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The Corrosive Impact of Money in Our Political System

Are We Becoming an Oligarchy?

Hossein Askari
4 min readJan 2, 2025

Unlimited flow of money into American elections is framing and shaping the political landscape. Can the United States still be called a democracy or is it a plutocracy or even more aptly and honestly closer to an oligarchy?

Consider the following disparate facts before deciding:

Is it really one person one vote or does a large financial contribution from a big donor in support of a candidate supplant this cherished notion resulting in a stronger campaign with more campaign workers, more adds, more publicity, etc., and thus help elect the donor’s candidate? So while ours is still a country with each person technically having one vote at the ballot box, do large financial contributors tilt the playing field overwhelmingly in favor of one candidate beyond his or her single vote?

Even before becoming a party’s candidate, does the threat of backing an opponent in the primaries change election results and deter potential candidates from even standing for election?

The fact that campaign donors heavily influence areas of domestic policymaking is pretty obvious, but do they even more dangerously control our foreign policy? Consider the donations of the Adelsons to Trump in 2016 to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (something that past presidents had resisted for over 50 years) and to similarly recognize the annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel, both illegal…

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Hossein Askari
Hossein Askari

Written by Hossein Askari

MIT engineer-economist. Prof: Tufts, UT-Austin, GW. IMF Board. Gov Mediator: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. Focus on Econ-Fin, Oil, Sanctions, Mid-East, Islam

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