I keep reading about how there is this 1% and how much they have and how much more they are amassing and so on and so forth, but what is stopping anyone in America from joining them? Anyone can invest in the stock market or trade bonds, free education is available to every child and anyone can go to college thanks to student loans and scholarships. The sky is the limit here, so how much of the class divide is really class warfare and how much is people not using the opportunities they have or making poor choices?
What is stopping people in America from become part of the one percent, is the one percent themselves.
Most people believe, falsy that the one percent is composed of people such as the Koch brothers, Bill Gates or the Waltons. While these families do have a considerable amount of wealth and do qualify as "the one" percent in economic terms, in political terms, they are mere interest groups.
They are not truly entrenched in the polity, not as of yet. Among the ultra wealthy, they are what is commonly known as, "New money." In fact, they are more wealthy than old money. Among the rich, once you achieve a certain level of wealth, say, your first billion, it really doesn't matter how much wealth you have, what you crave is power.
One needs to know how to invest one's money to accrue to one's family the most power. That is what these nouveau rich are just now trying to figure out.
Here's a nice convenient list of them;
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
But these folks are newbies to the oligarchy. Once you have money, you become bored. You soon learn that there is more to life than "things." If you don't discover a spiritual life, than you decide to play the sport of kings, and that is politics. Money is the ticket to play this game, and the grandest game of all is international politics. Thus, all money is then spent on social engineering projects. Why do you think all social engineering projects have traditionally been made tax deductible since the turn of the century?
We commonly believe that these are, "charitable" contributions from wealthy benefactors. When actually, these are just the play things of men who fancy themselves as the new aristocracy, or worse yet, kings of the land.
Although, by gross wealth, the old families, the truly powerful ones, the
real one percent, are not listed as "the elite" one percent. The truth is, these families have more influence over the culture and the politics than the congressmen, the senators or the president. THIS is the one percent.
Once you have a business idea, or you are successful at investing, trading, law, etc., and should happen to come close to achieving the wealth necessary to enter this club, then you must know how to wield those financial resources into social engineering projects. It is one thing to become obscenely rich, but you most also know how to keep the wrong people from becoming wealthy and powerful, and becoming part of the club. . . .
America's 60 Families
Dynasties listed below were included in America's 60 Families, Ferdinand Lundberg's 1937 expose on the super-rich. Lundberg used tax records to uncover the often impenetrable financial and political machinations of the 60 Families, effectively publishing a directory of names and occupations of family scions as well as estimates of their fortunes.
"The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth... These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form since the Civil War. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States -- informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy."
Families are listed in ranked order (according to 1924 tax records) with their primary sources of wealth.
http://www.nndb.com/lists/439/000127058/
How do the One percent undermine our democratic institutions and keep you from their ranks? What is the goal of the One percent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_to_Investigate_Tax-Exempt_Foundations_and_Comparable_Organizations
The final report was submitted by Norman Dodd, and because of its provocative nature, the committee became subject to attack. He began by listing criticisms of the Cox Committee, and then moved on to content.
In the Dodd report to the Reece Committee on Foundations, he gave a definition of the word "subversive", saying that the term referred to "Any action having as its purpose the alteration of either the principle or the form of the United States Government by other than constitutional means." He then argued that the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Carnegie Endowment were using funds excessively on projects at Columbia, Harvard, Chicago University and the University of California, in order to enable oligarchical collectivism. He stated, "The purported deterioration in scholarship and in the techniques of teaching which, lately, has attracted the attention of the American public, has apparently been caused primarily by a premature effort to reduce our meager knowledge of social phenomena to the level of an applied science." He stated that his research staff had discovered that in "1933-1936, a change took place which was so drastic as to constitute a "revolution". They also indicated conclusively that the responsibility for the economic welfare of the American people had been transferred heavily to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government; that a corresponding change in education had taken place from an impetus outside of the local community, and that this "revolution" had occurred without violence and with the full consent of an overwhelming majority of the electorate." He stated that this revolution "could not have occurred peacefully, or with the consent of the majority, unless education in the United States had been prepared in advance to endorse it ."[6]
IOW, an administration like the current one is their dream come true. And make no mistake, it wasn't chance that landed Obama in office. It was all engineered that way. Non-profits by the one percent have controlled education and media for the past century. How can you become part of the one percent if you believe in collectivism? How can you achieve your potential if you believe it is the governments job to tell you what your potential is? Thank the one percent and their non-profit foundations for that.
