Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes American society “has become strongly oligarchic, with enormous wealth and political influence in the hands of a handful of billionaires. The current concentration of wealth at the top is not only immensely greater than in the ‘50s or ‘60s but is in fact far greater than during the Gilded Age.”
That’s the story in the Lowcountry, too. In Charleston County in 2024, the average income of the top 20% of earners was roughly 20 times higher than the average income of the bottom 20%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The disparity includes Black family income that is 46% of White family income. This is part of rising national inequality that finds that the top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025. . That’s the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989. The bottom 50% of people owned 2.5% of U.S. wealth in the first quarter of 2024.
This all brings to mind the warning attributed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “we can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
The current U.S. concentration of wealth distorts our politics in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court decisions killing limits on campaign contributions that enable billionaires like Elon Musk to buy elections. A new oligarchy of unprecedented wealth shaped by the rise of tech moguls places their own interests above Americans who struggle to keep up with the basics of life — housing, health care, food and other necessities.
“The biggest expenditure in America is the $2.4 trillion we spend on givebacks and loopholes to the top 1% and corporations.,” says author Scott Galloway of the NYU School of Business.
Billionaires allied with President Donald Trump now own top media and Internet platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), CBS, The Washington Post, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and many others. Trump has assembled an extraordinary group of a dozen billionaires who comprise his cabinet or serve as ambassadors or in top executive branch positions.
These individuals are untouched by Trump’s misleadingly named Big Beautiful Bill that slashed funding for Medicaid, Medicare, food assistance and food pantries. Other examples:
- When oligarchs dislike regulations that protect the public against carcinogenic pollution, the Trump administration simply removes the regulations.
- Corporate criminals who donated to Trump’s inauguration or his favored candidates get pardons while the victims of their fraud are denied compensation they won in court.
- And because the U.S. Supreme Court granted immunity to Trump from criminal prosecution, he is free to ignore criminal wrongdoing by his wealthy friends and political allies, particularly when he has the power of the pardon pen..
The high court under Chief Justice John Roberts and the rising influence of the Federalist Society have enabled fringe ideas to become mainstream in ways that have hastened a drift toward oligarchy. The court’s chilling Citizen’s United decision allowing corporations and other groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on political communications opened the floodgates to an era of government for sale.
Yet Roberts and the Federalist Society would have us believe that this was a triumph of “free speech.” But common sense tells us that money is not speech and corporations are not people. Justice Brandeis, who wrote extensively about free speech, would be appalled by this logic. Millions in campaign donations by corporate titans like Musk actually drown the voices of ordinary citizens.
Krugman notes the “massive decline in corporate taxation – from 35% in the 1960s to around 12% today” despite polling by Gallup for the past 20 years that shows nearly 70% of the public finds wealthy Americans pay too little. Why then have tax rates for corporations been cut by two thirds?
“Part of the answer is campaign finance, which was increasingly dominated by the interests of capital even before Citizens United unleashed a tsunami of billionaire money,” Krugman wrote on Substack.
To restore balance and fairness in American democracy, we need to raise taxes on corporations and the oligarchs whose power threatens democratic governance. Only then can we assure access to good health care, public education, affordable housing, childcare and other urgent needs. We also need to reform the Supreme Court whose members now enjoy lavish trips paid for by billionaires with issues before the court.
Let’s hope the brazen corruption of the Trump administration and its favored oligarchs may finally motivate voters these next two election cycles to support candidates who will make changes needed to ensure that the promise of America is available to all our citizens here in Charleston and elsewhere.
George Bogdanich of Summerville is a writer and filmmaker putting the finishing touches on a documentary on how the Vietnam War changed lives.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.
