The real difference between a democracy and an oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy.”
Aristotle.
It is often said that numbers do not lie. However, most people will agree that numbers are sometimes manipulated to promote agendas. Furthermore, as compelling as numbers might be, especially when they are used to make comparisons between numerical majorities and minorities, and to measure various quantifiable powers, they do not always tell the full story, neither can they always be relied upon to provide definitive predictions. There are numerous examples from history to substantiate this point
The Philistine giant, Goliath, for instance, a warrior mentioned in a biblical account, when that nation warred against the children of Israel, stood from six feet nine inches to nine feet nine inches tall. Because David was an adolescent shepherd, of average build, Goliath towered over him by at least one point five to four point five feet. Those numbers, in addition to the superior armor, weaponry and battle experience of Goliath, suggested that the outcome of the fight was a foregone conclusion in the giant’s favor. That was until David slew Goliath.
Several centuries later, in a theater of war on another continent, with numbers which portended decided victory for one side, what some prognosticators assumed did not come to fruition. The American colonial army was severely outmatched. The British Empire possessed a massive,
combat-hardened, professional military; with a global supply chain; and the world’s most powerful navy. However, the Americans leveraged defensive attrition, geographic advantages, and critical European alliances to offset this disparity and outlasted British political will. Those inspiring examples from history, however, did not come readily to mind as I was discouraged by things which I heard on a news channel as I worked from home, recently.
The occupation of our current U.S. Federal government by powerful oligarchs, with growing influence over the public affairs of this nation since 2025, at an alarming rate, has sent shockwaves throughout the world. The architect of the deliberate, methodical, and steady deconstruction of the government, under the auspices of corporate oligarchs, is the think tank, the Heritage Foundation, executing a plan to have corporate interests control the government – a desire which existed before the Civil War. Dr. Heather Cox-Richardson, in her book, To Make Men Free: A History of The Republican Party, revealed how that desire was of great concern for Republican progressives like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. And to see it materialize before our eyes is both frightening and discouraging. Goliath is in our midst.
I tried to put aside what I had heard about the ways that the oligarchs are using to privatize the government, including the U.S. Post Office, which has its roots in the Constitution. But the reality of their efforts towards monopolizing everything, including journalism, which is also enshrined in the Constitution, continued to gnaw at me. Yet, by the way that they have been spinning things, for decades, by demonizing government, one would never believe how much they have been benefitting from taxes. In fact, the handouts received by corporations have been staggering, making the complaints against the much-vilified Black “welfare queens” mere child’s play by comparison.
How many people know that the total government spending on subsidies for corporations is significantly larger than direct federal spending on traditional social welfare programs for individuals? One would never know that from the talking heads in the public square. Even their own conservative think tanks have not denied this. The Cato Institute, for example, estimates that federal corporate welfare and business subsidies alone cost upwards of $100 billion annually, with some analyses placing the yearly cost closer to $181 billion. Broader long-term public investments—such as those under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act—have injected hundreds of billions of dollars more into targeted private sectors like energy and semiconductors. By comparison, direct federal spending on the largest means-tested welfare programs ranges lower. For example, federal spending on the Supplemental Security Income for the disabled is roughly $13 billion annually. And so, who is fooling who? In this instance the numbers – their very own numbers – do not lie.
Again, does the regular man in the street, especially he who tends to support big business, blindly, and mindlessly, votes in favor of their agendas, know that the government develops private industry through targeted subsidies, grants, and public-private partnerships? Does he know that it protects industries by implementing trade tariffs, by securing critical supply chains, by acquiring strategic equity, and by sharing vital cybersecurity intelligence? With the wealth of knowledge available to all in America – through universities, public libraries, bookstores and the Internet – it is astounding how dark and how deep ignorance is in America. Some speak of “the people’s right to know”, yet many use it to bury their heads in the sand.
Does the regular man in the street know of the government machinery that the oligarchs have been benefitting from – the same oligarchs who accuse it of propagating “socialist” “handout” policies? The government, again, issues grants, loans, and tax incentives—such as those established by the CHIPS and Science Act—in order to spur domestic manufacturing, infrastructure expansion, and technological innovation. How does talk, therefore, about “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps” come into play here? Why only use that cliché against the exploited, and the poor? Why this glaring hypocrisy? The U.S. oil and gas corporations, for example, receive roughly $35 billion annually in federal subsidies and tax preferences. On a broader global scale, including both tax breaks and the unpriced environmental costs of pollution, the IMF estimates that fossil fuel subsidies reach well over $1.1 trillion per year in the United States. And yet the poor are the problem, according to the rich.
Some of the top companies that receive varying amounts in billions of dollars each in subsidies are Boeing, Intel, Ford, GM, Alcoa, Disney, Texas Instruments, Micron, VW, Sempra, Cheniere, Foxconn, NRG, Nucor and Stellantis. Elon Musk’s businesses have received an estimated $38 billion in funding, loans, subsidies, and tax credits. Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has amassed over $3.7 billion in subsidies over the years, and has avoided billions in corporate taxes, allowing the company to pay an effective federal income tax rate of a fraction of the statutory 21%. Is that socialism? Would that not make them, therefore, corporate welfare kings? Government is, indeed, good for them. Programs like the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer provide early-stage capital for startups to develop critical technologies. Agencies like the U.S. Investment Accelerator and the International Development Finance Corporation facilitate massive domestic and international capital investments. The oligarchs use, misuse, and ignore numbers only when it suits them.
Federal agencies collaborate with private commercial actors to share resources, develop emerging technologies, and stabilize industries during global crises.
President Obama, for example, bailed out housing financiers primarily by expanding and utilizing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, initiated under the Bush administration, and by providing massive, ongoing financial lifelines to the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The government maintains strategic equity stakes and portfolio investments in companies tied to critical sectors like minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors to reduce reliance on foreign competitors. Federal initiatives focus on reshoring manufacturing, curbing foreign ownership in critical infrastructure, and ensuring domestic capacity for key goods. And the government utilizes trade barriers, export controls, and maritime reinsurance programs to shape market conditions, enforce rules, and protect commercial actors.
All of that work was being accomplished by civilian federal employees, with salaries which accounted for slightly under 5% of the overall federal budget, both immediately before and just after President Trump took office in 2025. The financial distribution of this federal expenditure remains consistent across the transition. Total payroll for the roughly 3 million civilian federal workers cost approximately $336 billion annually. This represented roughly 1% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and just under 5% of the total federal budget. A recurrent expenditure of 1% of GDP is not detrimental, and it is a routine and manageable level of public spending. The consensus among the financial experts is that if your salary expenditure is sitting at just 5%, while maintaining normal operations, you are either heavily utilizing independent contractors, or are operating a highly automated model, or are, likely, headed for understaffing and employee burnout
Speaking about wages, let me just inject, at this point, that the federal minimum wage for workers in the U.S. remained at $7.25 per hour— since July 24, 2009. Canada did not have a standalone federal minimum wage for most of those seventeen years. Employees followed provincial rates until a federal minimum was introduced in 2021. Since its inception, the rate has increased annually, due to inflation, from $15.00 per hour in 2021 to $18.15 in 2026. Why not in the U.S.?
While the federal minimum wage remains frozen, except for increases given in some states, the average total compensation for CEOs at the largest 350 firms grew by, roughly, 150% to 160% – an annual growth rate of roughly 8% to 9%. And yet the poor, here in the U.S. – the greatest country in the world – are said to be the cause of its economic problems. And, God bless America.
Can the American people defeat this Goliath? Do they stand a ghost of a chance come the midterm elections in November of 2026 and beyond? Will democracy survive? Can we trust the numbers? Do they comprise a reliable crystal ball? I was downcast after I had heard the talk of the privatization of our government and of public resources until I made a discovery. It is a fact that the oligarchs are a force to be reckoned with. But, as I have said before, the numbers do not always tell the full story nor can they always be relied upon to say, with utmost certainty, what the future holds for America and the world. Remember David and Goliath?
In today’s economy, the private sector, which in large part is controlled by the oligarchs, accounts for roughly 85% to 90% of the U.S. economy’s output (GDP), while the public sector – federal, state, and local combined – accounts for 10% to 15%. It is often stated that most of the wealth in this country is owned by the top 1% of the population. Such a command of our economy is a formidable one. How then do the remaining 99% defeat the greedy and destructive machinations of the 1%? Would our hope for justice and equality be as one spitting into the wind? Does the data spell our doom? One would tend to think so, yet for the fact that the oligarchs had more control of the U.S. economy before the Civil War than they now do, accounting for roughly 97% to 98% of the economy. The federal government at the time was exceptionally small, with outlays averaging between 1.5% and 2.5% of the estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during peacetime. The breakdown of that economic division reveals a heavily decentralized, market-driven society. How many in the public square were acquainted with those facts? What saith the quantitative oracles of our qualitative future?
To my mind, if the oligarchs, before the Civil War, being more economically and politically powerful than the ones today, could be defeated by “we the people”, then their progeny can be defeated by “we the people”. I have no idea if America will remain a democracy. But, I am now of the opinion, having read the sodden tea leaves in the musty bowl of history, that despite the numbers and the huge gaps between them, that ordinary Americans can re-write the next chapter of their history and help to save and strengthen their gravely wounded democracy.
