Is The US an Oligarchy?

What, you think only Russia has Oligarchy? Trump, he's an Oligarch, Hillary is too. What many never seem to ask, is whether the US is an Oligarchy or not?

Let's start with a definition: From Merriam-Webster.com

Definition of Oligarchy
plural oligarchies
1 : government by the few The corporation is ruled by oligarchy.
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes a military oligarchy was established in the country; also : a group exercising such control An oligarchy ruled the nation.
3 : an organization under oligarchic control That country is an oligarchy.

And of course here's Wikipedia.com's definition:

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning 'few', and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning 'to rule or to command') is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people might be distinguished by nobility, wealth, family ties, education or corporate, religious or military control. Such states are often controlled by families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a necessary condition for the application of this term.

Problem Overview

Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?

Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.

This video gives a quick rundown of their findings - it all boils down to one simple graph:

[video:https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig] "Corruption is Legal in America"

This isn't one of those Faux News or CNN fake news videos nor a Alex Jones melt down either, it is produced by a non-profit, non-partisian organization US Represents, at usrepresents.us

The answer to that question, "Does the government represent the people?", is summarized as;

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."

In other words, that would be a big fat no, our government does not represent "the people", but "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests".

The "majority" in this country does not rule, the economic elites and organized groups representing business interests do. Political parties do not matter since both "establishment" parties, that is "republicans and democrats" alike, represent "the economic elites and organized groups representing business interests".

Trump or Hillary Clinton does not matter, Wall Street and big business make out like bandits at the expense of "the people" under either administration, just like they did under Obama and Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan and so fourth.

This is by design from the very beginning of our country. The framers of our constitution, feared democracy as some form of mob rule. The electoral college is touted as a "check" on mob rule, but in actual reality, it is by design to subvert the will of the people.

Think for a moment, 304 people (of the electoral college) decided Donald Trump should be president, subverting the will of the people, which over 3 million more people voted for the Queen bitch, Hillary. Gee, did Russia influence our election, or did the framer's do what they intended to do, enable the subversion of democracy, ie the majority of the people, by design?

The gerrymandering by republicans of voter districts all across our country, has nothing to do with voter fraud, but everything to do with subverting the will of the majority, ie the people.

Stop and think for a moment, do you really think cutting fresh produce off to low income people on SNAP benefits is going to do anything for their already precarious health? Especially when most can't even afford our already 2-3 times higher priced health care that does not produce better health outcomes?

Golly, look at the democrats and how they cheated the public from a free and fair democrat primary? Hillary, basically bought the DNC and ran a money laundering operation via the state parties and her SuperPAC, Hillary for America. There is nothing about the entire 2016 election that has anything to do with democracy, but who controls the money spigots of Government.

At 54 years old I've seen our government change hands back and forth many times between republicans and democrats, but the results are basically the same, the vast majority of Americans suffer the whims of the "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests".

Princeton University study: Public opinion has "near-zero" impact on U.S. law. Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law.

"The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a "statistically non-significant impact," economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.

Nearly every issue we face as a nation is caught in the grip of corruption.

From taxation to national debt, education to the economy, America is struggling to address our most serious issues. Moneyed interests get what they want, and the rest of us pay the price.

They spend billions influencing America's government who gives them trillions in return.

In the last 5 years alone, the 200 most politically active companies in the U.S. spent $5.8 billion influencing our government with lobbying and campaign contributions.

Those same companies got $4.4 trillion in taxpayer support - earning a return of 750 times their investment.

It's a vicious cycle of legalized corruption.

As the cost of winning elections explodes, politicians of both political parties become ever more dependent on the tiny slice of the population who can bankroll their campaigns.

To win a Senate seat in 2014, candidates had to raise $14,351 every single day. Just .05% of Americans donate more than $10,000 in any election, so it's perfectly clear who candidates will turn to first, and who they're indebted to when they win.

In return for campaign donations, elected officials pass laws that are good for their mega-donors, and bad for the rest of us.

Our elected officials spend 30-70% of their time in office fundraising for the next election. When they're not fundraising, they have no choice but to make sure the laws they pass keep their major donors happy - or they won't be able to run in the next election.

Our lives will continue a downward spiral, and our children will remain hostage to a gluttonous elite who think Curing Cancer poses a risk to the sustainability of a franchise. Ie in other words, curing cancer is not profitable. (How does that make you feel when looking down at your loved one, who is dying of Cancer?)

Well that's according to Gold Sach's Analysts, as CNBC reports:

"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution."

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

Hepatitis C has reached cure rates of about 90%.

"In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines ... Where an incident pool remains stable (eg, in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise."

You got that? "it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow." Gee, cashflow is more important than curing disease.

Glad to know that my wife, who died from Cancer, helped sustain someone's medical franchise. And now the debt collector is trying to sustain it's self by going after me to collect on what our insurance would not cover.

Fuck them and fuck American business!

This isn't a republican or democrat issue, it is an issue of epic proportions that affects all of us. While it might be true we have the best medicine money can buy, no one can really afford it. Health insurance does not mean you can get healthcare. Health insurance is just another "business model" to profit off human sickness, disease and suffering.

Until the Oligarchy feels the heat of poverty or death, nothing will materially change, incrementalism will rule the day, until the planet burns us all.

Solution?
Pitchforks and hand grenades I tell ya! (If it were only that easy)

This is not just an "American issue", but a global one. We must unite the working class on an international basis, and we must dissent, disobey and disrupt the global Capitalist system that is incrementally killing us! (#DissentDisobeyDisrupt)

Sources:

1. Gilens and Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Perspective on Politics, 2014.", http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_an...

2. Washington Post, "Once again, U.S. has most expensive, least effective health care system in survey," 2014."Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/06/16/once-aga...

3. Rich People Rule! 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/08/rich-peopl...

4. Forbes Opinion, "The tax code is a hopeless complex, economy-suffocating mess," 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrenzel/2013/04/04/the-tax-code-is-a-hop...

5. CNN, "Americans pay more for slower Internet," 2014. http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/internet-speeds/

6. The Hill, "Sanders requests DOD meeting over wasteful spending," 2015. http://thehill.com/policy/finance/234578-sanders-requests-meeting-with-d...

7. CBS News, "Wastebook 2014: Government's questionable spending," 2014. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wastebook-2014-sen-coburn-highlights-questio...

8. The Heritage Foundation, Budget Book, 2015. http://www.heritage.org/issues/budget-and-spending/government-waste

9. The Atlantic, "American schools vs. the world: expensive, unequal, bad at math," 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs...

10. CNN Opinion, "War on drugs a trillion-dollar failure," 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-drugs/

11. Feeding America, Child Hunger Fact Sheet, 2014. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/child-h...

12. New York Times, "Banks' lobbyists help in drafting financial bills," 2014. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/banks-lobbyists-help-in-drafting-...

13. New York Times, "Wall Street seeks to tuck Dodd-Frank changes in budget bill," 2014. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/wall-street-seeks-to-tuck-dodd-fr...

14. Sunlight Foundation, "Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions," 2014. http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/11/17/fixed-fortunes-biggest-cor...

15. CNBC Curing Cancer? - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustai...

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

The Aspie Corner's picture

up
0 users have voted.

Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

He said that in the 1880s. That's what American democracy has boiled down to, ever since, as far as Pitchforks and hand grenades are concerned.

By design, the U.S. political system has many levels of built-in conservatism designed to defeat democracy and assure that the majority will not take wealth by political means despite the fact that the overwhelming number are not wealthy. We still don't have direct elections of Presidents, and there's a reason for it.

As for Oligarchy, the Founders did not try as hard to prevent that. If you buy economic deterministic theory, Michael's "Iron Law of Oligarch" seems to be assure that small states, at least, will eventually succumb to oligarchy, and that even large states are greatly weakened by the emergence of increasingly unregulated elites. See, https://www.evnreport.com/politics/oligarchies-and-strategic-danger-to-s...

In the extreme, sectors of state sovereignty or infrastructure are used as collateral or exchanged for debt payment. Policies that favor monopolies at the expense of economic expansion subject small states to an enhanced security threat in those geographic regions where powerful interests intersect. Such situations have resulted in economically failed states.[4]

Even in steady-state oligarchies, state tax revenue suffers due to three mains factors.

Select monopolies may not be obliged to pay their fair share of taxes or any taxes at all.

Successful private and competitive businesses that would otherwise pay taxes are forcibly kept to a minimum or have moved to other countries.

The suppression of a viable middle class, thus substantially reducing its contribution to the tax base. Traditionally, the greatest effective tax burden is placed on the middle classes.

The only time Jay Gould's calculus ever changes is when risk of real loss for the Oligarchy is introduced into the equation.

Real loss can take many forms, and some risks are inherent in the system. But, where is the risk map? It seems that the last serious attempt to map systematic risk was in 1860s, and there hasn't been a Great Social Revolution since the late 1940s. It seems about time for an update.

The mid-1970s was the peak of post-War middle-class purchasing power and economic equality in America, if that's a significant indicator for you. It's been all downhill economically for the majority since. Why did that happen? What is to be done?

Looking for serious answers.

up
0 users have voted.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Raggedy Ann's picture

Writing an essay with the solution - now, THAT'S the what will get my attention.

Me write that essay? I've commented the solution time and again in the comments.

Even with the Universe in charge - Revolution is the only way.
Pleasantry

up
0 users have voted.

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

TheOtherMaven's picture

and more people refused to be coerced into choosing than chose. The system is totally FUBAR, and it's not just that it started out half-assed. It's been deliberately sabotaged at all levels, by "both" parties.

We know who the People's Choice really was, and how we were cheated of that choice. After that, nothing matters.

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Lenzabi's picture

Welcome to the Corporate States of Oligarchia!

up
0 users have voted.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Wink's picture

all they need to know about our level of democracy.
Or lack thereof.
The economics part is simply the result of Oligarchs owning Washington, which is the result of the hoi polloi unable to cast a vote due to voter suppression. So, yeah, we live in an oligarchy.

up
0 users have voted.

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.