Tug-of-War

The one-percent has ruled the world before, and for most of human history, aristocracy has been linked with heredity. Kingdoms were passed on from one generation to the next within the same families, which were often inbred. The U.S., though, was supposed to be different, for ours, we are told, is a land of meritocracy. This is the exception that is said to define American exceptionalism. The United States has historically been mythologized as a place where anybody can achieve success and be an active participant in the experiment of democracy... you know, as long as they happen to be white, male, landowning Protestants. 

It is therefore one hell of a coincidence that the Founding Fathers happened to have been some of the wealthiest people on the continent. Many of these men also owned slaves. In fact, the whole reason we have our electoral college system is because representatives from the southern states wanted to count slaves as three-fifths of human beings for census purposes, since that would give these states more electoral votes and representatives in Congress. Meanwhile, of course, the slaves themselves had no voice in American politics. In other words, the electoral college (yes, that electoral college) was created as a way of artificially balancing power between the more populous northern states and those in the south, who wanted to protect the institution of slavery because practically their entire economy was built on the backs of human beings that they regarded as property. 

After a couple of generations of being ruled by the American "elite," in the 1824 election, Andrew Jackson only narrowly lost to John Quincy Adams, who was the first President to be directly related to a former President: our first sequel President. To many Americans, this reeked of the monarchy from which they had only recently claimed their hard-won independence. When Adams ran for a second term in 1828, Andrew Jackson won handily. This had a lot to do with the fact that a number of states had only recently eliminated the requirement of owning property in order to vote. Jackson thus capitalized on the poor, uneducated, "populist" vote. This may sound kind of familiar. 

Andrew Jackson was considered by many to be the first President by, of and for the people. They saw him as one of their own, despite the fact that he had married into a family of extraordinary wealth. Sadly, his heiress wife actually died of a heart attack between the election and the inauguration, and her death has been attributed in part to the stress that she endured on the campaign, which is generally regarded as the dirtiest in American history up to that point. As many historians have noted, our seventh President was also a goddamn lunatic, and some suspect that he may have been functionally illiterate as well. So yeah, the parallels with today are kind of uncanny.

Do his hands look small to you?

Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States became increasingly urbanized and industrialized. During this period of enormous economic growth, railroads, mining companies and banks consolidated by means of incremental acquisition until they were enormously powerful corporations. An exponentially disproportionate amount of wealth was being accumulated by the already wealthy. Even then, it was the same old story. 

Pictured: Uncle Moneybags and J.P. Morgan, although I forget which is which.

Back in the 1890s, the one-percent were referred to as "robber barons," a term that invites direct comparison to thieving feudal lords and the unscrupulous means through which they gained their wealth. For everybody else, the good times lasted until they didn’t. A stock market that was built on manipulation and speculation inevitably imploded, all but destroying the world economy. However, for the true titans of industry (the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, et al), the stock market crash did not claim their fortunes. It merely slowed their continued acquisition of wealth until the next world war. 

The waxing and waning of economic inequality in the United States continues. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer until their numbers reach a critical mass, at which point the system breaks and large-scale changes are instituted to prevent it from happening again. Over time, these regulations are dismantled by those in power in order for these individuals to remain in power and accumulate more wealth... until history once again repeats itself. Meanwhile, economic inequality grows until the institutions that support this disparity inevitably collapse beneath the weight of their own corruption. They are then rebuilt in such a way that better reflects the changing times, until the times eventually change faster than the dysfunctional and bloated institutions, and so the cycle repeats. 

Other western cultures, like Rome, England and France have produced strikingly similar patterns, where the distribution of wealth expands and contracts in regular intervals. The bad news is that this was bound to happen. The good news is that standards of living for the working class will eventually improve again. Unfortunately, it's likely to get worse before it gets better. Change is indeed a natural process, but it seldom comes easily.