Why do they have oligarchs and we have entrepreneurs and magnates? I really hate doublespeak.
A few folks are talking out of the same side of their mouth as you.
From wiki wiki:
Some contemporary authors have characterized current conditions in the United States as oligarchic in nature.
[11][12] Simon Johnson wrote that "the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent", a structure which he delineated as being the "most advanced" in the world.
[13] Jeffrey A. Winters wrote that "oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay."
[14] The top 1% of the U.S. population by wealth in 2007 had a larger share of total income than at any time since 1928.
[15] In 2011, according to
PolitiFact and others, the top 400 wealthiest Americans "have more wealth than half of all Americans combined."
[16][17][18][19]
In 1998,
Bob Herbert of
The New York Times referred to modern American plutocrats as "The Donor Class"
[20][21] (list of top donors)
[22] and defined the class, for the first time,
[23] as "a tiny group—just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population—and it is not representative of the rest of the nation. But its money buys plenty of access."
[20]
French economist
Thomas Piketty states in his 2013 book,
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that "the risk of a drift towards oligarchy is real and gives little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed."
[24]
A 2014 study by political scientists Martin Gilens of
Princeton University and
Benjamin Page of
Northwestern University stated that "majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts."
[25] The study analyzed nearly 1,800 policies enacted by the US government between 1981 and 2002 and compared them to the expressed preferences of the American public as opposed to wealthy Americans and large special interest groups.
[26] It found that wealthy individuals and organizations representing business interests have substantial political influence, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little to none. The study did concede that "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as
regular elections,
freedom of speech and
Association, and a widespread (
if still contested)
franchise." Gilens and Page do not characterize the US as an "oligarchy" per se; however, they do apply the concept of "civil oligarchy" as used by
Jeffrey Winters with respect to the US. Winters has posited a comparative theory of "oligarchy" in which the wealthiest citizens – even in a "civil oligarchy" like the United States – dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth- and income protection.
[27]
Gilens says that average citizens only get what they want if wealthy Americans and business-oriented interest groups also want it; and that when a policy favored by the majority of the American public is implemented, it is usually because the economic elites did not oppose it.
[28] Other studies have criticized the Page and Gilens study.
[29][30][31][32] Page and Gilens have defended their study from criticism.
[32]
In a 2015 interview, former President
Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery" due to the
Citizens United v. FEC ruling which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates.
[33] Wall Street spent a record $2 billion trying to influence the
2016 United States presidential election.
[34][35]
en.wikipedia.org