EXAMPLES OF PLUTOCRACY CODE

Some modern historians, politicians, and economists argue that the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression. See also: American upper class and Wealth inequality in the United States

EXAMPLES OF PLUTOCRACY CODE

For the Nazis, the term was often a code word for 'the Jews'. Plutocracy replaced democracy and capitalism as the principal fascist term for the United States and Great Britain during the Second World War. In the political jargon and propaganda of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Communist International, Western democratic states were referred to as plutocracies, with the implication being that a small number of extremely wealthy individuals were controlling the countries and holding them to ransom.

In fact about 450,000 non-residents constitute the city's day-time population, far outnumbering the City's 7,000 residents. The principal justification for this arrangement is that most of the services provided by the City of London Corporation are used by the businesses in the City. More than two-thirds of voters are not residents, but rather representatives of businesses and other bodies that occupy premises in the City, with votes distributed according to their numbers of employees. The City (also called the Square Mile of ancient London, corresponding to the modern financial district, an area of about 2.5 km 2) has a unique electoral system for its local administration, separate from the rest of London. One modern, formal example of a plutocracy, according to some critics, is the City of London. A former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, also believed the US to be developing into a plutocracy. According to Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, the modern United States resembles a plutocracy though with democratic forms. Historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian merchant city states of Venice, Florence, Genoa, the Dutch Republic and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). Throughout history, political thinkers and philosophers have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict and corrupting societies with greed and hedonism. The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition.

Examples of plutocracy