“….Roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.” Chomsky notes that this arrangement is not unique to America: “Europe, incidentally, is much worse….[The general public has voted against the European Union’s economic model,] yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat after another.” According to Chomsky, America is essentially a one-party state, and the one party is the business party. He argues that this general power structure has been the same since the nation’s founding. Chomsky’s conclusion: “The general picture is pretty grim, I think. But there are shafts of light. As always through history, there are two trajectories. One leads towards oppression and destruction. The other leads towards freedom and justice. And as always – to adapt Martin Luther King’s famous phrase – there are ways to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice and freedom…”
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:37:35 +0000
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