For years, Oxfam—along with advocates and activists around the world—has argued that extreme concentration of wealth is leading to extreme concentration of power, allowing an ultra-rich few to tighten their grip on governments, economies, and media.
What is oligarchy?
Oligarchy is about the ability of an ultra-wealthy elite to shape political decision-making in ways that increase their wealth. Oligarchic power is ultimately rooted in wealth. The power of oligarchs is enabled by huge concentrations of wealth.
Given the massive amount of wealth and power that the ultra-rich have amassed, coupled with the way too many U.S. politicians have embraced them, it’s only fitting to use the term for the direction that America is headed.........
What about the electoral process? Don’t we all have equal power in that system? Not quite. We’ve seen 150 billionaire families spend a total of $1.9 billion in support of presidential and congressional candidates in 2024.
Right now, we’re getting a view into just how the ultra-rich have bought themselves a seat—if not a couch—in the Oval Office. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos are a few examples of the wealthy elite who have not only cozied up to president-elect Trump to influence policy, but also benefitted under previous administrations. So far, Trump has 13 billionaires—and counting—in his proposed administration whose total wealth is more than $450 billion. And even without Musk, Trump’s cabinet would be the richest in history..............
Trump’s blueprint for new oligarchy: three things to watch
First is a massive upward redistribution of wealth from everyday people, chiefly through a massive tax giveaway to the ultra-rich and to corporations.
Second is cutting away the public programs that we all rely upon and to take it a step further, privatizing programs to give them to profit-making corporations.
And third is taking a sledgehammer to the rules and referees that protect ordinary people from excessive corporate and monopoly power.
It seems to me that this has already been accomplished in just a few short weeks the only question remaining at this point being can the U.S. ….and indeed the rest of the world …... ever recover from this attack on our democracy and if so how many years will that take?
