Toxic Oligarchy and Luigi Mangione
When corporate greed reaches a "let them eat cake" moment
Dear TAT readers,
Today’s essay relates to a topic that I have written about occasionally for the past couple of years, oligarchy and its threat to democracy. In the wake of the murder of a healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, it takes on significantly more importance. With the election of another Trump administration, hellbent on autocratic and oligarchical subjugation of the American people, I have defined the oligarchical threat to our constitutional republic as, “Toxic Oligarchy.”
When I wrote Oligarchy is an acute threat to Democracy back in late March, it was easily at the time, the most popular of my essays. It struck a nerve then and based on the public reaction to Luigi Mangione’s actions, that nerve is now even more raw. We have all suffered through a couple of years now, of price-gouging, intentionally propagandized as “inflation.” The dominance of an elite wealth/ oligarchical class wielding unwarranted influence and control over our lives, is a far more sinister threat than just dollars and cents at the supermarket. Today we’ll look at the bigger picture and the implications for those of us, not among the oligarchical elite.
oligarchy government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes. Oligarchies in which members of the ruling group are wealthy or exercise their power through their wealth are known as plutocracies. - Encyclopedia Britannica - https://www.britannica.com/topic/oligarchy
When you combine Mangione’s actions and alleged motivations, you clearly see a legitimate grievance, partially resolved in the very worst way possible, murder. This can never be condoned, supported or approved of but on the other hand, taking action against our abusers is the right answer. My point in today’s piece is simple, it is not just Mangione, but most working Americans are fed up with the perpetual and ever-increasing abuse by US and global Oligarchs. The real question is, “what is the right action or series of actions to take in our own defense?”
To date, there are 14 billionaires that Trump has appointed to high-level positions in his upcoming administration. Not one of them with a better public reputation than the healthcare industry that Mangione, reportedly railed against in his writings. By definition, this is oligarchy. The only difference between Trump’s administration and a plutocracy, is that Trump’s version is an actual autocracy, where he holds the power and is supported by an oligarchical class. As I defined in a long essay not long ago, the incoming Trump administration, the GOP and their base make up the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence.
Excerpt "Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it." - Luigi Mangione's alleged manifesto - Ken Klippenstein - December 10, 2024
Within hours of the words from the murder scene shell casings, “deny, defend and depose” being publicly announced, public support materialized across the nation, with street posters in Manhattan, products and swag for sale on Amazon, social media mass support etc. Corporate offices expanded security, including in some cases, erecting fences around corporate headquarters. They demanded that the products and social media of Mangione were taken down or deleted. The groundswell of public emotion was and still is palpable. Although google searches for images of supportive social media posts are being scrubbed, plenty of support can still be found.
In many ways, this is the same emotional nerve that Trump and MAGA use to trigger their base that believe, that the “system” doesn’t work for all of us. The difference between most Americans and the MAGA base, is that we are not conned into believing that Trump and his billionaires care at all about the American people.
Corporate America has good reason to fear. Our nation has gone through multiple eras of abuse at the hands of personal and corporate oligarchs. At the end of each era, the rights of working Americans increased, but only after being pushed to limit and fighting back, hard. Today is one of those times that we must fight back! Oligarchs still reaped enormous profits when employee lives’ improved, and the law protected workers more and more, with each passing era. Labor laws simply meant that elite wealth couldn’t continue to whittle away at the rights, opportunities and living standards for the rest of us. Today in states like here in Texas, a “right-to-work-state,” unions are a dirty word and workers suffer accordingly.
The Great Depression, the Robber-Baron era, Industrial Trust-Busting era etc. Today’s economic era, roughly from the middle of the Reagan era, represents a modern version of all of its predecessors. It is no surprise that the Yellow Journalism era coincided with Robber Barons and Trusts or monopolies. After all, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had monopolized news. If all this sounds familiar, it is no different from what we experience today, and the threat is real.
"An analysis of the 50 richest families in the U.S. highlights tactics used to guard growing “dynastic wealth” in the country, and points to ideas for curbing and effectively taxing consolidated wealth. The Institute for Policy Studies tracked American families from Forbes’ list across nearly four decades and found that their assets grew by 1007% since 1983, outpacing the average American’s by a factor of 10. The list of American “dynasties” includes household names such as the S.C. Johnson, Rockefeller and Marriott families." - American oligarchs: Report details how the wealthiest US dynasties hoard their fortunes – and accelerate inequality - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - Anisha Kohli - July 6, 2021
Historically, when the needs of the general population of a nation are abused and their voices unheard, dramatic and often violent change cannot be far behind. Trump’s hero, Vladimir Putin knows this all too well. His beloved Soviet Union was born of a revolution of Russians peasants, little different from the serfdom of their forefathers. The successor, the Soviet Union, was little different other than the words describing it. Russia is not the only nation to wield serfdom as a form of exploiting working classes. Indentured servitude, slavery, peasantry are all forms of elite wealth, controlling the lives of those who provide the labor they profit from.
Modern America is certainly not as severe as any of these historical concepts but periodically, American workers experience eras of draconian work experiences with little or no recourse and suffer accordingly. For example, Elon Musk’s Tesla, is the poster child for unethical, immoral and illegal abuse of its employees. Is this really the unelected official to be dictating to and threatening Federal workers?
EEOC Sues Tesla for Racial Harassment and Retaliation | U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Tesla Sued by Warehouse Employees Over Work Quotas and Overtime
Tesla Settles Factory Worker’s Sexual Harassment Lawsuit | Allred, Maroko & Goldberg
Tesla says its factory is safer. But it left injuries off the books - Reveal
Tesla whistleblowers filed complaint to SEC in 2021: What it said
Elon Musk’s SpaceX illegally fired workers who criticized him, NLRB alleges - Los Angeles Times
Oligarchy in general is horrific for regular, working Americans and the specific oligarchy of the Healthcare industry in the US, is an abuse on a whole different level. Built on decades of healthcare industry lobbying efforts that allows them to abuse their clients regularly and abusively, is actually sanctioned by congress, who writes the legislation that protects them. These abuses, not infrequently, result in irreparable tragedies for families.
We’ve all heard the horror stories and many of have lived them, me included. Denial of claims, treatments, drugs etc. From the KFF/ Kaiser Family Foundation comes this next series of graphics regarding serious issues within the American Healthcare system that help to explain the intensity of frustration evident in Luigi Mangione and tens of millions of other Americans.
Even if you have only given the data above a cursory glance and have to work hard to simply keep health insurance, are lucky to afford a secondary insurance that covers what the basic plan doesn’t, it is not hard to see just how fraught with disaster, most healthcare can be for families. Any serious injury for those without disability insurance could cost you everything. Add to this the case implied by Mangione’s back surgery showing metal devices, pain is an added weight to bear. Chronic pain, disease and more, turn into life-changing experiences that could affect yours and your family’s entire future. This alone adds extraordinary losses to not only your life but cumulatively, the national economy.
U.S. health care spending grew 4.1% to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, faster than the increase of 3.2% in 2021, but much slower than the rate of 10.6% in 2020. The growth in 2022 reflected strong growth in Medicaid and private health insurance spending that was somewhat offset by continued declines in supplemental funding by the federal government associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. - National Health Expenditures 2022 Highlights - CMS.gov
Certainly, healthcare costs are rising faster than wages, another painful addition to family budgets. It’s not just family budgets that suffer. The US loses billions every year by not having UH/ universal healthcare. For example, a Yale School of Public Health piece in June of 2022 indicates that UH could have saved 335,000 lives and $105 billion in COVID-19 hospitalization costs alone. We spend far more than any other first tier nation in the world just for healthcare and get far less for our money.
The bottom line is that our healthcare system is broken. The costs alone are enough to drive any reasonable person to desperate measures, but if you include the tangential issues like pain, chronic disease, loss of work/ income, degradation of lifestyle due to denied claims, health of your family, these extra burdens are well known to drive desperate actions in normally stable, responsible adults. We still don’t know for certain what precisely drove Mangione to allegedly murder a CEO of the Healthcare company that he was dissatisfied with, but his social agenda is coming well into focus.
This may be only one data point on the scale of Americans dissatisfied with the constant price-gouging by nearly every major industry they rely on for their daily lives. Oligarchical monopolies, deny families the right to have any control over one’s own lives and this can be a hair trigger for public resistance and violence, or as MLK said, “the voices of the unheard.” Only a handful of oligarchs, personal and corporate, dominate our media, healthcare, fuel, foodstuffs, transportation etc. At every turn, Americans are being victimized in class warfare, made worse by politicians subservient to oligarchical lobbying interests, far more than their constituents.
Just in traceable expenditures, lobbyists spent over 4 billion last year on congress. The industries that pay this represent industries and special interests that we depend on every day. That $ 4 billion is included in the cost of products and services that we buy. That is a lot of money that we are investing in their opportunity to profit wildly, at our expense. Corporate profits are up dramatically almost across the board and the US taxpayer is footing the costs at the cashier and on our tax bill. We are not only not getting our money’s worth, but our standard of living is declining in the process. My question is simply, “why shouldn’t we be angry?”
More events like Brian Thompson’s murder, large public protests, voting with our wallets etc., should not be unexpected, as things worsen under an oligarchical administration, well known for abusive treatment of other human beings. None of those nominated for posts in the incoming administration are known for their ethics and moral standards. Should the abuse of hard-working Americans continue at the hands of inequitable taxes and higher prices for what we need to live, we may not see more murders, but retribution will come to those oligarchs and their industries, one way or another. Historically, the American people don’t handle having someone standing on their necks very well.
Those who voted for Trump and his henchmen in November will suffer as much as the rest of us in the meantime. “I told you so” will have zero satisfaction for those of us who warned them, because we will suffer too. All that I can suggest for molding a better-than-expected outcome, is to stop the crazy and demand your congressmen, do their job ethically, demand facts and follow-up to make sure they are not feeding the oligarchs at your expense. Republicans won’t listen because they vote in a block for whatever Trump says. None have the guts to actually represent their constituents. How you handle the “I told you so’s” with family and friends is your business. I would hope for respectful exchanges, but it is they that bear responsibility for what comes next for all of us.
There’s a lot to chew on in today’s essay. I planned it for the end of the week because our ever-expanding TAT family, seems to have more time with leisurely morning coffee on the weekends. Today’s essay matters intensely to all Americans except of course, those who are the subject of today’s essay.
My very best to all for your upcoming weekend,
Paul