There are myriad other examples of complicity between legislators or regulators, on the one hand, and special business interests on the other. When mega-banks make illicit profits by money laundering for drug cartels and get off with a slap on the wrist, as has HSBC and others, that too is plutocracy. The Senate Finance Committee hearing drew only three senators - yet another sign of plutocracy at work. being called 'stupid' to their face by senior Morgan executives. They also accepted abusive treatment, e.g. Senior regulators explained that they did not see it as their job to monitor compliance or to check whether claims made by their Morgan counterparts were correct. Morgan officials stated baldly that they chose not to inform the Controller of the Currency about discrepancies in trading accounts, without the slightest regard that they might be breaking the law, in the conviction that it was Morgan's privilege not to do so. Moreover, the extreme of a regulatory culture that, in effect, turns public officials into tame accessories to financial abuse emerged in stark relief at the Levin Committee hearings on JPMorgan Chase's 'London Whale' scandal. Between 20, the real net worth of 90 percent of Americans has declined by 25 percent. That pattern has been markedly accelerated since the financial crisis hit in 2008.

In short, the overwhelming fraction of all the wealth created over two generations has gone to those at the very top of the income pyramid. To put it somewhat differently, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 8X more than those in the 60 percentile after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 19 10X those in lower percentiles. In that period, real GDP has risen by 110 percent - it has more than doubled. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 0 percent to 28 percent. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80 percent of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2 percent, 65 percent to the upper 1 percent. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. Let's look at some striking bits of evidence. The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy - on a number of grounds.

Plutocracy examples