How Did the United States Become an Oligarchy?

[Sunstone]

What happened to turn America in an oligarchy? Was it our high R low G economy? Was it government policies? Did the tax code play a decisive hand in the creation of our oligarchy?

Is our oligarchy becoming hereditary? What percentage of the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth?

Your thoughts?





Background information, if you need it....

 

[Terry Sampson]

Your OP asks several questions. Your last question interested me most first.

What percentage of the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth?

I don't have an answer or even an opinion in response to any of your questions, however I just finished googling "Forbes 400 wealthiest and how did they obtain their wealth", and came across this:
Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century U.S. - Inequality.org

I'll start reading through it now, but share it here in case you or someone else reads and processes it faster than I can.

 

[Moz]

What happened to turn America in an oligarchy? Was it our high R low G economy? Was it government policies? Did the tax code play a decisive hand in the creation of our oligarchy?

Is our oligarchy becoming hereditary? What percentage of the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth?

Your thoughts?





Background information, if you need it....

Become?

 

[exchemist]

What happened to turn America in an oligarchy? Was it our high R low G economy? Was it government policies? Did the tax code play a decisive hand in the creation of our oligarchy?

Is our oligarchy becoming hereditary? What percentage of the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth?

Your thoughts?





Background information, if you need it....

This seems to be an example of question-begging. Surely you need first of all to substantiate your starting assumption, viz. that the USA is an oligarchy, don't you?

Once we know the basis on which you assert this, we can comment. Without that, it is likely that responders will make their own unstated assumptions about what, if anything, constitutes, or is responsible for this presumed oligarchy and the replies won't be very illuminating.

To test the proposition, can you describe the nature of the oligarchy that governed the country when Obama was president?

 

[PureX]

Our nation was instituted by oligarchs who quite naturally presumed themselves to be ordained by God and the natural order of things to dictate the terms and mechanisms of the new nation's government. And in so doing they wrote a Constitution that allowed for this presumption to fester.

When George Washington succeeded in winning our independence from Great Britain he was appointed our first president, but at that time, it was assumed that he would be our new "king", for life, by the men who set up this nation. And such an appointed "kingship" of a wealthy elite, by a wealthy elite, rather than heredity, is pretty much a definition of plutocracy. To George Washington's credit, he refused to accept such a kingship, and insisted that we elect new leaders periodically, but even then it was understood that these elected leaders would come from the ruling wealthy elite class of men. And it has been so ever since.

So the seeds were sown right from the beginning, and the doors of government were constructed to remain open to any would-be oligarchs right from the start. Our founders talked of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all, and I think they even believed it in their minds and hearts. But in the end they were essentially oligarchs, and they modeled their new nation's government after themselves. They never instilled any means of thwarting oligarchy because it never occurred to them that they should.

 

[HonestJoe]

What happened to turn America in an oligarchy?

The Declaration of Independence.

 

[Sunstone]

Surely you need first of all to substantiate your starting assumption, viz. that the USA is an oligarchy, don't you?

It saddens me that you want me to do your homework for you. That the US is either an oligarchy or very close to an oligarchy is old news. A willingness to familiarize yourself with the basic facts of a topic is an admirable virtue.

 

[Sunstone]

Your OP asks several questions. Your last question interested me most first.



I don't have an answer or even an opinion in response to any of your questions, however I just finished googling "Forbes 400 wealthiest and how did they obtain their wealth", and came across this:
Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century U.S. - Inequality.org

I'll start reading through it now, but share it here in case you or someone else reads and processes it faster than I can.

Fascinating article! Very helpful! Thanks so much, Terry.

 

[exchemist]

Our nation was instituted by oligarchs who quite naturally presumed themselves to be ordained by God and the natural order of things to dictate the terms and mechanisms of the new nation's government. And in so doing they wrote a Constitution that allowed for this presumption to fester.

When George Washington succeeded in winning our independence from Great Britain he was appointed our first president, but at that time, it was assumed that he would be our new "king", for life, by the men who set up this nation. And such an appointed "kingship" of a wealthy elite, by a wealthy elite, rather than heredity, is pretty much a definition of plutocracy. To George Washington's credit, he refused to accept such a kingship, and insisted that we elect new leaders periodically, but even then it was understood that these elected leaders would come from the ruling wealthy elite class of men. And it has been so ever since.

So the seeds were sown right from the beginning, and the doors of government were constructed to remain open to any would-be oligarchs right from the start. Our founders talked of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all, and I think they even believed it in their minds and hearts. But in the end they were essentially oligarchs, and they modeled their new nation's government after themselves. They never instilled any means of thwarting oligarchy because it never occurred to them that they should.

I am sure this is historically accurate, but is it not a feature of all democracies in history that they start this way, and then the franchise and the routes to gaining power gradually become widened?

In the UK we can trace the development by which the pwer of the monarch was gradually constrained by, and transferred to, wider and wider circles, from Magna Carta to the Civil War, the so-called Glorious Revolution, the Great Reform Bill and finally universal suffrage and the rise of the Labour party, specifically formed to represent the working class and in part drawn from their number.

However, those who gain high political office are nearly always drawn from the more educated classes of people, just as is true in commerce, or the arts, or anything else. The reasons for this are fairly obvious - such people are equipped with the tools required to succeed: they have knowledge, have been taught how to learn and analyse, and can communicate well. (John Major is a rare modern exception - he can do all of these things supremely well, in spite of leaving school at 16. )

However if one defines educated people - pejoratively - as an "elite", as people like Trump and Boris Johnson like to do, then it is an easy step to portraying this as also an oligarchy.

 

[exchemist]

It saddens me that you want me to do your homework for you. That the US is either an oligarchy or very close to an oligarchy is old news. A willingness to familiarize yourself with the basic facts of a topic before pronouncing judgment on it from upon high is an admirable virtue.

I do not live in the USA (nor am I making any pronouncements, whether from on high or otherwise).
If this is accepted by everyone, why does the USA also regard itself as a beacon of democracy? Or has it stopped doing that?

Can you provide a link to something that will bring me up to speed?

 

[Srivijaya]

There's a sad recognition that binary democracy in the modern world is inadequate on many levels, as it lacks the vision to evolve, and preserve the freedom from which it was born. It is ridiculously easy to polarize and split, and serves to uphold vested interests of one kind or another. Still, dictatorship is waiting patiently in the wings - as one man's oppressive dictator, is another man's liberating hero.

Gondor is weak. Tolkien had this all worked out in LOTR.

 

[Sunstone]

Can you provide a link to something that will bring me up to speed?

If you will look very closely, you might notice a video labeled "background information" in the OP. "Bringing you up to speed" would take a semester or two of uni - at least. But that video is as good of a start as any you will get.

 

[Shad]

Your OP asks several questions. Your last question interested me most first.



I don't have an answer or even an opinion in response to any of your questions, however I just finished googling "Forbes 400 wealthiest and how did they obtain their wealth", and came across this:
Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century U.S. - Inequality.org

I'll start reading through it now, but share it here in case you or someone else reads and processes it faster than I can.

You didn't read the article did you? It has to lie to make it's story. Jeff Bezos created his wealth. Gates created his wealth. None are dynastic yet the article mentions all 3 as if they are. Only 1/3 of fortune 500 companies are generational yet the article includes 400 in a lump total forgetting what it just wrote one line before.

Standard money grab article.

 

[exchemist]

If you will look very closely, you might notice a video labeled "background information" in the OP. "Bringing you up to speed" would take a semester or two of uni - at least. But that video is as good of a start as any you will get.

OK. I don't do videos -too timewasting, shallow and often of doubtful provenance. I'm certainly not spending 25 mins on this.

What about Obama's presidency though? Who were the oligarchs running the country?

 

[exchemist]

There's a sad recognition that binary democracy in the modern world is inadequate on many levels, as it lacks the vision to evolve, and preserve the freedom from which it was born. It is ridiculously easy to polarize and split, and serves to uphold vested interests of one kind or another. Still, dictatorship is waiting patiently in the wings - as one man's oppressive dictator, is another man's liberating hero.

Gondor is weak. Tolkien had this all worked out in LOTR.

A very acute observation!

 

[Revoltingest]

You didn't read the article did you? It has to lie to make it's story. Jeff Bezos created his wealth. Gates created his wealth. None are dynastic yet the article mentions all 3 as if they are.

It seems the article is written to give that impression, but doesn't explicitly say so.

 

[Shad]

It seems the article is written to give that impression, but doesn't explicitly say so.

It is using misleading stats

 

[Revoltingest]

It is using misleading stats

It does strike me as somewhat misleading,
but not to the point of prevarication.

 

[Audie]

Our nation was instituted by oligarchs who quite naturally presumed themselves to be ordained by God and the natural order of things to dictate the terms and mechanisms of the new nation's government. And in so doing they wrote a Constitution that allowed for this presumption to fester.

When George Washington succeeded in winning our independence from Great Britain he was appointed our first president, but at that time, it was assumed that he would be our new "king", for life, by the men who set up this nation. And such an appointed "kingship" of a wealthy elite, by a wealthy elite, rather than heredity, is pretty much a definition of plutocracy. To George Washington's credit, he refused to accept such a kingship, and insisted that we elect new leaders periodically, but even then it was understood that these elected leaders would come from the ruling wealthy elite class of men. And it has been so ever since.

So the seeds were sown right from the beginning, and the doors of government were constructed to remain open to any would-be oligarchs right from the start. Our founders talked of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all, and I think they even believed it in their minds and hearts. But in the end they were essentially oligarchs, and they modeled their new nation's government after themselves. They never instilled any means of thwarting oligarchy because it never occurred to them that they should.

"Ruling wealthy elite class...ever since"= garbage.

Even you cannot force fit Obama into that.
Or or or.

 

[Shad]

It does strike me as somewhat misleading,
but not to the point of prevarication.

The argument was about generational wealth. By include non-generational wealth is to conflate issues thus mislead people