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Do we live in an oligarchy?

Is the US an oligarchy?


  • Total voters
    44
  • Poll closed .
It basically established that corporations and the wealthy have right to influence elections as much as they please. It basically prevents any hope of reform.

But it is about even on both sides. The money flowing into the Clinton camp or related to the Clinton camp far exceeded Trump's. In fact, Trump was elected with probably the most money ever spent by everyone on both sides in an attempt to stop him. The left likes to pretend that all of this money from corporations and the wealthy goes into the Republican Camp but there is just as much money flowing into the Democratic camp. You've got George Soros, Michael Moore, Warren Buffet, and a bevy of Hollywood celebrities, just to name a few, so don't pretend it is one sided. And, look at all of the money Wall Street gave Hillary in one form or another. She was bought and paid for by corporations.
 
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We live in a democratic republic.
 
But it is about even on both sides. The money flowing into the Clinton camp or related to the Clinton camp far exceeded Trump's. In fact, Trump was elected with probably the most money ever spent by everyone on both sides in an attempt to stop him. The left likes to pretend that all of this money from corporations and the wealthy goes into the Republican Camp but there is just as much money flowing into the Democratic camp. You've got George Soros, Michael Moore, Warren Buffet, and a bevy of Hollywood celebrities, just to name a few, so don't pretend it is one sided. And, look at all of the money Wall Street gave Hillary in one form or another. She was bought and paid for by corporations.

Now where did I say this was a one-sided issue?
 
support strong unions
raise the maximum tax rate
revise our election system to minimize the effect of money
admit corporations aren't people
establish a single payer health care system like the rest of the modern world has done
raise the cap on Social Security
quit looking to other way while illegal labor is being exploited.

That should do for a start.

Who is going to pay for any of that and why do you think that will help0 anybody?
 
The US, especially post the 2017 GOP tax cut legislation further enriching the wealthy/corporations, is rapidly becoming a plutocracy where the wealthy-elite rule.

This has been further enabled/magnified by Citizens United v. FEC and the legal establishment of S/PACs (Super/Political Action Committee's). This system requires huge sums of money to win (purchase) high public office.

I've lived in Ukraine when it was a total oligarchy. Now it is a partial oligarchy and it is intended that adopting/incorporating EU 'Rule of Law' statute's will further eradicate the oligarch system.

I've visited Russia numerous times and it is an authoritarian oligarchy ruled by an elite clique of siloviki (former/current security-service officials) and corrupt business/crime oligarchs (extremely wealthy individuals).
 
Who is going to pay for any of that and why do you think that will help0 anybody?

Well, let's see...

strong unions, paid for by union members, give workers power to negotiate better wages and working conditions.
Raise maximum tax rate, provides more revenue for projects like the interstate highways, built at a time when the maximum tax rate was 90%
Revise our election system to minimize the effect of money.. would cost nothing and give average Americans more power over the election system.
admit corporations aren't people would cost nothing and take away power from powerful and wealthy corporations, which really aren't people at all.
establish a single payer health care system like the rest of the modern world has done would save a ton of money as we currently have the most expensive health care system on Earth.
raise the cap on Social Security would keep SS from going into the red and see to it that the elderly poor continue to have some dignity.
quit looking to other way while illegal labor is being exploited would raise wages for the sorts of jobs currently taken by illegals.

Looks like a win win plan to me.
 
And do you think that democratic republic is slowly becoming an oligarchy?

No, no real signs point towards this. We would have to make some major changes even to begin such a transformation.
 
The powerful can be oligarchs, but they by no means have to be, so I dislike the term but will use it for this thread.



Not exactly, but on a oligarchy-nonoligarchy scale, you are trending towards oligarchy, as are most countries I'm familiar with.

It's not exactly a new phenomenon.
Hammurabi's Law was game changing because it made laws legible for the common man, and made it more difficult for the powerful to manipulate the system.
Ancient Rome was a game changer because it introduced (in theory at least) equality before the law, making it more difficult for the powerful to manipulate the system.
Protestantism was a game changer because it insisted on preaching God's word in the local tongue rather than Latin, making it more difficult for the powerful to manipulate the system.

On the other hand, all the various forms of tyranny have special privilege for the powerful.
"This law applies to you, but not to me. This tax applies to you, but not to me. This obligation exists for you, but not for me. This exemption applies to me, but not to you. This right of veto applies to me, but not to you."

Generally, transparency and the abolition of special privilege is associated with human progress and the opposite with it's regress.
The problem for most countries in the Western world is that one can buy special privilege via (legal) contributions. It is not a problem I have a solution for, because contributions are necessary for popular rule to exist.
Abolish them and only the rich can afford to run for office. Regulate them and you have a class of bureaucrats deciding who gets to contribute what. Do not regulate them and the rich can afford to buy more privilege than the common man.

There is no easy solution. I guess the best we can do is to make contributions and privilege as transparent and accessible as possible.
I would like being able to ask my representatives why they voted for tax breaks to someone who contributed to their interests without having to give up my day job to do so.
The only solution I can see to some of the monetary influence is to have publicly funded elections - taxes pay for a set amount of advertising and such for each candidate, and no other campaigning is allowed....

Not sure that's a good idea though - because someone has to decide who qualifies as a candidate, and too many would cost more than the available funds might allow.

I think a large fix (in the USA at least) would be to make it illegal for corporations to donate to or spend money supporting politicians.
That used to be the case, but various legal decisions have made it legal for corporations to do so.

Combine that with changes in laws and practice which have pushed corporations into a corner where they are legally required to do everything in their power to increase the profit they can then pass on to their shareholders, and inevitably that will be interpreted as doing everything within their power to manipulate the government into helping them do so.
 
The Deep State has been the oligarchy, President Trump is currently destroying it. If they manage to destroy him we continue the process of becoming one.

How is he destroying it?
 
The only solution I can see to some of the monetary influence is to have publicly funded elections - taxes pay for a set amount of advertising and such for each candidate, and no other campaigning is allowed....

Some countries have introduced variants of that (for example Denmark where I live), but it raises a couple of serious issues.

First is that because established parties make the laws and so decide how much funding everyone gets, popular movements will not get a say in this, because they do not yet have representation.
Meaning that the established parties can choose how much money the population have to pay to campaign for the established parties against said grassroot movements. So if you are a member of say the Coffee Party movement, you get taxed X dollars to pay for the Liberal, Orange Juice, and Conservative parties' campaigns, meaning that you have that much less money to pay for the campaign you want to support. And worse, people who don't care one way or another automatically support the established parties through their tax payments, giving them a blatantly unfair advantage.

And secondly, on a related tangent, the established parties make the laws and so decide how much money the electorate has to pay for their campaigns.
So essentially people who are elected to govern for the common good get to decide how much money the electorate have to pay those same people to influence the minds of the electorate.

Both are very clear conflicts of interest, and what's worse, they both work to negate the momentum of popular movements who want to express the will of the people through campaigning in a lawful and democratically correct manner.
 
The only solution I can see to some of the monetary influence is to have publicly funded elections - taxes pay for a set amount of advertising and such for each candidate, and no other campaigning is allowed....

Not sure that's a good idea though - because someone has to decide who qualifies as a candidate, and too many would cost more than the available funds might allow.

I think a large fix (in the USA at least) would be to make it illegal for corporations to donate to or spend money supporting politicians.
That used to be the case, but various legal decisions have made it legal for corporations to do so.

Combine that with changes in laws and practice which have pushed corporations into a corner where they are legally required to do everything in their power to increase the profit they can then pass on to their shareholders, and inevitably that will be interpreted as doing everything within their power to manipulate the government into helping them do so.

Publicly funded elections sounds good on the surface, but there are problems with the idea as you mentioned.

Here's what we do:

When there is an opening for representative, senator, or president, we advertise the position and solicit resumes, letters of intent, and letters of recommendation, just like we do when there is any other job opening.

The paper is screened by a panel of citizens, similar to a grand jury.

A half dozen, maybe a dozen, qualified candidates would be chosen for interview. That would be a dozen more qualified candidates than ran for president in the last election. Then a thorough background check is done for all of them. Those who flunk would be removed from consideration and replacements chosen.

Those candidates are interviewed on national TV, followed by a primary election.

The two top vote getters square off in a debate, also on national TV.

A general election is held to choose the final candidate. After that, no more delving into the winner's past is allowed until after his/her term is up.

There it is. No parties, no fund raising, no annoying and misleading TV ads paid for by special interest money, no more digging up dirt on the winner after the fact, none of the nonsense that happens during elections.
 
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