Has the USA turned into an oligarchy?

Pretty sure it crossed that line decades ago.

I say this in nearly complete seriousness:

Always has been

🌎🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

It has been an oligarchy for a long time. This has been studied and proven.

Well in 2015 Jimmy Carter said that the United States is "just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. "

That same year The Economist's Democracy Index downgraded the United States to a "flawed democracy" and it has continued to trend downwards since then.

If you're looking for something more recent, Bernie Sanders is saying the same thing: "We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, have so much wealth and so much power".

So between the massive (and growing) income inequality in the country, and rulings like Citizen's United it's hard not to believe it's not at least on the trajectory towards an oligarchy. Now throw in the blatantly corrupt picks of the Trump administration, where cabinet positions are favors to rich friends, or being given to billionaires with a direct interest in killing the government agency they are running - not to mention all the things he's routinely done / will do to enrich himself / friends with tax payer dollars and it certainly seems like an oligarchy to me.

And just on a personal vibes level, living here, it feels like legislation to help normal people or solve normal people's problems is almost non-existent. And when it does happen, it also conveniently throws a ton of money at the rich at the same time (see recent tax cuts, pandemic relief funds, etc.). Even something like the Affordable Care Act, which did a ton of net good things for this country, enriched a whole lot of private healthcare companies along the way rather than creating an actual public option with negotiated prices to keep government costs down.

Turned? Have you ever heard of the Rockefeller and Morgan families?

the US is run by billionaires and corporations.

you can live in peace as long as you don't inconvenience them too much, and keep paying them

Always has been. They're simply not hiding it any more.

The US has been an oligarchy for some time. Act accordingly.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

There are political cartoons from over a century ago where they're talking about how much of an oligarchy it is. Look at this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg/1920px-The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg

It's been an open oligarchy since Citizen's United. Seems like a lot of people are just now seeing the effects of what that decision allowed. Our Supreme Court was already corrupt, but because they at least maintained an air of dignity, people just looked past the death of our democracy.

Tbh I think the most recent election and its implications makes the facts abundantly clear.

I would say corporatocracy. Ever since Citizens United, corporations have been making more and more policy and political decisions, placing in power who they believe will advance their agendas of unlimited and never ending profit.

I think it’s worse. I think we have noble houses fighting for the throne again. The Bush family, the Clinton family, they wanted Michelle Obama.. In what sane democracy does the family member or wife of the last elected leader make sense as being the best option? Forget oligarchy, we have a straight up monarchy brewing with a nice democratic paint job.

Astronaut Pistol Astronaut.

It always was

We've been an oligarchy since the Reagan years.

When Eisenhower warned of Military Industrial complex, US was already an oligarchy, and the warning was the declaration of defeat.

JFK assassination was deep state stuff, followed by more pandering to oligarchy with Regan. Media was always in charge of who won elections. That the veil of pretense for liberalism is removed doesn't change the nature of US empire, and its autocracy over meaningful rulership. Trump simultaneously threatens the US empire's covert colonization of world, while threatening to subjugate world even harder. Naked Oligarchy, and explicit anti-liberalism as treason, is a hallmark of incoming rulership through.

The rich were behind the mutiny in the first place, so, always has been

The usa Is a fascist regime. Plutocracy and oligarchy are normal Components of fascism.

citizens united is where I would draw the line and no I don't think we are an oligarchy but a plutocracy. Honestly Im not even sure if that is the right word because the money itself has the effect and the various wealthy people spending it. I don't think they even really understand what they are doing. So its more like being ruled by money rather than the wealthy per se and honestly the ones calling the shots are the financial entities so corporations. Part of it may just be their relative power and active global decision making bend. News articles talk about musk possibly being the first trillionaire but mean while corps have based a trillion as early as 2008 and now many multi trillion dollar companies are around and the top add up to tens of trillions. So corptocracy. We had enough of that to begin with but now its out of control. Someone recently posted the international agreement that allows corps to sue countries and that finished up in the 90's so it not only started before but is also not just a us thing.

LoL! Just because the Richest Man on Earth bought Our Presidency and anytime you kill a Rich Person it's considered an Act of Terrorism DOESNT make us an OLIGARCHY!

Yes.

Really and truly, yes.

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Oh, HELL yes.

Oil company with an army...

According to Jimmy Carter it has beensince 2015:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-63262/

Wut. When was the US not an oligarchy? Give me a year.

That was the case since the 80s

The USA has always and forever represented the will of the Bourgeoisie. The issue we are seeing now is further and further separation between the Proletariat and a smaller and smaller concentration of the Bourgeoisie due to Capitalism's centralizing nature. The silver lining is that this same centralizing process makes Socialism even easier to implement once the Proletariat siezes control, as these large intricate networks have already developed their own infrastructure for planning that can be folded into the Public Sector, the hard part is getting over that threshold of power.

Yes.

Looks like you are a few years behind events.

Americans foundation was built as an oligarchy.

Lol this post made me appreciate Lemmy so much.

There was a question on dead-it asking something about why the American middle class seemed to suffer so much since the mid20th century and it was full of obvious bots pointing to the positive but temporary effects of WW2. It took quite some scrolling before I saw any mention of the stagnation of real wages since then.

Oligarchy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy take your pick.

The land of the free enslaved it's inhabitants.

if money = power then liberal (democracy) = oligarchy

I mean, no country truely had 10/10 democracy.

The US literally started out from people in chains, but eventually free the enslaved people (with the prison exemption), then black men could vote, then women.

Segregation was legal, then it it was outlawed.

Civil Right Act was passed

The level of racism began to deminish, not completely gone, but deminishing

I would say the US was at 1/10 democracy at the beginning, it was at 5/10 before trump, then it was at 4/10 right after Jan-6, now its at 4.25/10 (because some judicial appointments were made by biden as a counterbalance to republican judges).

Is it an oligarchy? Not really. I would say it's a democracy in which rich people have an advantage in money and influence. So I guess you could call it a semi-oligarchy. Because in a real oligarchy, the media would've been censored, and you wouldn't be seeing my comment, you wouldn't be able to ask such question, there'd be no free(ish) internet access. There's be no somewhat protected union activity. There's be no somewhat protected protests. There are often violations to those rights, but back then, it was way worse.

We never really had a true 10/10 democracy, but as time goes on, it tends to trend toward becoming more democratic. (We'll see what happens with Project 2025. Could be just another period of recession as it has happened many times throughout US history, or it could be Weimar 1933, only time will tell)

The people saying "always has been" have really short memories or've forgotten about the Roosevelt administrations.

There is a decent argument to be made that the USA is a de-facto oligarchy. However, it's a de-jure liberal democracy and Constitutional Republic for the time being.

Feel free to crosspost to !AskUSA@discuss.online

Sure you can. Until January 6th.

it's very close to turning into one.

It's not quite there, but trump is definitely not one to shy away from it, so it mostly depends on who he appoints and interacts with. And how corrupt he will be.

A while ago

It's at least a Soft Oligarchy yes. There's no legally or extra legally enforced class system. If you can make it into the upper classes, by guile, luck, or sheer bastardry they'll accept you and let you run some things, maybe even political offices. See J.D. Vance, a millennial from Appalachia who has risen to the Vice Presidency via guile and sheer bastardry.

But it's a Soft Oligarchy because opportunities are far from equal. Before anyone starts screeching, equality of outcome isn't an expectation here, merely equality of opportunity. In the large majority of cases your zip code can predict your future socioeconomic level. And not because rural areas are cheaper, that just means middle and upper class start at lower numbers there. Those classes are still not being obtained. Along with this are several studies over the last couple decades telling us that socioeconomic mobility is all but dead, both individually, and more recently, intergenerational mobility.

So while you aren't going to be killed or imprisoned for earning too much or asking for stuff above your station, it is very rare to access those levels without being born to them. Thus the "soft" in Soft Oligarchy.

Yes, it has

The closest thing we have to democracy is our ability to begin democracy by fighting against first-past-the-post voting systems

No, we will never be an oligarchy. A plutocracy, yes, but I think money is the deciding factor here.

I'm no fool, they never convinced me of that lie.

50 is divided, not united...