A half-century ago, the United States had the largest middle class in the history of the nation and the world.

At the time, the political left pushed for stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research, while the right argued for greater reliance on the free market. But as wealth and power have flowed upward in the United States — and, to a lesser degree, in other wealthy countries — most people have become less secure, regardless of whether they once identified with the old left or the old right.

America's large middle class has become a shadow of what it once was. The bottom 90 percent are struggling to make ends meet. The richest 10 percent account for a large and growing share of consumption, while the top one-tenth of 1 percent controls an increasing share of wealth.

The central divide today, the article argues, is not between left and right. It is between democracy and oligarchy.

The term "oligarchy" comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning "few to rule or command." It describes a system in which a small group of extremely wealthy people controls the major institutions of society and, through them, most of the power over other people's lives.

Oligarchs may try to conceal their influence behind institutions, justify it with language about the public good, or defend it through philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. But, the article says, their power is used for their own benefit. Even a system that calls itself a democracy can become an oligarchy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of a corporate and financial elite. Over time, that elite can shape laws in its favor, manipulate markets to its advantage and build or exploit monopolies that further increase its wealth.

Modern Russia is presented as an example of oligarchy, with a small number of billionaires controlling major industries and dominating politics and the economy.

The article argues that the United States has experienced oligarchy three times in its history. The first was at the nation's founding, when many of the men who established the country were slaveholding white oligarchs. At that time, America had little of a middle class. Most white people were farmers, indentured servants, farmhands, traders, day laborers and artisans, while about one-fifth of the population was Black and almost all were enslaved.

A second oligarchy emerged a century later during the era of the robber barons. Men such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Mellon accumulated enormous fortunes through railroads, steel, oil and finance. Their empires helped drive the industrial revolution, but they also corrupted government, suppressed wages, widened inequality, deepened urban poverty, crushed rivals and eliminated competition. That period ended in large part because World War I and the Great Depression eroded their wealth, and because the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, along with Democratic majorities in Congress, stripped away much of their power.

For the next half-century, the gains from growth were more broadly shared and democracy became more responsive to ordinary Americans. The country still had major unfinished work, including civil rights and voting rights for Black Americans, broader opportunity for women and Latinos, and environmental protection. Even so, the article says, the nation was making progress by nearly every measure.

A third American oligarchy began around 1980. That period coincided with major policy shifts: the top marginal federal income tax rate, which had exceeded 90 percent during the 1950s, was cut to 28 percent by the late 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, and union membership — which covered roughly a third of American workers in the mid-1950s — began a steady decline that has brought it to around 10 percent today. Since 1980, the share of national wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled, rising from 0.8 percent to 3.7 percent. The richest 130,000 Americans and their immediate families now hold as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent — about 117 million people — combined. The three richest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. The article says Russia is the only other country with similarly high wealth concentration.

This shift has also brought a steep rise in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally steep decline in everyone else's influence. Unlike income or wealth, power is described as a zero-sum game: the more of it concentrated at the top, the less remains elsewhere. The average American now has little or no effect on public policy, while large corporations, their chief executives and a small number of very rich people wield more influence than any comparable group since the robber barons.

The article links this power shift to the flood of big money into politics. In the 2024 election, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion to candidates, accounting for almost 20 percent of all contributions to federal elections either directly or through political action committees. Billionaire families gave an average of $10 million each in 2024, roughly equal to the combined donations of 100,000 typical political donors. One donor, Elon Musk, gave a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump's reelection. That figure does not include money routed through dark-money groups that do not disclose their donors.

By comparison, five presidential elections earlier, billionaire spending on elections amounted to almost nothing after inflation, at 0.3 percent. The article points to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which overturned key provisions of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, as a major turning point. Corporate lobbying has also soared, the piece says, drowning out ordinary voices.

The article says the wealth and political power shift has been accompanied by lower taxes on the rich and on corporations. It cites Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill of July 2025, which cut taxes for the richest 10 percent of Americans by more than $14,700 per year, per household, and cut taxes for the richest 1 percent by more than $50,000 per year. At the same time, safety nets for the poor and middle class have weakened. About 3 million fewer Americans have access to Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage than before the second Trump regime because of higher premium costs. Roughly 4.5 million to 5 million fewer Americans receive food stamps. Public investment in education and infrastructure has also declined.

The article argues that the free market has been replaced by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts and corporate welfare, and says American oligarchy has returned "with a vengeance."

The piece stresses that not every wealthy person is blameworthy. It says the issue is the overlap of wealth and power, where money is used to gain influence and influence is then used to generate more money. That, the article says, is how oligarchy destroys democracy. By financing campaigns and hiring large numbers of lobbyists and public relations specialists, oligarchs effectively purchase political loyalty.

The article then turns to Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of JPMorganChase, which it describes as the largest and most profitable bank in the United States and the most influential CEO in America. If someone wants to understand American oligarchy, the article says, they need to understand Dimon.

A lifelong Democrat and friend of Bill Clinton, Dimon supported Barack Obama in 2008 and mentored several people who later served in the Obama White House. At Obama's 2008 inauguration, Dimon told the incoming president, "Tell me what you need. I'll send people down here. I'll do anything." In 2009, The New York Times called him "Obama's favorite banker." He also supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But Dimon has also praised Donald Trump. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, at the start of 2024, Dimon said, "Take a step back, be honest," and argued that Trump was "kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked."

The article disputes that assessment and says Dimon likely made the remarks because he thought Trump had a strong chance of returning to the presidency and wanted to stay on his good side. It argues that, at a moment when leading business figures should be defending the rule of law, democracy and decency, Dimon has instead helped normalize Trump.

The piece notes that Dimon has also publicly acknowledged many of the country's problems. In his 2017 letter to JPMorgan shareholders, he warned that inner-city schools were failing children. In 2018, he said middle-class incomes had stagnated for years, inequality had worsened and equal opportunity was not being offered to all Americans. In 2019, he wrote that "a big chunk of [Americans] have been left behind." More recently, he told the Economic Club of Chicago that white Americans do not adequately understand racial discrimination, saying, "If you're white, paint yourself black and walk down the street one day, and you'll probably have a little more empathy for how some of these folks get treated," and that a "special effort" is needed because it is "a special problem."

The article then lists what it sees as six major contradictions in Dimon's public posture.

First, although he speaks about the struggles of poor Americans, he has not addressed the growing concentration of wealth and power or the role of big money in politics. He has not called for campaign finance reform. Instead, the article says, he lobbied Congress heavily for Trump's 2017 and 2025 tax cuts, which rewarded the wealthy and big corporations while adding to the federal debt and producing little benefit for workers or the poor. It also notes that JPMorgan paid $13 billion to settle Justice Department claims that it defrauded borrowers and investors before the 2008 financial crisis, when Dimon was in charge.

Second, Dimon has spoken about the damage caused by climate change, including the way it hits people who cannot afford flood- and storm-resistant housing or climate insurance. Yet the article says JPMorganChase is the world's leading financier of fossil fuels, citing the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report. It says the bank directed $58 billion toward fossil fuels this year, up 13 percent from 2024, and that a report from six environmental groups named Dimon the "world's worst banker of climate change."

Third, while condemning racial discrimination and pointing to JPMorgan's investments in poor neighborhoods, the bank has also been accused of blocking Black borrowers from fair treatment. In January 2017, JPMorgan agreed to pay $55 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that mortgage brokers charged minority borrowers higher interest rates than white borrowers with the same credit profile, costing Black borrowers tens of millions of dollars in extra mortgage payments.

Fourth, after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in August 2019, Dimon sent employees an email urging them to "recommit ourselves to work for a more equitable, just and safe society." Yet the article says JPMorgan is the largest U.S. source of financial services to gun manufacturers and gun retailers, and a major lender to gun buyers. It argues that Dimon could stop that financing, urge other banks to do the same, or use JPMorgan's payment systems and lobbying power to promote stronger tracking of gun sales, but has not done so.

Fifth, Dimon has long spoken about women's rights and gender discrimination, but JPMorgan maintained a long financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The article says the bank processed $1.1 billion in more than 4,700 transactions for Epstein between 1998 and 2013, including at least seven years after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution. It says JPMorgan's general counsel, Steve Cutler, wrote in a 2011 email that Epstein "is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client," yet the bank still allowed large recurring cash withdrawals and account activity that helped facilitate transfers and payments to victims of Epstein's trafficking ring. The bank later paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing it of enabling his sex-trafficking operation.

Sixth, although Dimon says he cares about workers who cannot live on their wages, JPMorgan pays bank tellers very little. The article cites an April 2019 House Financial Services Committee hearing in which Rep. Katie Porter said a JPMorgan teller in Irvine, California, started at $24,000 a year, leaving the worker $567 short each month of what she needed to live on. When Porter asked how that worker should manage the shortfall, Dimon repeatedly said, "I don't know, I'd have to think about that." When she asked whether the worker should use a JPMorgan credit card or overdraft and pay fees, he gave the same answer. Porter then noted that Dimon earns $31 million and still could not explain how to cover a $561 shortfall. The article also recalls Dimon's response when Bank of America raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour: "It's not an arms race."

The article says Dimon is important because he is the Democrats' favorite CEO and is widely seen as a liberal on social issues and moderate on the economy. His views are trusted by the establishment, the article says, because he is the establishment.

But, it argues, the deeper issue is not simply hypocrisy. JPMorgan's directors and shareholders expect Dimon to maximize the bank's profits, and that is his job. The broader problem is power and deception: Dimon has enormous public influence, but he uses it for private ends, presenting himself as someone acting in the public interest when he supports Trump's tax cuts, opposes a wealth tax, appears on CNBC and other media outlets as an economic expert, urges lawmakers to loosen bank regulation or warns Democrats against nominating a candidate too far from the center.

The article argues that the public, the media and members of Congress should not trust his advice on the economy, taxes, financial regulation, the environment or inequality, because his real objective is to make more money for JPMorgan. His influence over government is part of how he does that.

The piece broadens that critique to other powerful business figures, naming Elon Musk and other billionaire allies, Brad Carp and elite corporate lawyers, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the Ellisons. It says they have aligned themselves with Trump to win corporate welfare, large tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust forbearance and war contracts, and to avoid his anger. It says they have contributed billions to Trump's inauguration, ballroom, 250th birthday, family businesses and super PAC, and that they have traded integrity for profit.

According to the article, these figures have built media empires that will not criticize Trump, financial empires that support Trump's crypto interests, energy empires that profit from his wars and legal empires that let him disregard the rule of law. In doing so, the article says, they have abandoned public responsibility at a time when the political-economic system is drifting toward authoritarianism.

The article concludes that oligarchs have redirected the gains of the economy toward themselves, gaining unprecedented wealth and even more power in the process. They have rewritten the rules of American capitalism to their advantage, undermined trust and weakened democracy.

As long as oligarchy remains in control, the article says, there will be no meaningful response to stagnant paychecks, climate change, the dangers of artificial intelligence, racism or the rising costs of health insurance, college, childcare and housing. It argues that oligarchs will resist tax increases, block antitrust enforcement, allow Wall Street's risk-taking to grow, keep CEO pay unchecked and continue funneling subsidies, bailouts and loan guarantees to large corporations while stripping away protections for consumers, workers and the environment.

The article says Trump and other propagandists and demagogues are intensifying old divisions by stoking racial resentment, describing human beings as illegal aliens, fueling hostility toward immigrants and spreading fear of communists and socialists. That, it says, helps the oligarchy by distracting Americans from the looting of the country, the buying of politicians and the silencing of critics.

The only way to weaken oligarchy, the article concludes, is for ordinary people to organize and reclaim power. It calls for a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans committed to democracy and opposed to concentrated wealth, power and privilege.

The agenda it outlines includes getting big money out of politics, ending corporate welfare and crony capitalism, breaking up monopolies, stopping voter suppression and strengthening labor unions, employee-owned companies, worker cooperatives, state and local banks and grassroots politics.

The article says this program is neither right nor left. It is the foundation for everything else the United States must do.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and a former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at .