mr smith makes clear the evidence that has been right in front of you for your lifetime but you just didn't really notice. it ain't gonna get any better with this covid game rushing towards you and emptying your grocery store and gas station as you loose your job;

January 10, 2022

Try to find a developing-world kleptocracy in which the top few collect more than 97% of the income from capital. There aren't any that top the USA, the world's most extreme kleptocracy. We're Number 1.

Imagine a town of 1,000 adults and their dependents in which one person holds the vast majority of wealth and political influence. Would that qualify as a democracy? Now imagine that 100 of the 1,000 adults own 90% of all the wealth, collect 97% of all the income from capital and have virtually all the political power. How can a society in which 90% of the populace is decapitalized, disenfranchised and demoralized by political powerlessness be a democracy?

This is America: a kleptocratic autocracy that serves the few at the expense of the many, stripmining the bottom 90% under the guise of a fraudulent "democracy" in which only the few wield real power. Recall Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

That our elected government responds only to the super-wealthy and corporations has been well-established: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.

It's also a fact that the top 10% get virtually all the gains from the nation's capital, and this wealth is concentrated in the top 0.1%: Monopoly Versus Democracy: How to End a Gilded Age
Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.

Exactly how can a system of governance that is nothing but an invitation-only auction of political favors in which the top 0.1% own more than the bottom 80% be a functional democracy? The answer is it cannot. Politics and government have been reduced to protecting and enriching a neofeudal autocracy while claiming to serve the stripmined public.........read more......