In 2014, the United Press International formally reported that the political structure of the United States of America had become an oligarchy. A study in the same year by political science researchers at Princeton and Northwestern Universities stated that the American government does not represent the interests of its citizens, rather, it is ruled by the “rich and powerful.”
Now, over a decade later, it has been proven, time and time again, that they were correct. Such as in January 2025, Donald Trump of the Republican Party was inaugurated for his second term as President.
President Trump by himself is not an oligarch. He is simply a very influential politician. His power comes from his large following, not his money. Having a net worth of $7.3 billion, he pales in comparison to the other extremely wealthy elite, who have hundreds of millions to throw out to lobbyists and super PACS.
What is frightening and disturbing about Trump’s second inauguration was the overwhelming support from the ultra-wealthy, such as Larry Ellison, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Not only did Trump receive over $1.4 billion in campaign contributions, breaking numerous records, and, in return, big donors got favors out of Trump. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given power over government agencies, Larry Ellison was given the initiative by Trump for buying TikTok, while Bezos and Zuckerberg were generously rewarded with the deregulation of bonus depreciation and R&D expenditures. It should be clear that those with outrageous amounts of money are actively changing American politics without any real popular support.
How did America become an oligarchy? As with most of history, it didn’t happen overnight. American oligarchy stems directly from the American revolution. The senate and electoral college was established by the founding fathers in order to keep the uneducated and poor from majorly influencing politics. Beyond that, up until Jackson gave universal white manhood suffrage, a very large amount of the voter base was rich, influential elites, oligarchs.
Even beyond the Jacksonian era, the invention of the cotton gin allowed southern land owners to accumulate wealth beyond imagination. Before the civil war, land and slave owning southern whites had a disproportionately extreme grip over the political system. The slavocracy of the pre-Lincoln U.S. set in stone this oligarchy for years to come. By 1860, the top 1% of Americans collected almost a third of property incomes. While the civil war crushed the confederacy, some of the systems that kept the rich and wealthy in power continued.
The income inequality and oligarchal influence would reduce during the 1930s to late 60s in a period known as the Great Compression. The Progressive New Deal put into place by President FDR, as well as post-war economic growth, enhanced protections for trade unions, and economic regulation by the National War Labor Board all contributed to a much higher income for everyday Americans. The income change was primarily because of high union membership. Unions increased the wages for workers, which also led to an increase in wages for non-union members to a lesser extent. More than a third of agricultural workers were members of unions during this time. Medicaid and Medicare, which was introduced during this time, were one of the biggest factors in poverty reduction.
Sadly, this period did not last for long. In the 1980s, a period known as the Great Divergence began. The name derives from the divergence of the Great Compression, where income inequality skyrocketed. The focus on workfare over welfare destroyed the progress made in poverty reduction, and finally the explosion of Neoliberalism as the dominant economic ideology across both political parties ended the dreams of a social democratic system. The cuts to welfare systems and an increase in tax cuts for wealthy Americans lead to financial power being located in several large conglomerates. The Democratic Party could no longer compete with the Republicans on economics, so they adopted a more fiscally conservative approach and switched to social issues for their ideological base. The identity politics of the Democrats from this time forward would be the dominant positions, until Bernie Sanders and the subsequent progressive movement rose to prominence in the 2010s.
Financial capitalism and Neoliberal policies in the 2000s eventually showed their weakness in providing for the people, and their ability to centralize wealth in oligarchs during the Great Recession. Caused by a systemic crisis of corporate greed, big finance, the housing bubble crash and a systemic flaw of only limited government regulation caused the western world to suffer economically for over a year. Economic professionals such as Ravi Batra, Alisa McKay, and Margunn Bjørnholt argue that the uncontrolled crony capitalism during the 2000s creates economic bubbles that burst, resulting in depression and political instability. This was proven true when the government failed to address the systemic problems of the recession, such as a massive reduction in wealth equality.
When the Bush and Obama administrations began giving mass bailouts to banks and corporations to cope with the economic turmoil, it became clear what the real problem was. While the stock market and other financial markets stabilized, 93% of Americans held most of their wealth in their homes equity, which remained stagnant for several years. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) failed to help homeowners with their mortgages. This concentrated large amounts of wealth in the upper 10% of the people. Beyond these wealth issues, wages remained stagnant while the gains of those with capital drastically increased. The faster capital gains outshined labor gains, which concentrated even more wealth into the hands of billionaires. This allowed the wealthy elite, towards the end of the recession, to influence political systems to their benefit, as social mobilization was lackluster during that period.
It should not be difficult to see the path oligarchy has taken in the United States. Citizens United, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the increase in CEO pay versus worker pay ratio, the crackdown on unions, artificial intelligence, and immigration has all increased income inequality in the United States. These instances concentrate wealth into single individuals, and the more wealth you have the more you can influence American politics and society. At the current moment, the top 0.001% of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 50%. In other words, the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. This is not okay.
But how does it influence our government? Citizens United allows for unlimited monetary donations to super PAC’s, lobbying by companies allows corporate interests into our government, and that’s just in the government. In order to win elections, candidates need to spend more than ever, and who else to fund these campaigns than wealthy elites with motives for more money? The most brazen would be Elon Musk offering two Wisconsin voters $1,000,000 checks for voting in his interests in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
It should be clear it is less and less the American people who decide policy and elections. It is the wealthy. It should also be clear that the past 50 years have been the best for the very wealthy of the United States, allowing political control, vast concentration of wealth, and more power to crackdown on workers’ rights across the nation. I am not calling out any single party for enabling this—this is a two-party problem. Republicans and Democrats in Washington are allowing this. Billionaires don’t donate on party lines, they donate on candidates they think they can influence. In fact, they often donate large amounts to both candidates in any given race. They don’t have ideology, just a desire for control.
