that protect their wealth. For example; the "carried interest" income of hedge fund managers (essentially their salary) being taxed as capital gains, rather than simple income.
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I contend that happiness in a democracy doesn’t lie in the accumulation of wealth. Happiness comes from having forward-looking plans and working to achieve a goal. Success brings satisfaction beyond money.
Not being able to have and achieve goals brings despair, which afflicts many who feel shut out of the progress toward equality. Their solution can be sadness, depression, dependence on drugs, violence, and suicide.
We seem to be having an epidemic of these problems now, and we need to provide solutions.
2
Capitalism as currently practiced is a predatory system benefiting the well-to-do with the real work being performed by the burgeoning underclass.
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Reagan gave speeches with Goldman Sachs whispering in his ear. Bannon travels the world on a drunken, egomaniacal mission to dismantle governments. ( No one is stopping him. ) The GOP with the aid of indicted Roger Stone, installed a wanna be dictator in the US. Murdock, thanks to the undoing of the Fairness Doctrine, gets to lie on tv all day and call it Fox News. The banks stole peoples' homes, launder money, hand out golden parachutes and live to steal another day. The oil and mining companies take the Peoples' land and via eminent domain and destroy the environment. Corporations paid no Federal income tax this year as we stagger to the P.O. to mail our hard earned money. Rumor has it the Mueller Investigation was in fact shut down. Insurance companies gouge people through the pharmaceutical scams while people who paid for the insurance, lie dying. Lots of hard workers can't pay their rent because of a measly minimum wage. Individual One is somehow now free to leap over the only boundary left: taking money from foreign governments to enrich himself via his resorts. What was the question?
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When a billionaire, who is undeclared as a Presidential candidate, such as Howard Schultz, can have a Town Hall on CNN, do you even have the ask this question?
The question is when did it become an oligarchy.
Or can I have a Town Hall too?
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"a context of grotesque concentration of wealth."
That is a line worth remembering
And using
5
No. Has it long since become one? Absolutely.
4
Capitalism is about profit and exploitation. Democratic socialism, or whatever else you'd like to call it, is about people. Humans. Society.
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The only way to halt America's drift towards becoming an oligarchy is to address the racial problem. Republicans wisely focus on race (Black, Latino, Muslim) and sexual orientation issues to enlist mass support while simultaneously making economic policies that harm those same supporters. Trump and his ilk will continue to reign as long as half of America (perhaps more) harbor nativistic attitudes.
8
Historically, oligarchies have not fared well when the bills were presented. The last time an oligarchy won a class war was in the German peasants' rebellion, in 1525, when the peasants fought with scythes against armored, mounted knights. Then we come to France, 1789, when oligarchs saw their children nailed to the walls of their churches, and the House of Bourbon got publicly beheaded. Then there was the Russian Revolution, when the Romanovs were genetically exterminated. Then the Chinese revolution, when Mao's armies extirpated the hereditary oligarchs. America's oligarchs really ought to be considering how they can step down into the upper middle class, while they still have legs and feet to step down with.
12
Wrong tense:
America has become an Oligarchy. There is no “becoming” anymore.
8
The US was born with liberty to enslave, and to deceive. It never was a democracy, and it will probably never be one.
8
BECOMING an oligarchy? Please read "Dark Money." Don't tell me the Kochs haven't controlled the Republican Party for decades. Gerrymandering, FOX, corporate campaign donations. The rest of the world has concluded that the U.S. is no longer a democracy for YEARS. Make America great again by bringing democracy BACK - not putting the final nail in its coffin, as Trump and his clueless followers are on the verge of succeeding in doing.
12
THe plutocrats and Republican enablers want to implement the Russian model. At first I considered the Oligarchs refugees but now I see their Oligarchs as sleepers. The closer we get to a corrupt government the closer we are to the Russian model. Trump is an attempt to deliver corruption for the plutocrats.
Actually men get more conservative as we get older and men are living longer with many exceptions. Statins are a big reason men live longer.
3
How to create an Oligarchy
As the country is engrossed with moore
Republicans rob the company store
A tax plan written for the rich
Leaving the average Joe without a stitch
Cutting corporate tax fifteen percent
Cutting the deduction for the mortgage rent
The super wealthy no inheritance tax
Creating an Oligarchy capitalism to the max
No debate no discussion on the senate floor
Trading favors behind the bloody door
The fascination with human peccadillo's
While the house burned down democracy aglow
1
Becoming an oligarchy? Get serious! The US is an oligarchy, and it's been one for at least 10 years now. Under Trump this condition has become egregious, which is the only reason why people have begun noticing it.
4
No, not an oligarchy, but a dictatorship. After he steamrolls over all opposition, trump will issue an executive order declaring limited terms for presidents is unconstitutional and then declare himself president-for-life. Putin and others are leading the way for him..
3
Becoming? It is an Oligarchy.
1
My God, you're a few decades late on this one. The Regan attack on unions, the disinvestment of industry that began even before then, the looting of pensions funds from the samer era....anyone who didn't see where this was going hasn't been paying attention. Sadly, this includes much of the Democratic party and the people running liberal interest groups who mostly make sure they can keep their salaries and K Street addresses.
2
Is America becoming an oligarchy, becoming?
1