Oligarchy is defined as “government by the few”. The term derives from two Greek words: oligos meaning “few” and arch for “rule”.
Plutocracy is also derived from the Greek ploutos meaning “wealth” and kratos for “govern.”
In 2010, the top 1 percent controlled 20 percent of U.S. income and, together with the next 9 percent, the super-rich controlled 50 percent of all income. The IRS recently noted that in 2011, 11,445 U.S. taxpayers declared incomes of more than $10 million.
In 1937, Ferdinand Lundberg published ‘America’s 60 Families’. It revealed the financial and political power of the nation’s great fortunes. Nearly three-quarters of a century ago he warned:
“The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth… These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments …. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy.”
Not much changes. The faces, perhaps, and sometimes the names, but the system stays the same.
Taken from here
Plutocracy is also derived from the Greek ploutos meaning “wealth” and kratos for “govern.”
In 2010, the top 1 percent controlled 20 percent of U.S. income and, together with the next 9 percent, the super-rich controlled 50 percent of all income. The IRS recently noted that in 2011, 11,445 U.S. taxpayers declared incomes of more than $10 million.
In 1937, Ferdinand Lundberg published ‘America’s 60 Families’. It revealed the financial and political power of the nation’s great fortunes. Nearly three-quarters of a century ago he warned:
“The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth… These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments …. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy.”
Not much changes. The faces, perhaps, and sometimes the names, but the system stays the same.
Taken from here
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