American Oligarchy (ePub)

A permanent political class has emerged on a scale unprecedented in our nation 's history. Its self-dealing, nepotism, and corruption contribute to rising inequality. Its reach extends from the governing elite throughout nongovernmental institutions. Aside from constituting an oligarchy of prestige and power, it enables the creation of an aristocracy of massive inherited wealth that is accumulating immense political power. In a muckraking tour de force reminiscent of Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and C. Wright Mills, American Oligarchy demonstrates the way the corrupt culture of the permanent political class extends down to the state and local level. Ron Formisano breaks down the ways this class creates economic inequality and how its own endemic corruption infects our entire society. Formisano delves into the work of not just politicians but lobbyists, consultants, appointed bureaucrats, pollsters, celebrity journalists, behind-the-scenes billionaires, and others. Their shameless pursuit of wealth and self-aggrandizement, often at taxpayer expense, rewards channeling the flow of income and wealth to elites. That inequality in turn has choked off social mobility and made a joke of meritocracy. As Formisano shows, these forces respond to the oligarchy 's power and compete to bask in the presence of the .01 percent. They also exacerbate the dangerous instability of an American democracy divided between extreme wealth and extreme poverty.|
Cover
Title
Contents
Preface
Introduction. Beyond Plutocracy: Becoming an Aristocracy
Chapter 1. Meet the Political Class
Chapter 2. Our One Percent Government Congress and Its Adjuncts: The Way to Wealth
Chapter 3. Is the Political Class Corrupt?
Chapter 4. The Permanent Campaign and the Permanent Political Class
Chapter 5. Political Class Adaptation and Expansion
Chapter 6. The Political Class in a Poor State
Chapter 7. The Profitable World of Nonprofits
Conclusion
Afterword
Notes
Index|Ron Formisano is the William T. Bryan Chair of American History and professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky. His books include Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor, The Tea Party: A Brief History , and For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s .