How the Super-Rich Control the U.S. Government

Eric Zuesse

The U.S. Government tries to hide how obscenely top-end the nation’s wealth-distribution is; but one remarkably clear presentation of it (the U.S. private-wealth distribution)  was the web-page from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that presented an “Overview” of “Distribution of Wealth” starting in “1989:Q3” and extending up till “2021:Q2”. (It will be presented even more clearly here, using their reported data.)

The following shows breakdowns of the wealth-quintiles — percentages of the wealth held by the nation’s households, all the way from the top fifth to the bottom fifth — in the “US$ Trillions” for each fifth — during the latter quarter (the “2021:Q2”), as is shown on that web-page:

Top 5th =Top 20% total $94.68T ($36.23T for top 1% + $58.45T for all of the next 19%)

2nd 5th =Top 40%-Top 20%: $20.68T

3rd 5th = Top 60%-Top 40%: $9.62T

4th 5th = Top 80%-Top 60%: $5.41T

5th 5th = Too 100%-Top 80%: $3.69T

100% = $94.68T + $20.68T + $9.62T + $5.41T + $3.69T = $134.08T total.

Therefore: Top 20% = 70.6% of all wealth.

Top 40% = 86.0% of all wealth.

Top 60% = 93.2% of all wealth.

Top 80% = 97.2% of all wealth.

Top 100% = 100% of all wealth.

Additionally shown was the top 1%:

Top 1% (“99-100%”): $36.23T

Top 20% less that top 1%: $58.45T

So: the top 1% (the wealthiest 5% of the wealthiest 20%) held 38.3% of all the top fifth’s $94.68T.

Top 1% =  27% of all wealth.

(Bottom 1% wasn’t shown.)

Bottom 20% = 2.8% of all wealth.

Bottom 40% = 6.8%

Bottom 60% = 14.0%

Bottom 80% = 29.4%

Virtually all people who have the discretionary cash to be able to donate significantly to the politicians they favor are in the top fifth — the people who have 70.6% of all wealth. They dominate the nation’s political money. Almost all of the virtually bribes that fill political campaign-chests in America come from the richest 20% of Americans — and the top 1% contain all of the ‘king-makers.” And if you’re in the bottom 80% of wealth-holders in the U.S., you’re not represented, at all, in the U.S. Government.

The top 1% have vastly more, than rest of the top 20%, available to them to donate to their favored politicians, because these people — the top-one-percenters — hold the corporate board seats, and select the corporate executives who hire the congressional lobbyists to entertain and reward and hire the crucial congress-members so as to serve their corporations, and serve those top one-percenters who control all of those corporations. Included in these corporations are the ones that control all of the major, and most of the minor, news-media and that thereby shape the ‘knowledge’ and thus the views that most of the voters (in each Party) hold.

America has around a thousand billionaires, and they have control over so much discretionary cash as to be able to get Congress to not pass any bill that these super-rich oppose, and to pass many of the legislative bills that those super-rich want to become law. So, almost all of the thousand-or-so individuals who control the U.S. Government are billionaires. They especially control international corporations. Those few people dominate both Parties. But they do it very much behind-the-scenes. In previous centuries, aristocrats were publicly known, by formal titles; but in today’s ‘democracies’, they are, instead, as hidden as they can be. They don’t want the public to know that the Government represents only them, because, otherwise, the Government’s saying that this or that foreign ‘dictatorship’ that poses no real threat to the national security of one’s own country, should be regime-changed, would have the citizens wonder, instead, “Isn’t it our nation’s regime that should be regime-changed first?” Any look at the ‘news’-media will make clear that they DON’T want THAT question to be in anybody’s mind. The message is instead always to regime-change the foreign leaders whom one’s own nation’s billionaires WANT to be regime-changed. That’s the way to get the public to be willing to fund (via their own taxes) the ‘Defense’ Department. Isn’t it un-‘patriotic’ to want to slash the spending on ‘defense’? Where did THAT idea come from?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.