Who Rules the World? How a Concentration of Wealth and Political Power Undermines Democracy

[Octafish]

Mr. Dangl makes an important observation: The people who got the United States into the present situation are the same people who benefit from the situation being what it is. Time to rethink strategy, including who rules -- runs -- the Democratic Party, and the rest of Washington. Personally, I side with Democracy.

Baron DeRothschild and Sen. Prescott Bush enjoy a moment and an official photograph together, ca. 1954.

How a Concentration of Wealth and Political Power Undermines Democracy

Who Rules the World?

by BENJAMIN DANGL
CounterPunch, Nov. 20, 2014

EXCERPT...

Just as most of the world’s wealth is in the hands of a few people, according to a recent article in the academic journal Climatic Change, two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions were produced by just 90 companies, with Chevron, Exxon and BP leading the list as the biggest polluters. Half of these emissions were from the past 25 years.

“There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world,” Richard Heede, the author of the journal article, told the Guardian. “But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two.”

Confronting climate change requires a systemic transformation of how our economies are run and who runs them. Part of this radical change will involve disempowering the global 1% and the disaster-producing industries they profit from.

Across the US, we are living in a dream state; crisis is the new normal. In the face of global catastrophe, the leading political parties of the country typically offer more business as usual, meaning more corporate power to fuel democracy, more capitalism to fight inequality, more war to fight for peace, and more pollution to fight climate change.

We cannot depend on the 1% of the world to lead us away from disaster – they caused our global crises in the first place, continue to profit from them, and cannot bring about solutions from the top-down. It has to be the people’s movements leading the way from below, deconstructing capitalism and building a better world from the bottom-up.

SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/20/who-rules-the-world/

Today's Helpful Hint for Democracy: Wealth from the top seldom does more than trickle down.

For proof look at what happened to the average person before the Depression and after Ronald Reagan. From FDR through LBJ's Great Society, life got better and the Middle Class grew in size and power. The rest of the time, it's pretty much a steady state of the Rich getting Richer and the Poor getting Poorer -- which is where the Middle Class is going.