The Free Press:  Tyler Cowen: America Isn’t an Oligarchy
By Tyler Cowen — 07.19.26

• The left preaches that a small group of ultrawealthy people are steering the country. But the problems in our politics stem from popular demand.
• Is America ruled by an oligarchy—that is, a small group of tightly knit, self-serving, and very wealthy people? We hear this argument increasingly, most of all from the Democratic Party. Their fundraising emails have begun to stress this point over the last year, blaming “billionaires” for driving America into ruin. I call this “billionaire derangement syndrome.”

Functional Oligarchy, Iain Davis, Off-Guardian.org

• Today, we define “oligarchy” as “government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes.”

  When oligarchs exercise political power by virtue of their wealth, we call it “plutocracy.”

• In 2014, political scientists Professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin I. Page conducted a multivariant analysis of nearly 1,800 policy decisions made by the US government over a more-than-thirty-year period. Their objective was to understand:
  

  Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of US citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless?

  Gilens and Page concluded:

  Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

  Representus

  • RepresentUs is America’s leading nonpartisan grassroots organization working to make government accountable to the people.

    We unite people from all backgrounds to defend democracy, root out corruption, mobilize action, and support campaigns at every level to build a political system that truly serves the public.

  • A study by Princeton and Northwestern professors looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?

    What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at a