But if you refine it more closely, the inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1 percent. If you look at total inequality today, it’s like the worst periods of American history. But the “dream” has to be sustained, otherwise how are you going to get people in the richest, most powerful country in world history, with extraordinary advantages, to face the reality that they see around them? Inequality is really unprecedented. “You hear it in every political speech, “vote for me, we’ll get the dream back.” They all reiterate it in similar words-you even hear it from people who are destroying the dream, whether they know it or not. Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power Democracy is when there is a majority of free, poor men who have authority to rule, while oligarchy is when it is in the hands of the wealthy and well-born, who are a minority.” Rather, democracy is when every free citizen has authority and oligarchy is when the rich have it. If the majority of a citystate were wealthy and had authority, nobody would call it a democracy, just as if a small group of poor men had control over a larger rich population, nobody would call it an oligarchy. Oligarchy is not necessarily wherever a minority has power over the system of government. Democracy is not necessarily only wherever the multitude has authority.

Usually, where the rulers hold power by wealth, they are few, but where the poor rule, they are many, because few men are rich but all are free, and wealth and freedom are the grounds on which the two groups lay claim to government. Wherever the poor rule, that is a democracy. Wherever the rulers, whether they be a minority or a majority, owe their power to wealth, that is an oligarchy. “Aristotle’s Politics, Book III, Chapter 8 The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is between poverty and wealth.

Requiem for immortals