President That of Joe Biden a sharp warning that the United States is becoming a “ oligarchy “technology billionaires will be illustrated at that of Donald Trump inauguration, when the three richest men in the world will sit on the dais as Trump is sworn in for a second term.
Elon Muskthe richest person in the world, enjoyed unprecedented success, practical role in the latter part of Trump’s campaign, spending some $200 million through a super PAC. Musk has a new role in reshaping government in the next administration and will be joined on the dais by the Amazon founder. Jeff Bezos. Both men’s companies have huge contracts with the federal government.
The trio is completed by the CEO of Meta. Mark Zuckerbergwho recently amended his company’s priorities to align with Trump’s and moved closer to the president-elect less than six months after Trump threatened to imprison him.
The three men are worth nearly $1 trillion together and will be joined at the inauguration by the CEOs of OpenAI and social media platform TikTok, which is whose closure is planned in the United States this weekend under a new law that Trump opposes.
Meta, Amazon and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI donated 1 million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund.
The mega-rich have long played a prominent role in national politics, and several billionaires helped finance Trump’s Democratic vice president’s campaign. Kamala Harris. Biden recently presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Sorosa billionaire donor to liberal causes.
But the inaugural presentation highlights the unusually direct role billionaires play in the new administration. Biden’s use of the word “oligarchy” is no accident: it is a direct reference to the form of government in Russia, about which leader Trump has long spoken warmly. Russian President Vladimir Putin preserves the wealth of the very rich and keeps them in check through threats.
Here’s a look at the dynamics of the new administration and the mega-rich:
A new level of wealth
Inequalities in the United States in fact abandoned for most of Biden’s term and is slightly lower than it was 10 years ago, but still historically quite high.
Consider that the richest 0.1 percent of Americans — about 131,000 households — owned nearly 14 percent of the nation’s wealth last fall, or more than $22 trillion in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve. This is an increase from 10% twenty years ago.
The bottom half of the U.S. population — about 65 million households — collectively owns just 2.4% of the nation’s wealth, or just under $4 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data.
A relatively new development, however, is the stratospheric wealth levels of a handful of the country’s several hundred billionaires.
Musk, for example, is worth $450 billion, according to Bloomberg. Billionaires Index. Bezos, with $242 billion, and Zuckerberg, with $212 billion, also hit new highs. They are the only ones worth more than $200 billion worldwide. Of the world’s 10 richest people, all but two are tech moguls.
Exploding wealth levels have led Democrats to attempt to revamp the U.S. tax code to target wealth. The senator from Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax during his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Last year, Democrats in 10 states tried unsuccessfully to create wealth taxes. Several Democratic-leaning states impose higher taxes on those earning more than $1 million as a way to combat income inequality.
An oligarch who claims he will disrupt the oligarchy
Trump, vice president-elect J.D. Vance – who worked as a venture capitalist with conservative Silicon Valley billionaire, Pierre Thiel — and others in their circle identify themselves as men of the people, promising to take power back from interest groups and elites and return it to Americans.
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, prominent conservative influencerhas repeatedly called the U.S. government an “oligarchy” that rejects the will of the citizens for its own military and financial interests.
Trump, of course, is a billionaire himself. And part of his rhetoric has always been a form of populism focused on billionaires. He and his allies argued that a wide range of intellectual elites — lawyers, executives, journalists and academics — have held back the country’s lower and middle class and that wealthy entrepreneurs can set them free.
This tension appeared Thursday during the confirmation hearing of Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. The Democratic senator from Vermont. Bernie Sanders noted high levels of wealth inequality in the country and the control that the mega-rich exert over social media.
“Would you agree with President Biden that an oligarchy is taking shape in America? » Sanders asked Bessent.
The candidate responded: “The billionaires you mentioned make money themselves. »
Bessent, a hedge fund manager, is one of several billionaires Trump has hired for his cabinet.
Americans skeptical of the influence of billionaires
While the growing involvement of Musk and other ultra-wealthy tech executives in national politics has attracted public attention, it’s not necessarily in a positive way.
A Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research A poll finds that about six in 10 Americans think it would be somewhat or very bad for the president to rely on billionaires for advice on government policy.
That sentiment was more pronounced among Democrats, according to the survey conducted earlier this month. Republicans were less skeptical of billionaires advising presidents, with 44% having no strong opinion and about 2 in 10 saying it would be somewhat or very good.
The example of Russia
The term “oligarch” has been most associated with Russia in modern times.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, a group of businessmen took advantage of the privatization of state industries under then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin to quickly seize control of vast participations.
They became known as “oligarchs” and, by the time Putin came to power in 2000, they had accumulated both considerable wealth and power while millions of ordinary Russians struggled in turbulent economic times. .
After Putin took office, he met with top oligarchs in a closed-door meeting in the Kremlin and reportedly offered them a deal: stay out of politics and your wealth won’t be touched.
Russian oligarchs who did not end up imprisoned or dead became extremely wealthy and largely stay under Putin’s control.
The risk in the United States
The United States is far from a Russian-style oligarchy, with a diverse and strong economy and resilient institutions. The risk is that if wealth is increasingly determined by leaders’ relationships with government, this could increase inequality and lead to stagnation for most. This is Russia’s cautionary tale.
Some are concerned about what is starting to happen in the United States as Trump prepares to take office. Just look at the tech sector, which Trump spent much of his first term feuding with and which he promised to retaliate against if he returned to power.
Both Google and Microsoft reportedly donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inauguration fund. Zuckerberg is hosting a reception with wealthy Republican donors next week for the inauguration, and the Microsoft CEO had lunch with Trump and Vance at Trump’s Florida headquarters at Mar-A-Lago this week.
And Amazon recently purchased exclusive rights to a documentary about Trump’s wife, the new first lady. Melanie Trump.
Brooke Harrington, sociologist at Dartmouth College which studies the world’s richest people, has dubbed the new wave of Trump tech supporters “broligarchs.”
“This will not be good for democracy anywhere in the world,” Harrington said of their rise, “because they have acquired so much wealth that they are more powerful than the governments of individual nations.”
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Gary Fields, Fatima Hussein, Zeke Miller, Christopher Rugaber and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington, D.C., David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Harriet Morris in Tallinn, Estonia, Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
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