Plutocracy: The Rule of The Rich Minority

[Christopher Hill]

Most people consider the USA to have a Capitalist economic system, yet this is changing. Rather than function like Adam Smith and David Ricardo spelled out many years ago Capitalism has become dark and twisted, which is hard to do when it comes to something which is already evil. Yet it has happened, rather than being made up of many small businesses the economy is instead made up of huge corporations who collaborate together to stomp out every grassroots company which tries to take a piece of the market. This of course has drastic consequences, The people of America were raised to believe that if they worked really hard that they too could be rich.. But this is now a complete falsehood.. Even more concerning is the political power that these corporations wield, The corporations to preserve their interests throw money at political candidates. This can clearly be seen by the disclosed donation statistics during the past election, Both Obama and McCain received huge corporate donations, far outweighing those small time private donations. And really it doesn't split on party lines, the Democratic and Republican parties are both equally under the power of the rich, the parties are nothing but slaves doing their masters bidding, Obama who was expected to bring so much change.. and made so many promised.. has kept only one promise.. this one promise.. was to the corporations.. The people cannot stand and allow this to continue, we must stand for our rights and  form a worker's  Democracy.. but until then we must in every way oppose this inequality.. Please express any thoughts on the matter that you may have..

Also for any comrades who have a facebook.. I have created a a group on facebook for discussion on how to combat Plutocracy.
 International Opposition to Plutocratic Oligarchy which can be found here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=179771249932

[Antonio Balmer]

Chris tell about how the study by citibank talks about relying on the consumption of the wealthy and ignores the working class. Basically, because of the profit motive, capitalism has this tendency to ignore working class needs if meeting those needs is not profitable. This is one of the basic problems of capitalism. Needs are left unmet because they are not always profitable to meet. example - health insurance industry makes its money by denying coverage whenever possible and by avoiding payment to doctors. Another example - it's more profitable for oil companies if everyone drives gas cars despite the effects on the environment, so oil companies strive to keep electric cars and other alternatives off the market.

[Christopher Hill]

That really is the problem, and while I myself cannot classify this abomination that we now know as Capitalism as being the same Capitalism as explained by economists, all Capitalist economists favor a system in which many small companies compete to breed innovation and lower prices, but instead we have the large corporations who really have nothing to fear from competition, in fact they have slowed technological progress and raised prices which are targeted more at the rich than at the poor, this has given birth to (as the people at Citigroup would say) "Plutonomy"  (n. An economy that is driven by or that disproportionately benefits wealthy people, or one where the creation of wealth is the principal goal. [Blend of pluto- (wealth) and economy.] ) This system bears as much resemblance to Capitalism as does Stalinism to Socialism, While they are perceived as the same, and share some of the same mechanics - they are mirror opposites of each other.
You can find the reports on "Plutonomy" as authored by the "good people" at Citigroup in a downloadable form
here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2