America Is Ruled by Billionaires, and They Are Coming After the Last Shreds of Our Democracy
http://www.alternet.org/america-ruled-billionaires-and-they-are-coming-after-last-shreds-our-democracy
Plutocracy literally means rule by the rich. “Rule” can have various shades of meaning: those who exercise the authority of public office are wealthy; their wealth explains why they hold that office; they exercise that authority in the interests of the rich; they have the primary influence over who holds those offices and the actions they take. These aspects of “plutocracy” are not exclusive. Government of the rich and for the rich need not berun directly by the rich. Also, in some exceptional circumstances rich individuals who hold powerful positions may govern in the interests of the many, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt.
The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy – on a number of grounds. Let’s look at some striking bits of evidence. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80% of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2%, 65% to the upper 1 per cent. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 20% to 28 %. In that period, real GDP has risen by 110% – it has more than doubled.
To put it somewhat differently, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 8X more than those in the 60 percentile after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007; 10X those in lower percentiles. In short, the overwhelming fraction of all the wealth created over two generations has gone to those at the very top of the income pyramid. That pattern has been markedly accelerated since the financial crisis hit in 2008. Between 2000 and 2012, the real net worth of 90% of Americans has declined by 25%. Theoretically, there is the possibility that this change is due to structural economic features operating nationally and internationally. That argument won’t wash, though, for three reasons. First, there is no reason to think that such a process has accelerated over the past five years during which disparities have widened at a faster rate. Second, other countries (many even more enmeshed in the world economy) have seen nothing like the drastic phenomenon occurring in the United States. Third, the readiness of the country’s political class to ignore what has been happening, and the absence of remedial action that could have been taken, in themselves are clear indicators of who shapes thinking and determines public policy. In addition, several significant governmental actions have been taken that directly favor the moneyed interests.
The latter include the dismantling of the apparatus to regulate financial activities specifically and big business generally. Runaway exploitation of the system by predatory banks was made possible by the Clinton “reforms” of the 1990s and the lax application of those rules that still prevailed. Attorney General Eric Holder just a few weeks ago went so far as to admit that the Department of Justice’s decisions on when to bring criminal charges against the biggest financial institutions will depend not on the question of legal violations alone but would include the hypothetical effects on economic stability of their prosecution. Earlier, Holder had extended blanket immunity to Bank of America and other mortgage lenders for their apparent criminality in forging, robo-signing, foreclosure documents on millions of home owners. In brief, equal protection and application of the law has been suspended. That is plutocracy.
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One law for the rest, and no law for the rich and powerful. That's a prescription for civil-war and social disintegration.
That's pretty much how all Empires collapse. On edit: That, and ugly hats.
I appreciate all your posts, xchrom (and alternet even more as a result of your sharings), and share them elsewhere with those who -- amazingly -- refuse to see this truth.
Yet it makes me wonder this morning: Have you found anyone at DU who disagrees with this? We tend to disagree about nearly everything, but surely everywhere here agrees that herein lies the crux of our problems? Surely?
Read some Marx. 
He and Engels are being proven more and more right every day.
(the MSM would be the best) often and on tee vee, then maybe the idiots who will not acknowledge this..will. IF that happens, MAYBE enough average Americans (it should be millions) would unite and take to the streets in protest to restore(?) Democracy in America.
IF Helen Thomas before she was removed (or an actual white house journalist still allowed in the whitehouse) were to daily ask "our" president or his spokesperson, if we are a plutocracy (as opposed to a democracy) and get an honest answer on tee vee ("yes, we are a plutocracy) Then "average Americans" may become incensed enough to ACT and demand a real democracy.
Of course, "there is a big "I" in front of that "F." Something has to change...
capitalism destroyed the USSR and it is doing the same to the USA....
Who are the real takers in our society?
The mom on welfare who's working three jobs just to be able to have barely enough to put a roof over her kids?
Or the billion dollar corporation that rakes in billions in profit every quarter and then gets another few billion from the government in the form of "subsidies"
They're bleeding us dry and getting away with it. It's fucking disgusting. And they have the balls to call themselves "job creators". 
It's less clear who will be the GOP candidate, but (s)he'll be owned, too.
Isn't the government's main job to help them in their grueling struggle?
(And why can't somebody in Texas rewrite the history books to reflect this ancient truth?)
Great article. I for one, DO NOT welcome our new overlords.
The fight between the rich and poor has been going on for a long time. I do not think anything will change the control that the plutocracy has, short of an alien outer space intervention. Then we will find out we have been raised like cattle, ready for the intergalactic slave market. Hey, I am old and I like aliens, so I will not substitute reality for what the plutocracy tells me, there are outer space people (?). Peace.
~Frederick Douglass
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