We speak with political scientist Jeffrey Winters about his new book, The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies. Winters argues that democracy’s failure to address wealth inequality is by design. While voters have a say on some issues, oligarchs, who succeed in maintaining economic inequality by fighting against wealth redistribution, have more power.
“Liberal democracies around the world are now among the most unequal societies ever to have existed in human history,” says Winters. He explains that in Imperial Rome, the wealth gap was about 16,000 to one. “Take the average person in the Forbes 400 compared to the median person in the United States. That has exploded to 140,000 to one.”
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