I have written previously about the emerging wealth and wage gap in this country. Bernie Sanders has been literally screaming about the dangers of the coming oligarchic form of government since the 1990’s. As everyday Americans are finding it more difficult to manage family finances, more and more individuals are gorging on profits, and the wealth gap is ballooning to ludicrous dimensions. Most Americans are struggling to afford groceries, put fuel in their cars, provide basic medical care and prescriptions, and access higher education, while the “broligarchs” build spaceships for joy rides, build yachts as big as small towns, and spend 600 million dollars for weddings to their new trophy wives.

It is not just the widening wealth gap, or the offensive and shocking expenditures, that make the uber-rich disturbing. Many do not understand the role the oligarchy could play in the future of our country.
Some of the startling statistics that I shared in a previous post bare repeating in this context. In 1990 there were a total of sixty-six billionaires in the United States. In 2023 the number of billionaires ballooned to 748. In a period of thirty-three years, 702 individuals were able to grow wealth at an astonishing rate.

In conjunction with this astonishing increase in billionaires, it is interesting to reiterate the comparison in wage increase and its widening gap during a longer period. Since 1978 CEO compensation has increased 1,322 %. Wages for the average worker have increased just seventeen percent for low wage workers to forty-six percent for higher wage workers. Providing the quick math, that is a difference of 1,276 % over the highest wage workers. The average worker has had diminishing returns while CEOs and stockholders have enriched themselves on the backs of the average worker.

It is also informative to review the inflation rate over this period and how that compares to buying power for the average worker. We obviously don’t have to concern ourselves with the buying power of CEOs and stockholders. According to the US Inflation Calculator between 1978 and 2024 the average inflation rate has been 3.79% for a cumulative price increase of 380%. Average housing prices have increased 196% over the same period. It is obvious that the average worker is swimming against a tsunami while the CEOs and billionaires are riding the wave in their yachts.

It is important to realize the ways in which the growing billionaire class has achieved this status. The most important tool that the wealthy have used to accumulate their staggering wealth is through the manipulation of the current tax code. The current federal corporate tax rate is 21%. The highest individual tax rate is currently 37%. Jeff Bezos paid a true tax rate of .98% in 2023 – less than 1%. From 2014-2018 he paid on average a 23% rate. That is 14% lower than the highest tax rate. And Amazon paid 0% in corporate taxes in 2023 while paying an average of 11.5 % between 2013 and 2018. Elon Musk paid a true tax rate of 3.7% in 2023. Clearly the super-rich are not paying their fair share of taxes.

The other tool used by the wealthy to avoid paying taxes and shouldering their fair share of the tax burden is the use of offshore accounts. Full disclosure, I borrowed the term “Broligarchy” from a Dartmouth sociology professor, Brooke Harrington, who has just published a book entitled, offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism. She studied the wealthy for many years, even going so far as to earn a wealth management certification to get closer to those who advise the wealthy and understand the means used to manipulate their money. Professor Harrington estimates that offshore investments could account for as much as 700 trillion dollars in unpaid taxes. Our country’s forefathers fought against taxation without representation. Harrington calls offshore accounting representation without taxation. She argues that the theft of these potential taxes is an affront to true capitalism.

This is not the first time that Americans have faced this wealth and power gap. From the 1880’s at the height of the industrial revolution, and the Gilded Age, until the early 20th century, , the Robber Barons such as John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, and their like, controlled much of the wealth in this country and held a monopoly on their respective industries. Workers suffered long hours in deplorable and unsafe conditions for pennies per day while often living in squalid conditions.


Two main forces at the time sought to stem the tide of the wealth and power disparity. The federal government enacted the Sherman Act that essentially broke up monopolies such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Of course, companies would find ways to diversify and maintain control without the appearance of the monopoly. The other force that exacted some pressure on the powerful were the trade unions. The unions fought actual physical battles with these companies to earn better wages and living conditions. Many men and women actually lost their lives in these violent and dangerous strikes and protests.

More recently in the 1990’s, the billionaire character was reintroduced into our consciousness with people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. A different type of ethos was developed around these characters. Buffet has been seen as a benign billionaire who, despite his vast wealth, is somewhat of an everyman. He lives in a fairly modest home in Omaha, Nebraska which is located in a normal neighborhood. It is the home where he raised his children. He lives a very low-key existence. He has told his children and grandchildren that he has, and will continue, to donate the vast majority of his wealth to charity.

Bill Gates was the first of the tech billionaires to enter the zeitgeist back in the 1990’s. He was the poster boy for the new age billionaire. Gates has admittedly not embraced the simple lifestyle of a Warren Buffet. He has lived a rather lavish lifestyle clearly enjoying his money. Despite that disparity, he has embraced Buffet’s attitude with regard to charity and improving the world around him with most of his money. He and Warren Buffet were instrumental in starting an exclusive club of sorts that included other billionaires (many less to choose from at the time) who would commit to donating at least ninety percent of their wealth to charitable causes.

One of the biggest recipients of the Buffet and Gates fortunes has been the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation has spent billions on a number of domestic and foreign initiatives including the eradication of diseases in Africa and improvements in education in the US. There is no doubt that Gates and other charitable donors have lived lavish lifestyles that most of us can only dream about. They have also donated most of their money and energy to improve the lives of less fortunate people as well.
Since billionaires like Buffet and Gates have appeared on our radar a new breed of billionaire has emerged more in common with the Robber Barons of the past than the occasional benevolent billionaires of the nineties. This new breed of billionaires are the new titans of the tech world. The group includes but is not exclusive to Jeff Bazos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and other young phenoms. This group is not known for its collective philanthropy, but excessive consumption and displays of their wealth. They are also known for the negative impacts that their businesses have on society as a whole.

Mark Zuckerberg is the “alleged founder” and CEO of Meta which includes Facebook and Instagram. It is commonly accepted that the logarithms of Facebook and Instagram have been purposely designed to be addictive especially with younger people and allow for communication that is damaging to the self-concept of many young people. It is also accepted that Meta engages in monopolistic practices shutting out or buying up potential competitors. It is interesting to note that Meta and other platforms have been under heavy scrutiny by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission for the past few years. Despite the vast wealth that he has accumulated, there is no discernable evidence that Zuckerberg has made any effort to use any portion of his wealth to improve the lives of ordinary people.

Elon Musk was once seen as the emerging boy genius. Initially, his efforts with Tesla and Space X were seen as initiatives that would benefit society by promoting green technology and future efforts to explore new opportunities to establish inhabitable communities on other planets. Although Space X has made it possible to reduce government cost of space travel and exploration, it has also made Musk richer than any other individual on the planet. What has he done with any of his wealth, much of which is built on the backs of American taxpayers? He bought Twitter, happily fired most of the employees, and allowed the new platform known as X to share unchecked misinformation and conspiracy theories. There is no evidence that Mr. Musk has used any of his vast wealth to benefit anyone else besides himself. Instead, he advances his wealth in many cases by sucking at the teat of the American taxpayer.

Tim Cook presents himself as a man of the people while running the richest company in the world which makes its fortune through exclusionary and monopolistic practices and cheap labor in China. Working conditions in the Chinese factories were so horrific that workers were literally throwing themselves off the building to commit suicide. Apple has always been a closed system which forces customers to buy their exclusive products. Most recently the company had to be sued by the European Union to force them to allow for the use of a universal USB-C charger for its products like everyone else in the world.

And then there is Jeff Bazos. Initially, Bezos was seen as a business savant. He built a company that allowed people to easily purchase products that would be delivered to their doorsteps the next day. Who could argue with that? I will freely admit that I am as addicted to the convenience of Amazon as the next person. Amazon has made Bezos one of the richest individuals in the world. The problems with that are many. The primary problem is that his vast wealth has come as a result of thousands of workers who program the network, fill the orders, load the trucks and deliver the packages. Most of these employees work in pressure-packed and physically demanding circumstances while not being paid commensurately for the work provided.

Let’s have some fun with math. There are approximately 1.4 million non-programming Amazon employees. The average warehouse worker and driver makes approximately 19.00 per hour. That is 39k per year. Subtract approximately 12% or 3,200 dollars in taxes (taxes that Old Jeff avoids) for a take home salary of 36,800 per year. Not exactly livable wages for as hard as these people work. If Jeff Bazos were to pay these people 15 % more per year it would cost the company and him approximately 7,280,000,000 dollars. 7 billion dollars! Sounds like a great deal of money until you are reminded that Bezos is worth more than 250 billion dollars. The company is worth 1.8 trillion dollars. Wait. Now it doesn’t sound like so much considering what these people contribute to the effort.

It is also important to note the impact that Amazon has on small businesses and the environment. Small and medium-size businesses and malls are closing at an alarming rate. Amazon also controls access to third-party businesses often making it difficult for them to survive. Despite the use of a natural gas fleet of delivery trucks to lessen the carbon footprint, the amount of cardboard that Amazon and its customers produce yearly could possibly be enough to build a few cities.

Let us include the Walton family in this discussion. Until recently, if you combined the net worth of the four Walton siblings, that combined entity would likely be the third or fourth richest person in the world. Walmart is worth approximately 750 billion dollars. There are some 2 million Walmart employees. The average Walmart employee makes roughly 25 dollars an hour or 31K per year. Once again, we see fulltime workers putting in an honest 40 hours of work a week and barely surviving especially if they have a family. The interesting fact is that it cost the federal government, or we should say the American taxpayers, 6 billion dollars a year to provide public assistance to Walmart employees. Walmart made 160 billion dollars last year and you are subsidizing these super-wealthy individuals to the tune of 6 billion dollars while too many of their employees are forced to subsidize their meager salaries with public assistance.

So why are we so concerned about the “broligarchy”. To understand the danger, you must understand how the oligarchy works. It is not the oligarchs that hold the real power and control. In Russia, Putin allowed the oligarchs to become rich to enrich himself. The Russian oligarchs control all of the essential infrastructure in the country including oil and gas, food, transportation and everything else. They become vastly wealthy in the process and then share that wealth with Putin making him one of the richest men in the world. Putin controls them. Not the other way around. If they oppose him, as a couple have tried to do, he strips them of their “power” and wealth and throws them in jail.

So, what does that mean here in the United States? The “broligarchy” controls our access to technology and goods. They control what we buy, see, hear and think. The potential damage to our society and democracy was already in the works. When a Donald Trump, and his idea of government and control comes along, and threatens to curtail their alleged power and real wealth by using the government’s power, the bros sit up and listen. They learn quickly to bend the knee and do the bidding of the fearless leader. The control of goods, technology and ideas are now controlled by the government. That is why they all showed up at the inauguration with puckered lips ready to listen for instructions.

We always knew that the rich controlled the country. They have always controlled the politicians. There is a new wrinkle in that equation that threatens our basic democracy and any chance of ever improving the lives of average Americans. We all cannot be wealthy, but basic capitalism is defined by strengthening the buying power of the average citizen which in turns grows the economy. This is the system that Adam Smith, the accepted father of capitalism, defined in the 18th century. The system is supposed to allow for those who are innovators and risk-takers to potentially become reasonably wealthy while maintaining a health balance that allows for a robust middle class that has purchase power and avoids daily struggle. We have moved beyond traditional capitalism into a new area that allows for individuals to hold more and more wealth while obliterating any semblance of a middle class and totally abandoning basic workers who are struggling to afford housing, food and medical care. That is not capitalism. That is an oligarchy.

What needs to happen to stem the tide of the oligarchy and the establishment of any chance at real democracy? The average American worker needs to wake up and realize the real enemy. The real enemy are the super-wealthy employers who are not paying workers what they are worth. Donald Trump is not the savior of the worker. He may be the savior of the culture wars eliminating all of the issues that too many workers see as the major issues like DEI, transgenderism and multi-culturalism, but he is definitely not a friend of the worker. I heard an apropos quote the other day that sort of sums up how Trump, and his like, have come to be seen as working-class heroes. “We are living in a world where the people making 700 dollars an hour have convinced the people making 25 dollars an hour that the people making minimum wage are the problem.”

There needs to be a re-awakening of the union movement in this country. Workers need to recognize their power and wrestle it back from those who have undervalued it and underpaid for their hard work. There is a disparity between workers in northern states and those in Southern states regarding union membership. Membership is much lower in many southern states. Many of the major unions like the Teamsters and United Auto Workers have been making inroads convincing workers that it is in their best interest to unionize and fight for a fair share of profits. More needs to be done in this regard.

Challenging high-tech industries is a much more difficult proposition. We are so reliant on social media for connection and commerce that it is difficult to put pressure on these industries. Call out misinformation as much as possible. Instead of messaging friends or relatives, take the time to write them a note or letter. People still enjoy receiving a card or letter with a hand-written message that has longer, well thought out ideas and feelings expressed with words instead of emojis. Pick up the phone and use it for its original purpose by calling a friend and checking on them. Maybe less individual screen time will have some cumulative effect on these apps as we become less reliant.

Restrict the access of social media to young people. Do not allow your children, especially those under the age of sixteen, to have unfettered access to the internet and all of the damaging apps that are available. If they have to have phones, make sure that phone access is the extent of the technology. Ween them off of the addictive apps and put a crimp in the power and control of the tech companies.

The one thing that can be done immediately is strive to make as many purchases as possible at brick-and-mortar businesses, especially small businesses. The effect of in-person purchases will have a two-fold impact. In one sense Amazon and Walmart will be making less money and feel the impact. In another sense, getting out to stores will re-establish human connection that is not separated by a phone screen. Admittedly, some of these connections might be negative. We will have to learn how to actually speak to other humans face to face again which may be awkward and frustrating.

The wealth gap is the number one issue facing our country at this time. It has an impact on every facet of our lives and the potential for the greatest negative impact on our government and future. If average working Americans do not wake up immediately and act to stem the tide of the oligarchy, life in the United States will look very different for too many Americans and it will be too late to act.