These ostensible justifications may run the gamut from protecting the environment to national defense to promoting public health. Such policies are almost never promoted as explicitly favoring the interests of the wealthy, but tend to be cloaked in some other seemingly legitimate public policy goal that just coincidentally results in advancing or securing the interests of the wealthy. As a result, a relatively small proportion of the population, with access to the majority of the wealth and control of the commanding heights of economics and finance, are able to shape both public opinion and public policy in their own interests. Expenditures by wealthy individuals and corporations on activities such as political campaigns, legal lobbying, "socially conscious" activism, and occasionally direct bribery determine most or all of public policy. Again, these do not usually take the form of explicit policies that openly favor the wealthy as a stated policy goal, but nonetheless set in motion economic processes and practical consequences that favor the interests of the wealthy.įor example, most modern countries are nominally democracies that, in practice, require the support of wealthy donors to effectively campaign for office or influence policy. ![]() The specific content of government policies may vary greatly based on local and historical economic, political, and social conditions. Policies enacted and enforced in a plutocracy tend to redound to the benefit of the wealthy either directly or indirectly. However, plutocracy more often arises informally and is implicitly embodied in constitutional, legal, or regulatory measures that create barriers to participation in politics and political life that can be met only through the possession or expenditure of significant wealth. This may be a matter of official rules and restrictions that explicitly require that a person have some specified level of economic affluence in order to exercise political authority, such as voting or holding public office. In a plutocracy, access to political power is limited and requires one either to possess wealth or to have the support of the wealthy by being willing to serve their interests. The concern of inadvertently creating a plutocracy is that the regulatory focus will be narrow and concentrated on the goals of the wealthy, creating even more income and asset-based inequality. Instead, it can be created through the allowance of access to certain programs and educational resources only to the wealthy, thereby making it so that the wealthy hold more sway. Send us feedback.Plutocracy doesn't have to be a purposeful, overt format for government. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'plutocracy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. 2021 Inequality is one of the biggest barriers to a functioning democracy: To turn around a slide into plutocracy, Democrats need to address the fact that two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now.Ĭlio Chang, The New Republic, 9 Jan. John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 8 June 2021 Once before, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, similar rhetoric about the dangers of plutocracy helped cement a Democratic majority that endured for decades. 2021 In recent decades, as the stock market has soared, the vast fortunes amassed by some members of the plutocracy have largely escaped taxation. Victor Davis Hanson, Arkansas Online, 13 Sep. 2021 Within 40 years, California had created a new plutocracy of Eloi, whose wealth exempted them from all worries about the mundane problems of the distant and despised Morlock others. ![]() 2021 Alas, Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer seem to be at home in the backroom, even as the Democrats squander the opportunity to break the plutocracy - government of, by, and for the super-rich. ![]() 2022 The battle against plutocracy isn’t going to be won in a single piece of legislation, certainly not one against which Manchin and Sinema hold an effective veto. Katherine Stewart, The New Republic, 11 July 2022 Social equity pits people with very little wealth and clout against the plutocracy that runs the world, with billions of dollars at stake.Īmanda Chicago Lewis, The New Republic, 4 Apr. Recent Examples on the Web One school of progressive thought says that America has devolved (once again, perhaps) into a plutocracy.
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