Democracy Of The Rich

Whenever speaking of politics or government in the United States, the word democracy is heard several times. Sometimes it is combined with some adjectives, such as “the largest” or “the greatest”. There is no doubt that no country in the world has such a vast and untarnished democracy as the United States. However, no one asks who the beneficiary of this democracy is. The term is Greek, and it means the vote or the rule of the people. The question is who these people are.

Preparing taxes, I came across with elimination of some deductions, that was passed by congress on December 22, 2017, under Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The interesting common place among all the enacted status is their titles, which is usually the opposite of what the act is for. For example, this one is not to cut taxes, but to cut deductions, several of them at once, which would increase one’s taxes.

There is a story about the most dramatic change in the tax system and deductions which goes back to early 1930s and FDR and the New Deal. The story is about FDR going to the richest people in the country, the ones who elected him, and telling them that he was elected by them to protect their wealth. However, there was this huge and growing tendency towards the Left, which could jeopardize their wealth. With the current tax system, he told his benefactors, he could not keep this Left from growing. When a dog is protecting a building, while kept hungry, that dog would attack anyone getting close to the building. In order to enter the building, a piece of meat should be thrown to the dog first. The same thing he explained to be happening with the majority of Americans. It was not like the time of the founding fathers who protected voting for only rich people, by eliminating minorities and those with no land, from voting process. Every citizen could vote, and they would vote for a socialist, or someone who would be a danger to rich people, if the current condition continued. FDR convinced them that he had to throw some meat towards poor people, called The New Deal, and those rich people had to provide the meat. No one in the United States was elected as a president as many times as Franklin D Roosevelt.

United States has over 328 million people. According to a new published report, the ten richest people in the world are: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zucherberg, Bernard Arnault, Larry Page, Mukesh Ambani, Sergey Brin, and Amancio Ortega, the great majority of whom are American. Jeff Bezos’ wealth is more than the wealth of several countries. He does not produce anything. He has gathered this wealth by moving products from factories to houses, who used to be called a porter. In a country where campaign contributions for any political candidate have no limits, anyone who thinks that these rich people do not spend a small portion of their wealth to ensure election of a person who protects their wealth, should be naïve. They have clubs, federations, committees, and other group setups where they get together and discuss who protects their wealth the most. This is in a country where creating a labor union is almost impossible.

In fact, the structure of this country is built on serving the rich. Travelling in the eastern states fifty years ago, I came across a word, turnpike, for the first time. It was referred to toll roads. I thought a road was made by taxpayers’ money for public use, and I found it strange that one had to pay to use such roads. Then I noticed privately funded roads in Southern California, which would ease travelling, but one had to pay a toll in order to drive through it. It has become a common place for freeways, now days (which are built with tax money collected from mass population) to have a lane that is faster than other lanes, but one has to pay every few miles in order to use this lane.

Result: life is easier if you have money. Therefore, if you are rich in the United States, you can contribute to those political candidates of your choice, and in return they provide you with laws and regulations which protect your wealth. When you are rich, life is made easier for you, not only because you can afford to buy anything you need, but you can fly in your own planes and drive in your expensive cars on fast lanes. No wonder in this country, any grain of humanity is trampled upon in order to get rich. According to statistics, in 2019, a quarter of American families with an average of three people in the family had daily income of $137, which means $27 each. At least half of this $27 is paid for rent, and the rest is for utilities, transportation, food, clothing, and other living expenses. This is not counting official number of half a million homeless, who have nothing.