US Study: The US Is Not A Democracy But An Oligarchy

[PEB]

"Deal includes opt-out clause if costs continue to rise"

Good,

We do need new planes but the cost increases and continual problems with the JSF had me thinking we would be crazy to commit even more to this without them being near ready.

Heads up wrong thread you want the F-35 thread I believe?

 

[IDL]

Economist Thomas Piketty new book claims that US Oligarchs "Just playing on the thread title" have surpassed European Oligarchs all the way back to the mid 1900's. He analyzed the ways that the plutocrats earned their money but also how it impacted economic growth. His claim is that a greater portion of their wealth is being driven by the stock market and not manufacturing.

The number of new manufacturing made wealth has largely remained flat but wealth created by the explosion of Wall Street and banking has created more wealth with little job creation. Its a pretty interesting video where Steve Rattner explains what is in the book. Steve seems not to completely agree with Thomas assessment but Steven makes his money in Wall Street "Don't bite the hand that feeds you!".


Link to the video no way to embed.

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/is-taxing-wealth-the-way-to-solve-inequality-233833539566

Wallstreet is certainly a big part of it but getting information about oligarchs from the oligarch controlled MSM will always spin you off in the wrong direction. They talk about taxes and party politics and whatnot.

They won't tell you that they control both parties and the media and they won't tell you that the banking system is rigged to extract money for nothing.

Also, these oligarchs are global they are not patriotic by their actions. They have their own agendas and meet together. Seeing them as US oligarchs might give someone the impression that they are part of team America. They certainly are not.

 

[HIMBOB]

I think you missed...

Why yes, yes I did.

Carry on folks, nothing to see here.

 

[PEB]

Wallstreet is certainly a big part of it but getting information about oligarchs from the oligarch controlled MSM will always spin you off in the wrong direction. They talk about taxes and party politics and whatnot.

They won't tell you that they control both parties and the media and they won't tell you that the banking system is rigged to extract money for nothing.

Also, these oligarchs are global they are not patriotic by their actions. They have their own agendas and meet together. Seeing them as US oligarchs might give someone the impression that they are part of team America. They certainly are not.

Oligarchs do business around the world but many call US their home and they spend more effort leaning on the US. They are largely United State Citizens and in this world they like to shape policy to their advantages seeing they chose to live here. It benefits them to get lower tax rates and favorable policies to benefit their interests. Example David Koch who owns a summer home in Massachusetts loves to even in a liberal state to finance the republicans in the state.

Another one is at least one who was born here Sheldon Adelson "Dorchester MA Native" pours tons into Republican races in this state. David/Charles Koch, Sheldon and Cook "An England native living in Massachusetts after graduating from Harvard". Cook plunked down the largest block of money in a Koch funded group. So much that David Koch invited him to their yearly winter retreat in Southern California. He put 7 million into Americans for Prosperity the largest single donation the Koch brothers have received to date.

Cook is an interesting Oligarch he lives relatively in obscurity in Massachusetts and I think he likes it that way. What I gather is he is worth several billion dollars and likely the 3rd richest Massachusetts resident behind Abigail Johnson "20 billion" and another who made their wealth on Wall Street.

 

[IDL]

Oligarchs do business around the world but many call US their home and they spend more effort leaning on the US. They are largely United State Citizens and in this world they like to shape policy to their advantages seeing they chose to live here. It benefits them to get lower tax rates and favorable policies to benefit their interests. Example David Koch who owns a summer home in Massachusetts loves to even in a liberal state to finance the republicans in the state.

Another one is at least one who was born here Sheldon Adelson "Dorchester MA Native" pours tons into Republican races in this state. David/Charles Koch, Sheldon and Cook "An England native living in Massachusetts after graduating from Harvard". Cook plunked down the largest block of money in a Koch funded group. So much that David Koch invited him to their yearly winter retreat in Southern California. He put 7 million into Americans for Prosperity the largest single donation the Koch brothers have received to date.

Cook is an interesting Oligarch he lives relatively in obscurity in Massachusetts and I think he likes it that way. What I gather is he is worth several billion dollars and likely the 3rd richest Massachusetts resident behind Abigail Johnson "20 billion" and another who made their wealth on Wall Street.

That may be true, but their objectives are not to better the US or its people. Their objectives are global and they will undermine the US to achieve them.

It's essentially a global network. I find that if you look at the US as a corporation that has a parent company, and that parent company owns most other nations (corporations) it is more clear. US oligarchs work for the US corporation but it still answers to those above.

The tangible web of the network is the global banking system.

 

[Diamond Jim]

We needed a Princeton professor to tell us the obvious?

 

[HOLA]

How does IDL have such relatively little amount of posts? I feel like he is ubiquitous on Sherdog. He was even prophesying about Rothschilds, bankers and The Book of Revelations in Mayberry.

 

[Orgasmo]

In other news, the sky is blue and the sun is hot.

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."

On the other hand:

When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

They conclude:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.

"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

This is the "Duh Report", says Death and Taxes magazine's Robyn Pennacchia. Maybe, she writes, Americans should just accept their fate.

"Perhaps we ought to suck it up, admit we have a classist society and do like England where we have a House of Lords and a House of Commoners," she writes, "instead of pretending as though we all have some kind of equal opportunity here."

Sauce: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

 

[lapollarecords]

 

[Madmick]

Search, noob.

 

[315MMAFighter]

In the world of really no way department! Princeton and Northwestern Universities have finished a study where they determined the obvious that the rich rule a vast majority of policy decisions. The study looked at changes between 1981 to 2002 and find that effectively the rich rule the decision making. This study compliments the results from another study done by University of California and CREDO Action where the rich have far greater access to policy makers. The evidence is piling up to back what many on left has been saying for years that America is becoming a plutocracy.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/04/15/study-us-is-an-oligarchy-not-democracy/

I agree, US is a damn Oligarchy, Democracy my ass. Where the $ is, is where the big dogs of the government are

 

[IDL]

If anyone really wants to get to know their oligarchs, study the following:

Club of Rome
Bilderberg
CFR
Royal Institute of International Affairs
Committee of 300

They are all unelected and private groups and think tanks where global strategy is put together with the worlds top oligarchs. They do not disclose much of what they do, but there are many researchers who follow them and it is known by many what their general directives are.

Media moguls are part of these groups, so do not expect much information from main stream sources that are controlled by them.

If you want to know how things are directed from the top, it's a good place to start.

This is an introduction to the Bilderberg group for anyone interested:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tru...ning-now/13808