Oligarchy is always a transitional system, typically a mere way station in the shift from democracy to fascism or some other form of authoritarianism.
Source: Can American Democracy Survive the Age of Oligarchs? – Factkeepers.com
things I copied clipped while reading this. could this be a contributor to the stagnant wage growth since the 1970s,:
It’s a phenomenon that’s popping up worldwide. In a new book, The Oligarch’s Grip, authors David Lingelbach and Valentina Rodríguez Guerra take the definition of “oligarch” beyond the common understanding of a person who’s morbidly rich.
“The book distinguishes various types of oligarchs. ‘Business oligarchs’ like Musk turn wealth into political power, while ‘political oligarchs’ go the other way. A classic example of the latter, says the book, is Vladimir Putin, ‘a billionaire with nuclear weapons’. Oligarch presidents have decision-making power, oligarch influencers such as Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch and George Soros set agendas, while platform owners such as Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page have rewired the information streams that flow into our brains.”
The top tax rate was generally around 90 percent, giving the very wealthy an incentive to leave their money in their businesses and pay their employees well. Which is why from the 1930s through the end of the 1970s the American middle class grew in both numbers and wealth faster than any the world had ever seen.
But then in the 1970s five Republicans on the Supreme Court, for the first time in American history, began the process of legalizing political bribery, first ruling that laws limiting big money in politics were suppressing the “free speech” rights of billionaires (1976) and then extending that “right to bribe” to corporations as well (1978).
That Citizens United decision blew open the doors to oligarchy in America.
