The big question to ask- Are we a plutocracy?

[Virgil]

To know which direction the country should go, a person needs to know two things. One is where we are and one is where we are going. Rather than condensing the whole scenario into something that gets locked, let us start with where we are. I say the immediate question in answering where we are is "Are we a plutocracy?"

These are the definitions for "plutocracy" at dictionary.com

1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Yeah....

And that is both a good and bad thing..

[Johnyawl]

6. What's good about it?

[punpirate]

2. There was a recent study...

... saying that something like 88% of political contributions which can be tracked ($200 or above) come from 2% of the population. That clearly indicates that the wealthy control political money.

The next question, one every politician denies, is whether or not those contributions generate political access. I think they do. At the very least, a politician is much more apt to lend an ear to the big money sources.

Cheers.

[durutti]

5. Not only that...

But globalization has cemented their rule. If some government passes reforms they don't like, corporations can now easily have them either overruled or just invest elsewhere.

The Left needs to become a truly international movement. Ideally, we should fight to establish an international minimum wage or basic income, international social programs, etc.

A good first step would be to abolish the WTO and similar institutions and replace them with something more democratic.

[davekriss]

8. Your "next question" misses a key point

You say, "The next question, one every politician denies, is whether or not those contributions generate political access." I think this misses the point.

Significant campaign contributions generally do not flow to anyone who is markedly different from the contributors. No one who espouses ideas that threaten the interests of the 2% of the population making 88% of the contributions gets the cash needed to be heard by the voting population. "Access" isn't necessary; this contributing sliver of the socioeconomic strata rests assured that the politicians elected will act in their interest because the funded politician has already internalized the mores, myths, values, and motivations of their class. He or she is "one of them", or close enough, to be funded.

There are two votes in America: The dollar vote and the democratic vote. Nothing gets on the agenda of the democratic vote unless it first passes the dollar vote. The problem with this arrangement is that those with more dollars get to vote more often, their vote has more weight, than those without. So the man without means becomes inconsequential to the political process. Ever wonder why we get such low voter turnouts? Could be that the common man understands that no one representing their interests is running -- just two factions of one party representing the same monied elites.

Political dissent is drowned out by cash and the coopertation of a near-monopolized major media, becoming sidestory banality and inconsequentiality reported in section D of your local paper (if at all). Welcome to the USSA, where the Republicrat apparatchik posture for dollar votes from the real powers that be, the plutocratic lords that serve as the foundation of our modern State. Be it Kerry, GWB, Clark -- they all pass the dollar vote and none threaten the class interests of the top 2%. Such is the state of our sad Republic.

(But then, it's the same as it ever was -- read Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States, for example.)

But there's hope: What the plutocrats fear most are populist upwellings. They fear the masses with ideas and a will of its own -- and when an upwelling appears they take out all the stops to beat it back down. Though they are usually successful, small progressive wins are made along the way. The more a Dean or Kerry or Kucinich bangs the populist drum, the more hope I have for a few future crumbs for we many.

I tell you we're riding such an upwelling now, an upwelling of resentment for impeachable abuse of power by a pResident who was selected by a corrupt Supreme Court over the will of the people; who may have LIHOPed into PNAC adventures while looting current and future treasure and effectively "starving the beast" of government to the point where it can no longer guarantee a decent quality of life for all its citizens.

ABB in 2004!!!

[baldguy]

3. Ya think?

[PsychoDad]

4. Yes

Every election cycle confirms it

[solinvictus]

7. Yes

We're a plutocracy because of soft money, lobbyists, and the fact that our elected officials do not fear us anymore.

[guitar man]

9. You bet

It is sickening how much of a plutocracy this country has become.The downright hostility displayed toward the average American worker by the $Rich-Wing political machine is appalling.

Trade agreements designed to allow wealthy corporate owners to ship American jobs out of the US,effectively devouring our lives and livelihoods and depositing them into the pockets of the uber-class.
Now * is proposing a plan to import cheap indentured servants to replace what is left of the middle class in the workplace.

This bullshit has got to stop:grr:

[Selwynn]

10. Indeed.

[gold_bug]

11. Yes, in many respects.

see Democracy for the Few by Michael Parenti
http://www.michaelparenti.org/DemocracyForFew.html

[sweetheart]

12. one vote one dollar... perhaps, yet a timocracy works as well...

timocracy definition at dictionary.com
1. A state governed on principles of honor and military glory.
2. A state in which civic honor or political power increases with the amount of property one owns.

Methinks we have an effective plutocracy, with a strong element of timos as well. Dollars buy lobbiests and election advertizing, and those interests buy office... clearly one vote one dollar has exceeded one vote one person.

That said, the military empire has a very strong voice in appointing a president... and it is less about pure-dollars rather the amount of property owned. The senate certainly would be a more timocratic thought than a democratic one in this regard, as land mass outvotes citizens.

Yes, however, plutocracy is the clearest definition of that the USA is all about these days.

[dpibel]

13. Why the heck wouldn't it be?

It was founded as a plutocracy, so it shouldn't be too surprising if it still is one.

That great document of democracy, the Constitution? Check it out some time. Slavery; votes by white, landed males only; electoral college; no election of senators. All that stuff.

The part we learn about, and are told is the meat of it, is the Bill of Rights, tacked on in order to keep the rabble in the game.

Note that the body of the Constitution is devoted to a nice, slow moving, easily deadlocked government under the control of the wise, wealthy and white.

The Bill of Rights is not about the power of the rabble; it's a flimsy (as we recently see more and more) bit of protecting the rabble from the unchecked power of the plutocrats.

Granted, there was about 50 years of actual progress toward something resembling the dreamy democracy we all learned about in school. And a big chunk of that was because, in the '30s, the plutocrats got the shit scared out of them because the rabble started to rumble and there was some credible talk of a revolution. The flower of the labor movement, from the 30s-50s was bracketed by female sufferage (in this, the world's greatest democracy, it only took 150 years to decide chicks could vote (term as used by the founding fathers, or the then equivalent)) and by the Civil Rights movement.

All of which worried the plutocrats right fierce, because you can't have the people starting to understand the meaning of things like the power of mass movements, and things like that.

So the plutocrats have been working very hard for 25 years, to undo all of the progress of the 75 years before that.

Which is a verrrrrry long way of saying:

Of course it's a plutocracy. We tried to change it, but we lost.

So far.

[buddhamama]

14. excellent summery!

mass movements come in cycles and we're due for another.
so far, yes, we have lost but we are not out yet.