Inside the Rise of America’s Oligarch Class—And What It Means For All of Us

Per Literary Hub, America's wealthiest are wielding disproportionate political power despite the nation's democratic institutions. A two-thousand-fourteen study by political scientists at Princeton and Northwestern analyzed decades of data and found that economic elites' policy preferences dominated American government while average citizens had little independent influence—even when majorities disagreed with the wealthy. The wealth gap behind this dynamic has become extreme: since nineteen eighty, the top zero point zero zero one percent saw incomes explode six hundred percent while the bottom fifty percent's earnings flatlined. Today, America's billionaire class holds more wealth than the bottom fifty percent combined, and the top one percent earns over twenty-six times more than everyone else. In twenty twenty-four alone, the nation's nineteen wealthiest families expanded their net worth by one trillion dollars. The analysis suggests America functions as an oligarchy concealed by formal democratic processes.

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