Loading ...Why American founding father John Adams feared the political power of the rich—and how his ideas illuminate today’s debates about inequality and its consequences. Long before “the one percent” became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply “the few”—the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich.
In John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville presents the first extended exploration of Adams’s preoccupation with a problem that has a renewed urgency today: the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite.
By revisiting Adams’s political writings, Mayville draws out the statesman’s fears about the danger of oligarchy in America and his unique understanding of the political power of wealth—a surprising and largely forgotten theory that promises to illuminate today’s debates about inequality and its political consequences.
Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful in modern societies not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even sympathize with the rich.
He thought wealth is powerful in the same way that beauty is powerful—it distinguishes its possessor and prompts reactions of approval and veneration. Citizens vote for—and with—the rich not because, as is often said, they hope to be rich one day, but because they esteem the rich and submit to their wishes.
Mayville explores Adams’s theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic inequality, and also examines his ideas about how oligarchy might be countered.
Comment:
Long ago I heard two women in a pizza place, they voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, because they were good looking. LOL.
I believe there was a falling out or a break away group among the original global and domestic powers that be. And that’s how and why Trump was able to come onto the scene, on prime time TV, informing the domestic public how America was getting screwed financially, got elected, and the other bigger original part of the group focused on getting rid of him.
Also in the beginning with Gold as money only smart people got rich like Henry Ford and all the other successful steel railroads oil people etc. These days with funny moneyu and a casino type economy, dumb people like George Soros or other gamblers can become billionaires by shorting the British pound for example. So we have too many very dumb wealthy people with power and influence.