Democracy, Plutocracy and Useful Idiots
By Jim Marcinkowski on May 17, 2010 at 10:30 AM in Current Affairs
Editor’s Note: Jim Marcinkowski, a former county prosecutor and attorney, is well-known to NoQuarter readers as the CIA classmate of Larry Johnson and Valerie Plame Wilson who spoke before Congress and in many media interviews following the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson. The former FBI agent and Navy veteran was the 2008 Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 8th district.
Are we a democracy?
Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system
Or have we become a plutocracy?
Plutocracy: the rule or power of wealth or of the wealthy; a government or state in which the wealthy class rules; a class or group ruling, or exercising power or influence, by virtue of its wealth.
The answer is – plutocracy.
Now before you get all exercised and reach down inside and start spewing forth the usual partisan tags and talking points, you should know that this is not my opinion alone. In fact, it is the opinion of CitiBank. In a recently discovered, March 5, 2006, Industry Note, Citibank explained in detail how the U.S. has turned itself into a plutocracy. While you should take the time to read the entire 18 page paper, if you don't, here is a portion of the summary:
The latest Survey of Consumer Finances, for 2004, has been released by the Federal Reserve. It shows that the rich continue to account for a disproportionate share of income and wealth in the U.S. economy: the richest 10% of Americans account for 43% of income, and 57% of net worth. The net worth to income ratio for the richest 10% of Americans increased from 7.4x in 2001, to 8.4x, in the 2004 survey.
And from the body of the Report:
These economies (the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia) have seen the rich take an increasing share of income and wealth over the past 20 years, to the extent that the rich now dominate income, wealth and spending in these countries.
Also, new media dissemination technologies… have disproportionately increased the audiences and hence gains to "superstars" – think golf, soccer, and baseball players, music/TV and movie icons, fashion models, designers, celebrity chefs, etc. These "content" providers, the tech whizzes who own the pipes and distribution, the lawyers and bankers who intermediate globalization and productivity, and the CEO's who lead the charge in converting globalization and technology to increase the profit share of the economy at the expense of labor, all contribute to plutonomy….the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US – the plutonomists in our parlance - have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US.
[The entire 18 page CitiBank Report can be read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/
While there are those who espouse the virtues of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” this same group apparently turn a blind eye to the other more visible hand of lobbying and political spending by corporate, banking, and income elites who have not only gamed the system by derailing effective regulation but in many instances have been able to legalize conduct that a mere generation ago would have been deemed unethical, if not outright criminal, behavior.
Of course the Congress of the United States is responsible for allowing the continued pilfering from the middle class. But what is perhaps more intriguing, or downright mystifying, is why members of that same middle class take to the streets to demonstrate for actions that benefit the elite at the expense of their own self-interest. Examples of such irrational group behavior are many:
- protesting government regulation, while mines with thousands of safety violations recently killed 31 people;
- supporting "Drill Baby Drill," while the oil companies, that saved $500,000 per well by not installing the latest safety mechanisms as mandated by other countries, created a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that will likely wipe out hundreds if not thousands of small businesses dependent on the Gulf for their livelihood.
- arguing for less income taxes (for the rich), even though the highest income earner's tax brackets have already been reduced from near 90% in 1960, to around 38% today;
- advocating for elimination of the estate tax even though it could reasonably be assumed that few to none of the protesters have estates worth anywhere near $2 million;
- protesting against "socialized medicine" even though it would appear from viewing the many videos, that many of the protesters are themselves the recipients of the largest socialized medicine program in the U.S. - Medicare!
- and, even after witnessing perhaps the greatest theft in American history, inexplicably support the privatization of social security so we can put more of our hard-earned money into the hands of the same Wall Street thugs who looted billions of dollars from our retirement accounts.
If the stated aims of these groups were to be achieved, the most likely result would be further massive increases in corporate income and the personal wealth of a literal handful of Americans to the great detriment of the very people who have been propagandized into espousing policies that will create a further diminution of their own income and economic security. It is like a group of sheep fighting with each other to be first in line at the slaughterhouse, to the extreme delight, no doubt, of those who will benefit from the mutton.
Come to think of it, CitiBank may just have helped us learn the modern day definition of a "useful idiot."
Jim Marcinkowski
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