Posts Tagged ‘Oligarchy’
U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy- Princeton Study
Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy
By Brendan James April 18, 2014 TPM
A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.
Asking “[w]ho really rules?” researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America’s political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.
Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.
TPM Interview: Scholar Behind Viral ‘Oligarchy’ Study Tells You What It Means
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” they write, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
As one illustration, Gilens and Page compare the political preferences of Americans at the 50th income percentile to preferences of Americans at the 90th percentile as well as major lobbying or business groups. They find that the government—whether Republican or Democratic—more often follows the preferences of the latter group rather than the first.
The researches note that this is not a new development caused by, say, recent Supreme Court decisions allowing more money in politics, such as Citizens United or this month’s ruling on McCutcheon v. FEC. As the data stretching back to the 1980s suggests, this has been a long term trend, and is therefore harder for most people to perceive, let alone reverse.
“Ordinary citizens,” they write, “might often be observed to ‘win’ (that is, to get their preferred policy outcomes) even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites (with whom they often agree) actually prevail.”
95% of Income gains going to top 1%
from The Benefits of Economic Expansions Are Increasingly Going to the Richest Americans
NYT 09/26/14 [Some call it Capitalism- looks more like Cannibalism…..]
Wealth Inequality in America: perception and reality
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
References:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2…
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt…
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011…
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/…
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Category Nonprofits & Activism
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License Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Globalization and Debt: a return to slavery?
Taibbi: “Orwellian” SEC May Have Been Hiding Big Wall Street Crimes
By Sarah Seltzer | AlterNet
By Naomi Klein / The Nation When you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance.
Debt: The First Five Thousand Years
By David Graeber
Anthropologist David Graeber argues that it is only with a general historical understanding of debt and its relationship to violence that we can begin to appreciate our emerging epoch. Here he begins to fill in our historical knowledge gap
By David DeGraw | Amped Status
Oligarchy on the make- threat to democratic principles
Well worth thinking about, tho I’d 
hardly agree that feudalism is “normal”-
David Brin writes in: Space Exploration, Methane Blurps and Podcast Rants
… See a thought provoking snippet from the Globalist: “In the 1980s and 1990s, workers from China, India and the former Soviet bloc contributed 1.47 billion new workers to the global labor pool — effectively doubling the size of the world’s now-connected workforce, bringing little capital with them. Even Marx knew that the capital/labor ratio is critical. The more capital each worker has, the higher their productivity and pay. A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the balance of power as more workers compete for working with scarce capital.”
This ratio of scarcity explains some of the strong position of capital today and even (perhaps) the present hard push toward revived oligarchy, restoring the normal human governance model, recently displaced by the Enlightenment. That push may be all the more intense because new capital is forming at a furious rate, especially in Asia. Hence the ratio should correct itself within a couple of decades, especially as population levels off. The would-be restorers of that ancient pattern may feel they only have a little time….
American Corporatocracy (otherwise known as fascism)
By Paul A. Moore
InformationClearinghouse
January 22, 2010 –Schools teach that the United States of America is a democracy. The government was established as “of, by, and for the people” and later on, a President Abraham Lincoln called the nation’s people to join and die in a civil war that such a thing might never perish from the earth. Aside from the extent the lesson was ever in accord with the truth, it has today become an outright absurdity. The Supreme Court has declared once and for all that the corporations will rule. The United States of America is now better described as a corporatocracy. The government is owned and dictated to by these capitalist creations whose God is Mammon.
Radical Re-writing of 1st Amendment Creates Corporate State
Center for Media and Democracy
The Supreme Court just struck down critically important laws limiting corporate influence on election and public policy. Unless redressed, huge companies like Goldman Sachs and AIG will be able to use their enormous wealth to run campaigns against the President or anyone who opposes their agenda. You can help rebuke the Court and help put Americans before corporations by clicking here
An Introspective Look at the Future of America: Systemic Fraud, Corruption and Financial Instability
Global Research, Jan. 2, 2010
As we close out 2009 and look forward into 2010 and beyond, this has been a year of near financial catastrophe and monumental change, none of which benefited America or ordinary Americans. Late in 2008 and throughout 2009, events have happened in the US which would have been labeled unfathomable just a few short years ago, and yet already these monumental changes are expected to be filed into the memory hole and Americans are expected to believe nothing has changed.
Wake-up Call 