In his farewell address, former President Joe Biden cautioned the American people that an oligarchy was taking shape in the nation: “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people.” While I agree with his sentiment, there’s one key issue with this speech: the oligarchy is already here.
In America, the average worker in 2022 made around $37,585. The top 1% made an average of $785,968. This 1% also owns about 43% of all global financial assets, which amounts to billions and billions of dollars – more money than you and I will ever see in our lifetime. This gap between the rich and the rest increases yearly.
Before you think I’m about to go on an anti-capitalist rant in which I say we should overthrow the government and eat the rich, let me put that thought to rest right now. I am in favor of capitalism and a free market. I voted in 2024, and it was not for Harris. That being said, what I am not in favor of is the wealthy using America (and the world as a whole) as their personal playground.
The “American Oligarchy” has its tentacles in every facet of the American government, and actively uses it to get richer. The rich have been using it for a long time.
In what I would consider to be the second greatest farewell address by an outgoing president, Dwight Eisenhower warned the American and specifically his successor, John F. Kennedy, of the threat posed by the “military-industrial complex.” This is the relationship between the military and the defense contractors that supply it. These contractors are companies like Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
These companies being so ingrained in our government marked the beginning of the so-called “forever wars” that have marked the years since the Kennedy assassination. America found itself bogged down in wars with countries most Americans could not even point out on a map, such as long grueling wars with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. These also include short-lived wars with countries like Panama, Grenada and random warlords in Somalia.
The outcome of these wars didn’t matter. All that mattered was if military contractors got federal funding, and they did.
Why does the government allow this? Because those in power are getting a piece of the blood-soaked pie. In the 116th Congress, for the first time, the majority of Congress were millionaires. The median net worth of a United States congressman is $1,008,967. For context, the salary of a congressman is $174,000, unless you’re Speaker of the House, which nets you closer to 220 thousand. How do people who make a hundred thousand a year become multi-millionaires? By trading stocks of course. See, since members of Congress know what stocks will be affected by bills that are about to pass, they can make their trades accordingly and rake in heaps of money. If you do this sort of thing, it’s called “insider trading,” which is a felony. But when Congress does it, that’s just hustling for the paper.
Now technically, this isn’t allowed in Congress. In 2012, the STOCK Act was passed. This act prohibits Congress from trading based on information they learned in their official capacity. If they do trade stocks, they must report their trading monthly. But the punishment for breaking this rule is a fine. And not a fine of a million dollars or something. The fine is $200. So if you go and invest a million dollars in Nvidia because you know Congress is going to approve some funding for them, you can pay that fine because you know you’ll make $4 million on your investment. But again, we would be arrested for this behavior.
Please don’t think I’m only bashing Democrats in this.
Of the top 10 wealthiest in Congress, six are Republicans. President Donald Trump is the richest president ever, although most of his money comes from his company outside of the office. Republicans have historically always been bad about letting money influence their decisions. It doesn’t bode well for the middle class that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has an office in the White House. With the notoriously high turnover rate in Trump’s previous administration, we’ll see how long that lasts. It also isn’t a great sign that in attendance at the inauguration of Trump, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg were in attendance, as both are in the top 10 of richest men in the world.
There are two ways to make this government go back to being for the people, not just for the elite. The first way would take a long time, as it would likely require a Constitutional Amendment. The solution would be to ban private companies from being able to lobby Congress members towards voting for bills, as well as banning lawmakers (or members of their immediate family) from being able to legally commit insider trading. This way, they can make decisions that might not be influenced by the desire to line their own pockets.
The other solution is one that I personally hope does not happen, but might be inevitable at this point. On December 4, 2024, a masked assassin killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. The assassin, who was accused of being Luigi Mangione, had written “Deny, Defend, Depose” on the bullet casings as a signal that the killing was politically motivated against the insurance industry as a whole. Mangione was caught after a massive manhunt involving the entire New York Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (but if you and I were murdered in Manhattan, they would never go to all that trouble to catch our killer).
Just before this killing, the insurance company BlueCross BlueShield was planning to limit the amount of anesthesia they would pay for in all cases. Because the killing of Thompson received widespread support and admiration from many American citizens, BlueCross tried to quietly do away with this policy change. This openly signaled to the American people that this shooting worked. It scared those in power, and forced quick change towards policies people wanted. This has yet to be repeated, but it has only been a month and I fear it may be the solution people are looking at more favorably.
The violent solution can be avoided. If the government would decide to oust the ultra wealthy from having such an influence on their policies, then the American people would be happier for it. The oligarchy would lose its control over our lawmakers. But I fear the opportunity for this solution passed us by years ago, and we are only now realizing that.
Categories: Opinion
Leave a Reply