https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...lionaires-sanders-trump-musk-data-1235393910/ As Bernie Sanders campaigns against “oligarchy,” the data shows wealth concentration is benefiting shockingly few families Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin has recently been fretting about the increasing use of the term “oligarchy” by her fellow Democrats. Slotkin apparently feels that “oligarchy” has no resonance beyond America’s coasts. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders has been drawing record crowds beyond those coasts to his anti-oligarchy rallies. Americans, Sanders has said, don’t appear to be “quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.” Has America become an oligarchy? Could denouncing America’s growing oligarchy be a winning political message? Let’s leave those two senators to continue their debate over whether the term “oligarchy” resonates with voters and consider instead whether that term should resonate with them. Lee Drutman at Vox devoted a lengthy piece to this subject in April. Oligarchy exists, Drutman posits, when a “handful of very wealthy individuals use their riches to shape and influence the government on their own financial behalf.” He goes on to note the many examples of mega-billionaires using their wealth to shape government policy, including the nine-figure political contributions of Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson in the 2024 election. On tax and policy issues where the interests of all billionaires align, Drutman concludes, policy making has consistently favored their shared interests. In a recent New Yorker essay, Evan Osnos fills in the gory details about how the ultra-rich are also using their influence to benefit themselves personally. He mentions, for instance, the pardon President Donald Trump bestowed on billionaire Trevor Milton after Milton and his wife contributed $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign. He also outlines the benefits Musk and his businesses are receiving from Team Trump. Most troubling of all, Osnos details how Trump — our “oligarch in chief” — has used his presidential power to benefit himself. Drutman’s statistical analysis focuses on the income share of the entire top one percent, a cohort of over three million Americans. His stats on this top one percent, while certainly helpful, should not draw attention away from the reality that America’s wealth is primarily concentrating into far fewer than 3 million sets of pockets. Or even 3,000 — or 300 — sets of pockets. Ultimately, over the past dozen or so years, about half the concentration of wealth in the U.S. has benefited just 19 families. Indeed, the data on America’s wealth concentration over the past four decades point us clearly in only one direction: oligarchy. But that direction can be difficult to scope out — until we look beyond the increasing share of the country’s wealth held by each top-most group, whether that share be the top one percent or top 0.1 percent of whatever. The statistics on the wealth of America’s rich consistently obscure the wealth of America’s richest. Say, for instance, that the top 0.01 percent grabs an additional two percent of the country’s wealth. The entire top 0.1 percent and entire top one percent would show that same two percent increase even if the wealth share of the bottom 0.99 percent of the top one percent has registered no increase at all. We can only see the pattern of American wealth concentration clearly when we focus on the groups that follow each of those top-most groups, the nine percent that follow the top one percent, the 0.9 percent that follow the top 0.1 percent, and the 0.09 percent that follow the top 0.01 percent. The numbers we get from these breakdowns point us dramatically to the handful of very wealthy Americans who make up our 21st-century American oligarchy. Let’s start with the nine percent of Americans who sit just below the top one percent. Back in January 1990, according to economist Gabriel Zucman’s Realtime Inequality database, our top 10 percent in the U.S. had virtually the same share of America’s wealth as this group held 10 years earlier. But the wealth shares of the top one percent and the next nine percent moved in opposite directions. The deep pockets in the top one percent increased their wealth share by 5.6 percentage points, moving from a 24.8 percent wealth share to a 30.4 percent share over the ten-year period. The next nine percent saw their share of the nation’s wealth decrease by 5.9 percentage points, from 43.7 to 37.8 percent during that same 10-year period. Since 1990, the wealth share of that nine percent has slid further. That share sits today just slightly above 35 percent. The concentration in America’s wealth since 1980, in other words, has quite clearly been limited to the top one percent. Now let’s look inside that top one percent. We find the same dynamic at work. The wealth share of the top 0.1 percent has stunningly increased over the past 45 years, from 8.1 percent in 1980 to 21.9 percent today. In the first 26 years of that period, the next 0.9 percent saw only a slight increase in their wealth share, from 16.7 to 18 percent, with no share increase at all since then. Which means that since 2006, the concentration in our country’s wealth has been limited to just the top 0.1 percent. The next 0.9 percent have essentially only been treading water. As we move higher up in the ranks of America’s super wealthy, we see the same story. Since December 2012, our richest 0.01 percent have increased their wealth share by close to two percentage points, to 12.1 percent. And the wealth share of the next 0.09 percent? In December 2012, that share stood at 9.7 percent. Today, over a decade later, it stands at 9.8 percent, virtually the same. The bottom line: Since 2012, the concentration in our country’s wealth has almost entirely been limited to just our richest 0.01 percent. Our country’s wealth is not just continuing to concentrate. The beneficiaries of that concentration have become an ever smaller group. How small? The economist Gabriel Zucman has recently shared with The Wall Street Journal estimates on the share of U.S. wealth held by our richest 0.00001 percent, an elite just 19 households strong. The wealth share of this tiny group has hit 1.8 percent of total U.S. wealth, a share that represents over a ten-fold increase from the top 0.00001 percent’s share in 1982. We can determine, using a combination of the Forbes 400 list from 2012 and Zucman’s data for total American wealth at that time, some even more striking numbers. About half of the wealth-share increase of the top 0.01 percent since 2012 has been concentrated in the top 0.00001 percent — the top one-thousandth of the top one-hundredth of the top one percent. Nineteen households total. To recap, the concentration of American wealth has been, over the past dozen or so years, largely limited to the top 0.01 percent of American households, and half that concentration has benefited just 19 households. That's oligarchy.
Bernie's been beating that drum since the 1990s, you tell us, has it been successful? Unlike say, Obama, Clinton, Biden and even-gasp-Bernie Sanders himself. Those billionaires are not the reason that you aren't rich. Just makes people feel good.
Colombia, while South America's most stable democracy, is steered by a number of families, instead oligarchs that are called the "eternals". Even small places like Ireland, wealthy families can sit around the dinner table and decide the priorities for the government. But they are not named in political discussion. That there is an apex seems inevitable at any scale, but we should all understand what is actually going on, it makes things less muddled.
Stupid Americans keep voting for it.For half the country ending DEI and owning the libs are more important.
Democrats like Slotkin are the problem.She doesn't want to talk about it because the oligarchy owns her and most Democrats too which is why Biden and Democrats didn't even attempt to end the Trump tax cuts and raise taxes during his term even they could have through reconciliation.
1. we made them super rich by buying their companies’ stock. 2. It’s inherent in human existence that the rich get more rich. They are good at getting rich and as they make more money it’s easier to get richer.
Those billionaires are fucking with my peace because they run for office and wont shut the fuck up about dumb shit. You have to be rich to run for office so I wish people would stop using that as a negative in debates. what irks me is these rich fucks overstate their importance in a figurehead position unless they want to ruin things and then suddenly they stick their noses in eveything and fuck shit up.