The Senator of Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, has commented on the increasing use of the term “oligarchy” by her democratic colleagues. Slotkin seems to believe that the term “oligarchy” beyond the American coasts is no response.
In the meantime Beyond these coasts of records on visitors. Americans, according to Sanders, seem to be “not quite as stupid as Ms. Slotkin thinks”.
Has America developed into an oligarchy? Could the denial of the growing American oligarchy be a successful political message? Let us leave this debate to the two senators and instead concentrate on the question of whether the term “oligarchy” is correct at all.
What does “oligarchy” mean – and how does it apply to the USA?
Lee Drutman from Vox dedicated a detailed contribution to this topic in April. According to Drutman, oligarchy prevails when “a handful of very wealthy people uses their wealth to influence the government in its own financial interest”. He gives numerous examples of mega billionaires who have used their wealth to influence politics- such as the nine-digit election campaign donations by Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon and Miriam Adelson in the election 2024. According to Drutman, the interests of all billionaires agree, according to Drutman.
In a recently published essay in New York, Evan Osnos delivers the cruel details on how the ultra -rich use their influence to enrich themselves personally. For example, he mentions the pardon that President Donald Trump granted the billionaire Trevor Milton after he and his wife donated $ 1.8 million to Trump’s election campaign. Osnos also lists the advantages that Elon Musk and his companies receive from Team Trump. Perhaps the most worrying is how Trump – our “Oligarch in Chief” – has used his presidential power to advantage.
Drutman’s statistical analysis focuses on the top income of the chief a percentage – a group of over three million Americans. But as helpful as these numbers are, they distract from the actual point: America’s wealth does not focus on three million, not on 3,000, and not even 300 households. In truth, only 19 families has been able to take place in the United States in the past twelve years.
The data clearly show: it is oligarchy
The data on the concentration of assets in America over the past four decades clearly interpret in one direction: oligarchy.
But this direction is difficult to see – unless you look beyond the increasing proportion of the richest groups in the national assets, regardless of whether the top one percent, 0.1 percent or an even smaller share. The statistics about the wealth of the rich in America consistently obscure the wealth of the most rich. For example, if the top 0.01 percent more of the national assets acquires, then the entire top 0.1 percent and the top one percent show the same growth – even if the lower 0.99 percent of the top has no growth.
The pattern of the American concentration of assets only becomes clear when we look at the groups that are directly below the richest groups: the nine percent below the top one percent, the 0.9 percent below the top 0.1 percent, and 0.09 percent below 0.01 percent. This differentiated view reveals the handful of very rich Americans, who form our oligarchy of the 21st century.
Let’s start with the nine percent of the Americans who are one percent directly below the top. According to the real-time inequality data set by the economist Gabriel Zucman, the top ten percent of the US population had roughly the same proportion of national wealth as ten years earlier in January 1990. However, the top of the top a percentage and the next nine percent developed.
The richest are getting richer – and less and less
The top earners in the top one percent increased their property share by 5.6 percentage points – from 24.8 to 30.4 percent over the course of a decade. The following nine percent, on the other hand, lost 5.9 percentage points – from 43.7 to 37.8 percent in the same period.
The proportion of this nine percent has dropped further since 1990. Today, its share of assets is just over 35 percent. The concentration of assets in the United States since 1980 is clearly limited to one percent.
Now let’s take a look at this top one percent. The same pattern is also shown here. The tops of the top 0.1 percent has increased dramatically in the past 45 years – from 8.1 percent in 1980 to 21.9 percent today. In the first 26 years of this period, the next 0.9 percent only recorded a slight increase in their share – from 16.7 to 18 percent – and since then no growth.
This means that since 2006 the concentration of assets in the United States has been limited to the top 0.1 percent alone. The next 0.9 percent will take place.
The further we climb in the hierarchy of the super rich, the more clearly the picture becomes. Since December 2012, the top 0.01 percent has increased its property by almost two percentage points to 12.1 percent. And the proportion of the next 0.09 percent? It was 9.7 percent in December 2012 and is now 9.8 percent – practically unchanged.
This is oligarchy
Conclusion: Since 2012, the increase in wealth in the United States has been almost exclusively focused on 0.01 percent. National wealth not only continues to concentrate – the beneficiaries of this concentration are becoming less and less.
How few? The economist Gabriel Zucman has recently made new figures available to Wall Street Journal: the richest 0.00001 percent of the US population-just 19 households-now holds 1.8 percent of the total US assets. This corresponds to more than an increase in its share since 1982.
If you combine the Forbes 400 list from 2012 with Zucman’s figures at the time of the overall assets of the United States, there are even more striking numbers: About half of the increase in wealth of the top 0.01 percent since 2012 has been the top 0.00001 percent-i.e. the top thousand of the top hundredth of the top. Nineteen households as a whole.
As a reminder: The concentration of assets in America has largely limited itself to the top 0.01 percent of US budgets in the past twelve years. And half of this concentration benefited just 19 households.
This is oligarchy.