Abstract
The super-rich have accumulated great wealth for themselves by corrupting democracy. They have done this by establishing think tanks that masquerade as neutral and scientific. They have bought large segments of the print and electronic media, where they run disinformation campaigns that confuse truth and propaganda They have poured large and virtually unlimited funds into political campaigns, promoting and helping to elect candidates who support a neoliberal paradigm that has shredded the social contract. The corporate super-rich have employed armies of lobbyists to privatize public assets, to limit government oversight of the financial and banking industry, and to build new monopolies in everything from telecommunications to (patented) drugs. The super-rich have used political leverage to create “rents” by obtaining undeserved “subsidies” in everything from healthcare to agribusiness and then used government to reduce taxes on those rents.
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Luzkow, J.L. (2018). Democracy Corrupted. In: Monopoly Restored. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93994-0_2
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