Are We Now a Broligarchy?

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If Trump’s nominees are confirmed, his administration could include at least 13 billionaires, collectively worth $383 billion. And at the inauguration, billionaire tech leaders like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg sat front and center signaling their proximity to power. Wealthy people joining the government is not new, but the levels of extreme wealth are unprecedented. So much so that in his farewell address, former President Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.” Pundits have christened this new era a “broligarchy.” We’ll talk about how billionaires in and out of government are impacting the country. Guests: Brooke Harrington, professor of sociology, Dartmouth College; author, "Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism" Paul Pierson, political science professor, UC Berkeley; co-author, "Let The Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality" Noah Bookbinder, president, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:59.0	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. If Donald Trump's nominees are confirmed, his administration could include a minimum of 13 billionaires, collectively worth $383 billion.
1:11.6	While wealthy people have long been involved with presidential administrations, there's a point where the difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
1:19.6	And that's not even talking about the phalanx of tech executives who literally lined up behind Trump at his inauguration.
1:33.1	Today we talk with experts about what the vast wealth entering and surrounding the administration says about the ethics and actions of the second Trump administration.
1:37.6	It's all coming up next after this news.
1:53.3	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Growing up in the United States in the post-Ragan era, the idea of being a conservative implied a Milton Friedmaness faith in the markets. The right in the U.S. might have wanted social conservative action, but the markets and therefore
2:06.1	the companies were mostly supposed to be left alone to creatively destroy each other and make
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