The US announced stronger sanctions on Russia targeting oligarchs. Robert Reich talks about Russian oligarchs’ influence vs. that of U.S. oligarchs also known as Uber billionaires and the stinking rich.
After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy. Reich exposes how those at the top propagate myths about meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, and the free market to distract most Americans from their accumulation of extraordinary wealth, and power over the system. Instead of answering the call to civic duty, they have chosen to uphold self-serving policies that line their own pockets and benefit their bottom line.
Source: Edited Description to Robert Reich’s recent book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.
To avoid lawsuits Court Painter & Press Attache AHM, have staged how they consider oligarchs are likely to present themselves in various elite settings.I think we will have to agree they look born to the status!
Globally, the number of stinking-rich is projected to increase a staggering 28% by 2026. (Still, it’s worth noting that growth between 2016-2021 was almost three times this rate, at over 75%.)
Despite the spread of democracy in the 20th century, oligarchies continued to exist, including in countries that were nominally democratic in form. Among industrialized countries that have been identified as oligarchies are Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union and China since that country’s embrace of capitalism in the late 1970s. Some political scientists have argued that the contemporary United States is an oligarchy or a plutocracy, because its great inequality of wealth and income (as compared with other industrialized countries) enables economic elites and corporations to influence public policy to their advantage, often against the preferences of the majority of ordinary citizens.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
As an aside…pay awarded to the CEOs of Canada’s five largest banks rose by 23 per cent last year, the Globe reports. Five bank CEOs earned a combined $70-million in total compensation, compared with $57-million in 2020, according to company filings.
