{"id":30001,"date":"2023-11-01T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T22:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckms.ca\/?p=30001"},"modified":"2023-11-01T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T22:35:34","slug":"can-american-democracy-survive-the-age-of-oligarchs-factkeepers-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/?p=30001","title":{"rendered":"Can American Democracy Survive the Age of Oligarchs? – Factkeepers.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Oligarchy is always a transitional system, typically a mere way station in the shift from democracy to fascism or some other form of authoritarianism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: Can American Democracy Survive the Age of Oligarchs? – Factkeepers.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

things I copied clipped while reading this. could this be a contributor to the stagnant wage growth since the 1970s<\/a>,:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a phenomenon that\u2019s popping up worldwide. In a new book,\u00a0<\/strong>The Oligarch\u2019s Grip<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, authors David Lingelbach and Valentina Rodr\u00edguez Guerra take the definition of \u201coligarch\u201d beyond the common understanding of a person who\u2019s morbidly rich.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe book distinguishes various types of oligarchs. \u2018Business oligarchs\u2019 like Musk turn wealth into political power, while \u2018political oligarchs\u2019 go the other way. A classic example of the latter, says the book, is Vladimir Putin, \u2018a billionaire with nuclear weapons\u2019. 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\u2019s Larry Page have rewired the information streams that flow into our brains.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0The 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cfree speech\u201d rights of billionaires (1976) and then extending that \u201cright to bribe\u201d to corporations as well (1978).<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>\u00a0decision blew open the doors to oligarchy in America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oligarchy is always a transitional system, typically a mere way station in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282],"tags":[1836,140,58,840,57],"class_list":["post-30001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-oligarchs","tag-paul","tag-politics","tag-putin","tag-usa","wpcat-282-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30007,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30001\/revisions\/30007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}