Can one still claim that the USA is a liberal democracy? Where do you draw the line?
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It always was
I guess Teddy Roosevelt and FDR never existed.
We didn’t have a democracy then either. How many parties were at the debates? And how much wealth did the candidates have compared to the rest of the US?
Yep, all oligarchs.
I need you to define the word “oligarchy” and then show me that it applies using that specific definition.
I sorta disagree in the context of having a middle class. We did and still do have our oligarchs, we had our Gilded Age which I would definitely call an oligarchy that lasted into the early 1900s with the Rail, Steel, and Oil barons to name a few. But the middle class exploded in the post-war years, unions became powerful, corporations and the rich were brought somewhat to heel with consumer and worker protections, along with high taxes that kept the rich from taking an even bigger chunk of the pie. Yeah, the rich still did rich people stuff, but they tended to do it more on the DL.
Now? We’re literally at the point where people are so absurdly rich they can have private space programs, dump hundreds of thousands into political campaigns, crush unions, invite themselves into the government, and have fuck you money. Literally, Musk telling people to fuck themselves.
So IMO yeah, the US is an full-on oligarchy again after a brief semi-respite in the middle to later parts of the 20th century, and it’s a shameless and open one.
the US is an full-on oligarchy again after a brief semi-respite in the middle to later parts of the 20th century
It went from oligarchy that provided a certain minimum quality of life to workers into one that is intentionally as extractive as possible. Once women entered the work force and effectively doubled the labor pool, capitalists had a lot more leverage.
Spot on! Especially the “shameless” bit. Yeah, the rich were rich, but Jesus, it was distasteful and immoral to flaunt it.
if money = power then liberal (democracy) = 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.
Yes.
Really and truly, yes.
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.
Agreeing with this individual. The US has been an oligarchy for a while and late President Carter said it himself “It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s 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. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger.”
True. We’ve had J. Paul Getty, JP Morgan, Wm. Randolph Hearst, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis up to George Soros and Elon Musk. Since long before Citizen Kane and actually since the founding of the nation, it has been wealthy families, companies and individuals wielding the actual power in the nation and, honestly, across the world. It’s not like millionaires from billionaire families have never been elected senator or president before.
The people that are called “oligarchs” in the news and across the internet, though, are amateurs, puppets or patsies. Especially, the new Russian, Chinese oligarchs. The real powers don’t hold office and they try to keep their names out of the news.
Wut. When was the US not an oligarchy? Give me a year.
1908 and 1940.
During this time populist policies that disrupted the owners were implemented and being implemented. As such, it is clear they weren’t in control of the country. Thus, it was not an oligarchy.
These are the easiest examples. Anyone who thinks it was always an oligarchy is simplifying history. Anyone who disputes that is a liar or an idiot.
1200 BCE
Technically correct
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.
There’s no legally or extra legally enforced class system.
Lol wat?
US has a strict class system. There is owner class and working class, they get treated differently under the law.
For example, look at how owners get taxed v how regular people get taxed. That’s legally enforced class.
.D. Vance, a millennial from Appalachia who has risen to the Vice Presidency via guile and sheer bastardry.
Regime propaganda relies on these stories to justify the class system. Every generation gets a few of this class traitors so pedons can be told… You see loser, if you worked harder, daddy would reward you too! Now back on the planstation, start making daddy some mother fucking money.
The tax system doesn’t care where you came from. In a Hard Oligrachy it would. You would never escape the working class tax system or justice system and those systems would be designed to prevent you from changing classes, to the point of destroying anyone with the pretensions to try. The fact that you can access that other standard of treatment means the class system isn’t enforced. If you want to say it’s highly encouraged I would agree with you, but this isn’t some conspiracy to have a couple winners that get highly propagandized, and there’s no law against socioeconomic mobility.
Examples of Hard oligarchies are countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. In Russia you will go out a window because someone powerful didn’t like your competition and you have no protections; and in Saudi Arabia you will be arrested for pissing off the Royals.
The US is bad enough without exaggerating shit to make it seem like the worst. That leaves us unable to see what we might want to keep. Like the way the justice and healthcare systems treat rich people, we should all have that.
You would never escape the working class tax system or justice system and those systems would be designed to prevent you from changing classes, to the point of destroying anyone with the pretensions to try
This is practically how it functions, working class rarely becomes owner class.
there’s no law against socioeconomic mobility.
There is a set of laws that protect owners property, they get cash transfers from the government budgets, their legal entities get preferential tax treatment. Sure anyone can start business technically but capital is needed…
US increasingly doesn’t have social mobility, you parents social rank correlates strongly with your own out comes.
In Russia you will go out a window because someone powerful didn’t like your competition
Boeing milled its whistleblower, nothing happened.
Esptain committed “suicide”
JFK, mlk and malcom X got killed by the ruling class.
So it’s conspiracy theories.
Have a nice day.
So it’s conspiracy theories.
Lol, they are about as valid as whatever the government is shilling. It does make one wonder why so much of government records related to these murfers are classified still…
I’m no fool, they never convinced me of that lie.
50 is divided, not united…
How does one unite that which is already whole?
Tbh I think the most recent election and its implications makes the facts abundantly clear.
I say this in nearly complete seriousness:
Always has been
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Literally founded by slave owners
Only landowning or capitalist white men could vote and participate in politics…
Pretty sure it crossed that line decades ago.
I’d say around the beginning of the 1900s is when we truly lost the plot. While we, the workers, were given a few breadcrumbs over the years to appease us, the Owner class was strip mining the wealth at every level imaginable, there’s a reason people like Rockefeller and Carnegie were richer than heaven at this time in history.
Late 19th century. There was some pushback, some anti-trust laws with teeth, and then decades of bloody union battles to secure rights workers and their elected officials have thrown away for 50 years.
The concentration of wealth and influence of 10-16 people trumps that of hundreds of millions and is as bad or worse than it was during the robber baron era.
Political representatives are bought and paid for which means the poor have no voice against the wealthy.
We have a justice system that is incapable of prosecuting the wealthy and powerful, when it isn’t being stocked by ideologues.
Meritocracy is dead; Birth has much greater correlation to wealth and power.
Media is fully captured by the wealthy; they own the vast majority of media consumed: TV, film, news, social junk.
Nice country you got here.
Remember when unions thought they were so Irreplaceable and important. That they would withhold Support for a second term from a Democrat, they didn’t think did enough for them. One of the biggest miscalculations and blunders of the post World War II era. Because first they came for the unions and labor power.
The US has been an oligarchy for some time. Act accordingly.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
Looks like you are a few years behind events.
200?
Turned? Have you ever heard of the Rockefeller and Morgan families?
Koch brothers…
Yes.
