The power elite

Throughout history, a major conflict has always existed between two classes of people due to self-interest. As Alexander Hamilton put it during the Constitutional Convention, "all communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people." [1]

To those in the elite class, being one of the very few super wealthy with great power is the natural order. They feel entitled to control everyone else around them to protect what they have and to gain even more. Such control often extends to governments, national economic policy, and business monopolies for their own personal gain.

Due to self-interest, people tend to associate with others at their same social and class level. Accordingly, those of the ultra-wealthy elite class associate with other elites rather than with commoners like us. They often form exclusionary clubs and cabals. Such associations provide them with influence and with exclusive investment opportunities at lower risk.

Domhoff, who completed studies of the power networks of the elite class over many years, explained that they include the owners, the boards of directors, and the executives of the major corporations and banks. They support think tanks, foundations, commissions, lobbyists, and academic departments. Domhoff refers to those who lead this elite class along with those who support their wishes as the "power elite." He describes how they are politically well connected. [2]

Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington. …

Those corporate owners who have the interest and ability to take part in general governance join with top-level executives in the corporate community and the policy-formation network to form the power elite, which is the leadership group for the corporate rich as a whole. The concept of a power elite makes clear that not all members of the upper class are involved in governance; some of them simply enjoy the lifestyle that their great wealth affords them. At the same time, the focus on a leadership group allows for the fact that not all those in the power elite are members of the upper class; many of them are high-level employees in profit and nonprofit organizations controlled by the corporate rich. …

I argue that the business interest groups are part of a tightly knit corporate community that is able to develop class wide cohesion on the issues of greatest concern to it: opposition to unions, high taxes, and government regulation. …

The corporate community and the policy-formation network supply top-level governmental appointees and new policy directions on major issues.

Matt Taibbi described the power elite with their financial institutions and networks as the "grifter class." [3]

There are really two Americas, one for the grifter class, and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a lavish lapdog that the financial companies… use as a tool for making money. …

The new America, instead, is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose main job is to be good actors on TV and put on a good show.

America's dirty little secret is that for this small group of plugged-in bubble lords, the political system works fine not just without elections, but without any political input from any people at all outside Manhattan.

The entire elite class and their businesses disproportionately benefit through government programs and policy, preferential tax treatments, government subsidies, corporate welfare, and government spending. Whether in good times or in times of war or pandemic, the special business interests of the power elite influence and profit from government laws, contracts, and spending.

The elite who wrote the Constitution

From here on, I will refer to those in the elite class that wrote the Constitution and that continue to control our country as the "elite" or the "power elite." The power elite have ruled America for over 400 years. Originally, English nobility gained their elite class status through inherited wealth from land ownership. The British colonies in America were an extension of Great Britain. Consequently, the tiny, wealthy elite class in America consisted of the large landowners and the owners of highly profitable businesses as well. The elites in the colonies were well bred and well educated. They often had servants and slaves. They were minor aristocrats that held the high offices in colonial government. They were the voters. [4] They governed the colonies for about 170 years before the American Revolution and continued afterward as the rulers of the United States at both the state and federal levels.

The founding fathers who wrote the Constitution were the elite of their time, an active part of the highest levels of society. "Whether you are talking about a main group of six or 60 founding fathers, they were all far from ordinary in terms of income, wealth, education, and social standing." [5] They had been in control of the colonies and they designed the new Constitution to continue their control and to protect their wealth, their power, and their business interests. Can you imagine the wealthiest and most powerful men doing anything otherwise? It was only natural that they would feel entitled to rule as the educated, wealthy aristocracy of the new world motivated by their self-interest.

An example of their elite behavior

Despite the ideal picture painted by most histories of the period of the Revolutionary War, many of our elite founders opportunistically took advantage of the citizens. A good example was Robert Morris, an elite founding father who inherited wealth and who grew his wealth through becoming a global trader. Only Morris and one other founder signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. [6]

He is credited with "financing the American Revolution." Yet in reality, the Revolution financed him and made him the richest man in America. It is true that Congress used his name and credit to borrow money. However, as a Senator he was put in charge of procuring gunpowder and arms for the Revolutionary War, which he did through his own business producing a fortune in profits. As Charles Rappleye put it, "In modern-day terms, it would have been equivalent to a defense contractor getting himself elected to Congress, then using his position to appropriate money to his own company as a no-bid contractor." [7]

An example of their elite viewpoint and entitlement

Morris and many other elite founders saw themselves as above the commoners. He expressed his disdain for commoners as "vulgar Souls whose narrow Optics can see but the little Circle of selfish Concerns." Brendon Carpenter described how Morris, Hamilton, and many of the elite writers of the Constitution used the government to swindle the people for their own profit and felt entitled to do it. [8]

Morris's plan for America was to dedicate the new independent governments to the service of the affluent. He wanted governments to channel money to the wealthy, saying that national greatness would come by "distributing Property into those Hands which could render it most productive." To Morris, the public good could be assured only by "the mercantile Part of Society", and thus he supported the "combining together the Interests of moneyed Men." As probably the wealthiest man in America, profiting immensely from the war … Congress made Robert Morris the head of the Office of Finance, and gave him the right to appoint or dismiss any official in any agency of the government that spent government money. In 1782, he explained to the Continental Congress that gentlemen should be encouraged to speculate in government IOUs; then, once the affluent had acquired the IOUs "at a considerable Discount," the government should pay off the IOUs at top dollar. Moneyed men would spend little and reap huge rewards paid for by new taxes on the American people, and the affluent would reap "those Funds which are necessary to the full Exercise of their Skill and Industry."

… As Superintendent of Finance, Robert Morris refused to let citizens pay their taxes in war certificates, even as he encouraged fellow gentlemen [elite] to buy them up. …

Hamilton [a close associate of Morris] proved a key player in passing a measure that would reimburse owners of government IOUs and war debt at full face value, in installments over time, with interest. Of the $27 million in such certificates, 90% had been sold by farmers, artisans, and soldiers usually for pennies on the dollar. The stockholders and clients of the Bank of North America [founded by Morris] owned 67% of the debt, with the top thirty-five men in the banking circle owning 44%. Instead of promoting greater wealth equality, the first Congress of the United States of America passed legislation that widened the disparity greatly. … Robert Morris's vision of an America dominated by the wealthy had been realized.

Other statements by the elite founders illustrated similar attitudes towards commoners. For example, Alexander Hamilton was well known for his elitist political vision that the intellectual aristocracy should rule the nation. [9] One of his famous remarks was, "The masses are asses." [10]