AMERICAN OLIGARCHY - Robert Reich

Robert Reich opened a recent article by asking the question: What Does Oligarchy Mean?

He answered:

"‘Oligarchy' means government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. It comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning 'few to rule or command.’” The article continued:
"Even a system that calls itself a democracy can become an oligarchy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few very wealthy people – a corporate and financial elite. Their power and wealth increase over time as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets to their advantage, and create or exploit economic monopolies that put even more wealth into their pockets.

Modern-day Russia is an oligarchy, where a handful of billionaires who control most major industries dominate politics and the economy. What about the United States?
According to a study published in 2014 by Princeton Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern Professor Benjamin Page, although Americans enjoy many features of democratic governance, such as regular elections, and freedom of speech and association, American policy-making has become dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans. The typical American has no influence at all.

This is largely due to the increasing concentration of wealth. In a 2019 research paper, Berkeley economics professor Gabriel Zucman determined that the richest 1% of Americans now own 40% of the nation’s wealth. That’s up from 25 to 30% of the nation’s wealth in the 1980s. The only country Zucman found withsimilarly high levelsof wealth concentration is … Russia.

America has had an oligarchy before – in the first Gilded Age, which ran from the 1880s until the early 20th century. Teddy Roosevelt called that oligarchy the“malefactors of great wealth,”and fought them by breaking up large concentrations of economic power – the trusts – and instituting aprogressive federal income tax.

His fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, further reduced their power by strictly regulating Wall Street, and encouraging the growth of labor unions.

The oligarchy fought back but Roosevelt wouldn’t yield. 'Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob,'he thundered in 1936. 'Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.'

But the American oligarchy has returned. We are now in a second Gilded Age. As the great jurist Louis Brandeisonce said, 'We can have democracy in this country or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.’ We must, once again, make the correct choice and reduce the economic and political power of the American oligarchy.”
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Here are some facts about life in the U.S. these days.

43% of Americans are now poor and low income, which comes to approximately 140 million people. Those millions are victims of policies and laws that selectively exclude them from the nation's enormous productive wealth while favoring America's already rich and powerful.
Despite improving technology and huge increases in worker productivity in the last forty years, the average American worker hasn't shared in the increased profits at all, and in fact, today, in real, inflation-accounted-for dollars, is earning no more than he or she did in 1974.
What has quietly happened in recent decades has been a massive transfer of wealth from working families in America to the very rich, with the top 1% seeing its wealth increase by $21 trillion dollars while the bottom half, during the same time period, saw a $900 billion dollar decline in its wealth!

And the current administration continues to minimize or end social programs serving people's needs and, instead, promotes increased military spending and tax laws that favor the rich.
In the richest country in the history of the world, we have more wealth and income inequality than any other major nation of Earth, with the disparity between the rich and poor growing wider every day.

In fact, three individuals now own more wealth than the bottom half of America, and the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 92%. This is where America is now.

And when you hear news reporters mimicking politicians who say that “the economy is doing great,” they’re only talking about the "investor economy,” the “market economy.” The "real economy" includes "what everyone lives with,” and that’s definitely not doing great.
Words and definitions matter! Another way it’s differentiated is calling the "investor economy" the “Wall Street Economy” and the "overall real economy” the “Main Street Economy.” But “the economy” is a loaded term.

And when you hear the cries of "Stop Socialism!" coming from Senate Majority Leader McConnell and others in power, what they really mean is stop the advantages of democratic socialism from being extended to every American rather than just having 'Socialism for the Rich,' as it is now and as it was for the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the reckless and fraudulent practices of many of the banks who caused the economic wipeout for average Americans in 2008.

Thom Hartmann wrote an article describing how the process of so massive a transfer of wealth was accomplished, and how precarious the American economy truly is from the manipulators instead of intelligent, honest people making decisions to serve citizens instead of just the investment and business communities.

Hartmann says that our ignorant and incompetent president “...is maintaining and inflating an economic Potemkin village, a pretend economy made out of cardboard, chicken wire and bubble gum that will collapse in the face of the first stiff economic wind.”

He goes on to say, “If Trump and his collaborators can hold back the winds until November of next year, the GOP has a chance in the elections. And, as a bonus for Trump, if Democrats sweep the 2020 elections and Powell (at the Federal Reserve) and Mnuchin (at Treasury) pull out the ‘economy’s’ temporary props right afterward, crashing the ‘economy,’ Republicans will blame Democrats for the ensuing economic disaster for the next generation or two.”
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All of this is why we need to recognize how dangerous the patently anti-democracy Republican Party has become and do everything we can to create the largest voter turnout ever for the 2020 elections so that we can rebuild and restore the United States after decades of fraudulent, greedy, criminal behavior in economic and political leadership.

Hartmann’s article was published this week by the Independent Media Institute and was republished at Common Dreams, a site I recommend you get daily feeds from:

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