Is America an Oligarchy?

[Ben]

Is America an Oligarchy?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/04/is-america-an-oligarchy.html

[Turlington]

Short answer? Yes. See "Koch Brothers"...

[trish]

We've got so many checks and balances Congress can't get anything done...and given this Congress...that's a good thing. No. We're not an oligarchy. Yet.

The Supreme Court was once our biggest check against money, power and majority rule. This, sadly is no longer the case. The Citizens United decision and their 2011 decision in support of gerrymandering makes it nearly impossible to pry power from the old arthritic hands of monied players.

[Stavros]

Strictly speaking Gilens and Page do not describe the USA as an 'oligarchy', although they do cite the work of some who have suggested it (Jeffrey Winters in particular). But then, strictly speaking, if one is going to use wealth as a measure of power and suggest that real power is thereby concentrated in only a few people, this is a Plutocracy. It is possible to be an Oligarch and have neither money nor property.
The study by Gilens and Page is here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf

[buttslinger]

1700s) Revolutionary War
1800s) Civil War
1900s) WWII
2000s) Iraq
uh-oh

[broncofan]

I would say no. Power is distributed among the three branches of government and they are effectively separate. Do we have a plutocracy where one needs to be rich in order to obtain power? No. One needs to raise money and it helps having wealthy donors but politicians do not need to finance the campaign themselves.

[fred41]

Even if it were true...the rich don't always agree with each other...we have a tendency to mention the Koch brothers...but there is a lot of other money out there that affects the game....(Tom Steyer for instance)...so I guess that , in it's own way becomes checks and balances...
from a family dynasty point of view - well, if it wasn't for President Obama, we probably would have had Bush, Clinton, Bush , Clinton...but we could still continue that if it comes down to Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton in the next go around.