Us Democracy Contested: Aristocracy and Monopoly

Ken and Nancy Wieand

Ken and Nancy Wieand

Ralph Waldo, Emerson, in his 1844 essay on politics writes “…from neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.” True now as then. This essay argues that it is true because of entitlements to some citizens created by imperfections in the constitutional system, and that this is because of the creation of identity, aristocracies and public monopolies.

Introduction

Introduction

Political discord is the common state of affairs in the US. Even during the last century, the “American Century” during which the US led the free world, conflict roiled the public square. Such is the way with democracies. Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1844 noted that “a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom, while a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water”¹. Notwithstanding this disclaimer, the current state of US politics is not pleasing the voters in the land of the free. Voter surveys reveal that only a minority of respondents are sanguine about the direction the country is taking.

This essay explains the sources of our national political funk as the outcome of the interaction of groups of self-interested voters each of which shares the same economic and moral objectives. Over time, voters have gravitated toward communities, or pluralities, of voters. These pluralities in turn have formed organizations whose missions are to implement the priorities of their members. Each organization creates strategies to achieve its goals, and a narrative to justify its strategies.

These activist organizations and their members have gathered under the banners of one of two great political parties which represent and respond to them; the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Each party supports elected representatives who represent its common objectives.

The two parties, their voters and their elected officials must contend with each other within the country’s governmental structure and legal system. Within each Party, Party interests differ and often are in conflict, and the Party must coordinate the actions of its organizations and present an overall platform to present to its voters. There is less communication between the two major political parties, the Democratic and the Republican, than in recent memory, and less cooperation.

The daily activities of the two political parties, of party members, and of those who work for the organizations which support and control the elected representatives of each party, are reminiscent of a fireworks display. The voting public watching the fireworks, ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ at the colorful and loud explosions unfolding before them.

But the light-show provides little insight into the actual events which underlie it. To discover who runs the show in America today, one must look beneath the rhetoric of individual politicians and the roles they play in the daily operation of the US political system. At the fringes of the daily spectacle, out of sight and in the dark, are the pyrotechnicians who load and set off the rhetorical rockets. They are the actual sources of the sound and fury in the sky above the crowd.

How have the voters in the two parties formed such divergent opinions? The gulf between the two parties seems unbridgeable because the narratives of the Republican and Democratic Parties, and subsequently the public authorities that represent them, talk past one another. Each looks at the same facts and comes to opposite conclusions as to what they mean. Consequently, the two parties maintain sharply divergent views of the problems we face as a nation, and of the steps that must be taken to correct these problems.

With so little common ground, there seems to be no way forward that can incorporate the aspirations of both groups. Abraham Lincoln, our president during another period of national division, observed that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

An indication of the width of the gulf between the divergent views within the electorate is found in Table I-1, which reports a recent poll by the Pew Research Center in 2023 on differences between the Republican and Democratic parties to a set of national problems. The first two columns report the percent of voters in each party who consider the issue to be of major concern, and the third column shows the differences in those percentages between the two parties.

Democratic voters view climate change, gun violence, and racism as the most important problems facing the country. The democratic voter concern over racism in Table I-1 reflects opinions of black voters and to a lesser extent, hispanic and asian voters. Their concerns about white extremism also contribute to their views of the importance of gun violence and domestic terrorism. The importance of violent crime and illegal immigration have greater resonance with white voters and less resonance among nonwhite voters because white voters identify these problems with nonwhite communities.

The bottom four columns report Republican top problems; illegal immigration, the level of government debt, a declining level of public morality, and inflation as the worst issues facing the country. For Republicans, inflation and the Federal debt are related to recent Democratic party national economic policies. Immigration and public morality indicate challenges to the traditional values favored by Republican voters.

Voters are more closely aligned in agreement over those problems in the middle of the table. There is agreement on issues such as drug addiction, public school quality, unemployment and the quality of infrastructure because these issues transcend identity politics. This said, the opinions of Democrats and Republicans about the sources of these problems are doubtless different. For instance Democrats blame Republicans for the inability of the parties to work together while Republicans blame the Democrats.

Table I-1 Differeces in Assessemts of National Problems

Guide to Chapters

This essay consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 attempts to shine a light on the silent managers of the fireworks put on by politicians and newscasters. Who are they? They are activists in the major voting blocs who control today’s two political parties. Chapter 1 identifies the voting blocs that control the Democratic Party and the political issues that motivate them.

However, identifying the country’s voting blocs and their motives is just the first step in explaining their influence. After one identifies the parties^‘ political interests, one must go on to explain how they exert their power. How did they come to run the show, and how are they rewarded for their efforts? The goal of this essay is to provide answers to this second question. To forge answer these questions, one must first describe the political entity in which the US citizenry is contesting.

Chapter 2 discusses representative democracy and voting blocs, often referred as ‘factions’ or ‘pluralities’. And the chapter indicates the ways that today’s political factions can impede the operations of democratic institutions and prevent the establishment of full democracy

Because of the presence of political factions, Chapter 2 borrows the terminology of political theorist Robert Dahl to qualify the US as a Polyarchy instead of as a democracy. In a Polyarchy, political interest groups, or to use a related term, factions, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, have acquired legal entitlements that are denied to the general public. These entitlements are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 below.

Chapter 3 attributes the power of certain political factions to identity aristocracies. An aristocracy is a form of government. Chapter 3 develops the concept of aristocracy as a faction of citizens who share legal entitlements not available to the remaining voters.

Chapter 4 discusses the important roles that identity aristocracies play in the USA today.

Chapter 5 attributes other factional powers to the formation of ingrown public monopolies. Chapter 5 considers state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and their economic and political consequences. The crucial importance of public monopolies in social conflict is illustrated by the battle over privatization in the UK during the years 1979-1984.

Chapter 6 presents a governance model of the US Democratic Party and of its core constituents. The chapter goes on to develop the relationship between the Democratic Party and the US government.

Chapter 7 is a case study. The chapter provides an application of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 to the US education industry, perhaps the most numerically and politically important group of state owned enterprises (SOES) in the country.

Chapter 8 summarizes the conclusions of this essay.

There are two appendices. Appendix 3-1 provides an extended discussion of Francis Fukuhama’s description of the role of aristocracies in the evolution of Europe’s modern democracies. Appendix 4-1 provides an extended discussion of two studies which examine the wage gaps between US ethnic groups.

Chapter 1 Republican and Democratic Interest Groups in Today’s America

In broad outline, a fault line separates two sets of voters. The first set is comprised of those voters who comprised the cultural rebellion of the 1960s, in their present incarnation. They vote for the Democratic Party. This essay refers to these voters as the counterculture. The original members of the counterculture are now entering old age. The second set of voters consists of people who retain the traditional view of the country prevalent at the end of WWII. They vote for the Republican Party. They voted in 2016 for the Trump Administration. Each of these two groups comprises roughly half of US voters.

In today’s America, economic conservatives ally with cultural conservatives to support the Republican Party. Most economic conservatives disapprove of the expansion of government provision of health insurance and health care. They are critical of the performance of the country’s public schools. They tend to favor lower taxes and less income redistribution by the federal government. Many of them own businesses or work for private companies. They chafe at the expansion of regulations on private enterprise.

Private businesses also seek to influence both private and public authorities at the local, state and national levels. Both political parties seek support from business. Business associations support objectives to benefit members, or to pursue political objectives favorable to their common interests. Business support thus tends to depend upon the politics of the party. For instance at the national level fossil fuel companies provide greater support issues favored by Republican voters, while Democratic priorities are supported by alternative fuel industries.)

Conservative grassroots business organizations include the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Round Table. Members of the US Rifle Association are pro-republican. Many cultural conservatives oppose changes in sexual norms and resist the expansion of identity group politics. Denominations of many Christian churches oppose the unrestricted use of pornography, abortion, gay marriage, and the redefinition of gender identification. Cultural conservatives decry the widespread sale and consumption of addictive narcotics. They wish to control substance abuse and the widespread social damages drugs cause to individuals and families.

The most intuitive way to define the Democratic Party today is to identify the interests of its different voting constituencies in the context the Party’s history. Then, one must examine the strategy and tactics used by these interessts to achieve their ends.

We begin our discussion with the New Deal liberals and trade unionists who provided the traditional support for the Democratic Party prior to the 1960s. Both groups of voters remain loyal to today’s Democratic Party.

Two other types of Democratic voters advocate for more basic changes in the US economic system. The first consists of avowed socialists, who wish to eliminate private business and replace it with a centrally planned state-run economy. After the fall of the USSR, the argument for socialism shifted from an emphasis on the conflict of labor with capital to a more general thesis that capital creates a dichotomy between rich and poor. Only by the replacement of capitalism with the public ownership of capital and with central planning of all economic activity, socialists now argue, will income inequality be reduced.

The second new group of Democratic voters consider the health pf the physical environment of overriding importance. While concern about the impacts of human activity on the environment is universal and cuts across political divisions, many who describe themselves as environmentalists believe that capitalism is the cause of environment damage. They support the Democratic Party as most friendly to the environment. A number of environmental groups share the left’s enthusiasm for socialism.

Liberals, trade-unionists, socialists and environmentalists combine to provide resources and votes to today’s Democratic Party. They coordinate with each other to influence the Party’s policies and legislative agenda to reflect the wishes of their voters. Their influence reflects the pluralism of the Party’s base. They do not, however, restrict the country’s democratic institutions by limiting inclusive citizenship, as discussed below in Chapter 3.

The fifth and sixth types of Democratic loyalists were born during the counterculture of the 1960s. They have, over the past 60 years, acquired legal entitlements not available to the general public. Through these entitlements, each enjoys exclusive personal rights and benefits denied to other citizens.

The fifth core constituency of today’s Democratic Party is composed of three generations of US citizens who identify as members of one or more identity groups; the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, LGBTQ organizations, and the handicapped. All four of these voting blocs, and the political organizations which represent them, attained their current status during the formation of the counterculture during the 1960s and 1970s.

Identity aristocracies have secured entitlements not available to those who are not members. They violate the requirement of inclusive citizenship necessary to insure full democracy. We discuss the issue of identity politics in Chapter 3. Each composes a single purpose aristocracy, and each possesses a sense of group solidarity arising from a history of social disadvantage. Their common quests to gain social and political advantage explain their present roles in the counterculture, and their confrontational relationships with the US polity as it existed prior to the 1960s. Identity voters and traditional voters talk past one another over issues of race and gender.

The sixth constituency of Democrats is comprised of the direct beneficiaries, or stakeholders, of public enterprises. Public enterprise includes government agencies and state-run enterprises (SOEs). Government enterprise has grown absolutely and as a fraction of the US economy over the past 60 years. Government enterprise confers power and wealth on some segments of society, and extracts wealth and reduce the wealth of other segments. For this reason, government provided funding, and the value of the goods and services it produces create factions within the country’s electorate.

Employees of SOEs are important stakeholders. Government affiliated unions, which comprise about 6% of the US workforce, lobby to direct monopoly profits to the employees of SOEs. SOE suppliers and customers also lobby for a share of its funds. They seek to protect the SOE from outside competition, and shield it from direct political oversight. Therefore, SOEs violate the requirement of inclusive citizenship which is necessary to insure full democracy. SOEs are discussed discussed in Chapter 5.

The foregoing six voting blocs keep the Democratic Party competitive in national elections. In exchange for their votes, the Democratic Party acts as a broker for its various interest groups. Each group of Democratic voters supports the Democratic Party to satisfy the interests of its members.

Chapter 2. the USA Is a Pluralistic Polyarcic Republic

Political society has been described in terms of groups of individuals by many writers in different contexts. They all deserve a hearing. This essay quotes but a few. Chapter 2 begins by defining terms that are being used to place these nebulous groups of voters in their proper roles, and by then explaining their actions in a democratic context.

The first step is to describe what the US citizenry is fighting over. What kind of political system characterizes the US? What is the US citizenry fighting over? How is political power accumulated, and how may it be used?

A Pluralistic Democratic Republic

For decades, the school day for students all over the USA began with the class standing, children putting their right hands over their hearts and repeating the following pledge: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

This Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It encapsulates the loyalty that the majority of Americans felt to the US in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

The pledge is still recited in public schools, although legal challenges have established that no child can be forced to repeat it if they do not wish to do so. To what, exactly, are the ones who continue to do so committing themselves?

The school children reciting the pledge commit to support a republic. What is a republic?

_{dictionary.com defines a republic as “a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.”}

Citizen voters in a republic elect representatives. Political power in a republic is exercised by the elected officials, who constitute the government.

Crucial questions about any republic are ‘who gets to vote?’, and ‘how are the votes counted to elect the representatives?’. The answers differ greatly across the many countries which call themselves republics. Many republics are not run directly by the entire electorate. The People’s Republic of China is controlled by the Communist Party. Voters have only the choice to vote for the Party. The Roman Empire was a Republic. Patricians were entitled to vote, but plebeians and slaves were not citizens. No vote for them.

When most Americans are asked to describe their country’s political system, they usually do not say that it is a republic. They say that it is a democracy. Democracy is closely allied to the concept of republics. In a democracy, the power to choose the government lies directly or indirectly, with an inclusive set of enfranchised voters.

_{dictionary.com defines a democracy as}

_{“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”}

A society in which the individuals directly exercise political power through a voting process is a ‘direct democracy’. Individuals in a small community may run their community as a direct democracy. As the size of a population increases, and as the voting public becomes more diverse in location and lifestyle, the individual voter has a diminishing say in the final voting outcome. Direct democracy becomes increasingly unwieldy. Then, the democracy must operate as a ‘representative democracy’. Voters elect their representatives who manage the state. A representative democracy is one type of republic.

That is the purpose of the clause ‘a free electoral system’ in the definition of democracy. A free electoral system allows the electorate to select its own representatives. The US is often described as a representative democracy. It is also an inclusive one; the franchise includes most citizens over 18 years of age. It was not always so. Prior to 1918, only male US citizens held the franchise.

A core difficulty with representative democracy remains its use of majority rule for decision making. Under majority rule, individuals whose interests do not coincide with the majority have no choice in the democracy. Such individuals are then at the mercy of the majority. In a ferocious democracy, decisions made by a majority have life or death powers over individual citizens, and the anonymity of individual citizens in a representative democracy may leave individuals powerless to protect themselves from harmful decisions by the voting majority. An early example of direct democracy is the French Republic before Napoleon Bonaparte.

Famously, the authors of the US Declaration of Independence maintain that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, …(In Congress, July 4, 1776)².

It is the danger of majority rule to the individual citizen which led the founders of the United States to include protections from the worst abuses of individual liberty by the majority. These protections are spelled out in the constitution of the US republic, ratified in 1787, amended in 1789 by a Bill of Rights, and further amended over the intervening 233 years since.(In Congress September 17, 1787)³.

US representative democracy recognizes that Individual voters have little influence upon the central government. That is, US citizens rarely deal directly with their elected representatives. The individual’s control of the national government is vanishingly small. Even protected by the bill of rights, the anonymity of individual voters in a representative democracy leaves them powerless to effect political and social change.

Modern states have addressed this difficulty as well. The individual voter can make his or her vote heard by combining it with other like-minded voters to create a voting bloc. The freedom of association in the Bill of Rights allows individuals to act together as members of groups. As a bloc, voters can elect candidates who support their common interests. Through bloc voting, individuals with similar interests can make their demands upon elected officials heard.

The presence of voting blocs in a democracy is an aspect of pluralism. Because of its size, members of a voting bloc in a pluralistic democracy collectively have the ears of their elected representatives. The US is often described as a two-party “pluralistic democracy”. Thus the school children who pledge allegiance to the republic represented by the flag in the corner of the room promise to support a pluralistic democratic republic.

The discussion here about democracy relies upon the work of political theorist Robert Dahl, who has written extensively about the modern meaning of democracy, and about what conditions are necessary to establish a modern democracy. Dahl’s writings provide this essay with a working definition of American democracy.

Dahl maintains that all individual rights emanate from the existence of democracy because he believes that the fundamental human right is the procedural right of human beings to govern themselves equally.⁴

Dahl’s writings provide this essay with a working definition of American democracy. Dahl first establishes an intermediate set of rights which support a republic that features pluralistic voting republic and insures the individual liberty and personal security of its citizens. He defines this entity as a ‘polyarchy’⁵. That is, Dahl defines a polyarchy as a political system that includes guarantees of individual rights and the existence of pluralities in voting. Dahl posits seven political features for this polyarchy. The seven additional political institutions are: elected officials, free and fair elections, inclusive suffrage, the right to run for office, freedom of expression, unhindered access to information, and freedom of association.

Most Americans may note specific times in selected communities where some of the conditions for polyarchy are not met for all persons. However, most of the time, most people are able to exercise their rights within the US political institutions, in a way that the US can be defined as a polyarchy.

As extensive as the preconditions for a polyarchy are, they are not sufficient to establish a representative democratic republic, according to Robert Dahl. Dahl believes that to be fully democratic, a state must, in addition to being a polyarchy, provide all citizens with six additional guarantees. They are; effective civic participation, voting equality, opportunities for enlightened understanding (i.e., adequate opportunities for citizens to understand the issues facing them and the state), final control of the agenda by the entire citizenry, and inclusive citizenship.⁶

The first of these added requirements, effective civic participation, guarantees the right to organize in support of governmental actions and of open access to public figures and offices and to provide financial support for public policy. The second, voting equality, entails that each vote has equal weight in voting for the outcomes of elections. The third involves unrestricted and unbiased access to information.

The import of the final three of Dahl’s requirements for full democracy are less clear. There is a question about how the society creates ‘opportunities for enlightened understanding’, ‘final control of the agenda by the entire citizenry’, and ‘inclusive citizenship’. What do these actually entail?

We leave it to the reader to consult Dahl for the meanings of the first of these requirements, or to ponder its meaning himself or herself.

The second condition, ‘final control of the political agenda by the entire citizenry’, either at the national level, state level or local level, may be prevented if pluralities of voters seize control of one or more political issues and prevent the voices of other citizens from receiving an equal voice in government decisions.

The third requirement, that of inclusive citizenship, merits further consideration in these pages. The sense of the term appears to be that all citizens have equal rights to apply for jobs, to engage in commerce, to manage their financial matters, to travel, and in their dealings with national, state, and local government, as well as the aforementioned rights to vote and to run for office.

One interpretation of inclusive citizenship with equal rights is that each individual is free to choose his or her own actions within the framework of the law, and that the laws apply equally to all.

A second, more expansive interpretation, includes the requirement that the democratic state confers the benefit of its activities, and imposes the cost of its activities, equally upon all individuals. For example, when the state operates a system of public education, all students must receive the same educational services. Moreover, the curriculum must treat all students with equal dignity. No students should be given elevated or lowered status because of their ethnicity, sex, family income, or religion. If some individuals suffer discrimination because of who they are, the state is not a democracy.

Freedom of the practice of religion is another example of inclusive citizenship. In the US, all citizens are endowed with the right to practice their religion without interference, and no citizen or organization is free to interfere with the religious practices of others.

As an aside, we note that democracy as defined by Dahl does not guarantee that all individuals will have equal incomes, or equal wealth. We should expect individual wealth and incomes to vary across the citizenry as individual abilities and attitudes to work and leisure vary, and as people experience good fortune or bad fortune.

If, on the other hand, one believes that inclusive citizenship must lead to a defined degree of equality in economic welfare across the population, the demands upon democracy are much greater. In the latter case, democracy must impose limits on each citizen’s income, wealth, and conditions of employment. Doing so, however, appears to infringe upon individual freedoms guaranteed in the bill of rights.

A dispute over what constitutes inclusive citizenship is at the heart of the longstanding differences between liberal and progressive voters. Liberals are more concerned with universal political freedom, progressives with economic and social equality.

How does the US stand up to Robert Dahl’s criteria? The US is a pluralistic representative society which confers the right to vote on most citizens over 18 years of age. (The franchise for convicted felons varies by state.) The US is also a polyarchy. It consists of a set of voting pluralities, the members of each having a set of rights. However, the rights of each plurality can differ in the US.

That is, some pluralities may have unique rights denied to the general public in selected aspects of society. For example, elderly voters have special rights to health insurance. Minority workers have special protections from workplace discrimination. The disabled have special rights of access to public venues, and so forth.

In summary, the US is Dahl’s definition of a polyarchy, but it is not a democratic republic in his estimation.

Pluralism, Interest Groups, and Factions

If a student in our hypothetical classroom wishes to expand his or her study of the US democratic republic beyond the definitions of polyarchy and democracy in the preceding section, he or she might, as part of the voluminous literature on the subject, read the defense of the proposed republic and a discussion of the issues involved in its origination expounded in the Federalist Papers, a series of essays by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

Plurality of interests is diversity, a natural product of individual liberty. It is generally good for human beings. Diversity provides more space for individual choice and leads to self-understanding of one’s own interests. However, in the Federalist Papers⁷ James Madison issues a specific warning for the proposed new US political entity about what he refers to as the danger of ‘factions’. By a faction, Madison meant,”Citizens who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens”. The common synonym for factions today is ‘interest groups’.

Madison introduces the warning that Interest groups in a representative democracy can have a downside. The peril of factions, or of interest groups, that voting blocs can create, is the downside of pluralism.

Madison’s warning about factions illustrates the danger that interest groups may pose to democracy if they become powerful. If opposing interests disagree on fundamental issues which cannot find solution via the democratic process, democracy falters.⁸

History is replete with examples of such factional divisions, and special care must be taken in such situations, as in Switzerland and other multiethnic democracies, to reconcile the various groups peacefully. Recent international examples of uncontrolled factional division include the war between Serbia and Bosnia, and the Jewish and Palestinian conflict in Israel.

Polyarchies not only have difficulty accommodating extreme conflict, they may actually generate and exacerbate it. By allowing citizens to articulate their grievances freely and join associations to advance their causes, polyarchies place political weapons in the hands of people who may be culturally hostile to their fellow citizens. This is one of the issues that face the management team of Facebook.

The existence of political pluralities and majority rule does not, of itself, prevent a country from becoming either a polyarchy or a democracy. Many government policies which deal with the issues in Table I-1 on page 3 will leave many US voters unhappy, Global warming, for instance, generates the largest factional split between parties in the US in Table I-1. But the voters in the two parties, while they disagree on public policies to address global warming, retain equal access to citizenship. Consider also voter disagreement over the size of national defense spending. Here voters address the issue without outrage and personal insult. US voters too, have been able to avoid the continuing hatred and violence surrounding religion seen elsewhere in the world.

Interest groups can cripple Dahl’s requirement for ‘inclusive citizenship’ if some members of society have gained rights which are unavailable to the general voter. That society is not a democracy in Dahl’s expansive sense.

A failure of democracy does occur if and when citizen members of a faction vote to enact specific interests that provide them with benefits not available to other voters. And where social cleavages are deep and hinge on sharply differentiated subcultures based on religion, ideology, language, ethnic groups, and race, even polyarchy falters.

This essay argues that the challenge to US democracy stems from the political structures that voting pluralities have created to further their own interests. New political movements founded on protest have directed actions to promote themselves and to work against voters who oppose them. These political structures have a history that transcends the ballot box. They are part of the new social constructs that began with the counterculture of the 1960s.

Robert Dahl also agrees with Madison, who argues that “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on to adequate control” modern political factions.⁹

Chapters 3 and 4 define these ‘factions’, these ‘silent managers’, as the drivers of our national political fireworks display. They are aristocracies and public monopolists that are run by political interest groups who now control the Democratic Party.

CHAPTER 3 Democratic Republics Are not only Way to Manage A Modern Society– Aristocracy

The subjects of this chapter are the identity aristocracies that control public policies dealing with the hot-button issues of race, gender, sexual preference, and age and disability, While the concept ‘democracy’ is widely understood in the US, aristocracy is scarcely mentioned in political discussions. The term is used in many contexts and is not precisely defined or analyzed.

Chapter 3 begins by familiarizing the reader with the theory and practice of aristocracy n Western society. We chronicle the role of aristocracy in the evolution of European feudal societies in into modern democratic states. (See Appendix 3-1)

It then provides the definition of aristocracy used in this essay, and provide US examples. We contrast aristocracies with elites, and distinguish between the two. We describe the workings of political aristocracy.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of US aristocracies and the particular role that aristocracy has had in American history, from colonial times to the 1950s. And we describe the rise of modern day US aristocracies.

With all the above as background, we describe the workings of the modern aristocracies of race, gender, sexual preference, age, and disability. The benefits conferred to aristocracies are enumerated. And we show how aristocracies have prevented the country from developing into a full democracy the sense of political theorist Robert Dahl.

Autocracy, Aristocracy, and Democracy: History of Thought

The word aristocracy has been used historically in different contexts. The word is Greek in origin. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning ‘rule of the best’.

From classical Greek literature to European writers from the sixteenth century forward, aristocracy, autocracy and democracy have been considered to be the three forms of political organization possible for political societies. Aristocracy has played a venerable role in their political discourses.

The Greek philosopher Plato, in his essay ‘The Republic,’ envisioned an ideal society in which a group of individuals who were enjoined from private wealth and private connections so as to avoid a conflict of personal and public interests, and then selected by the citizenry to perform the public offices of the Republic. Aristotle discussed aristocracies of the city states of his era.

Ancient Rome was a republic in which those who could trace their lineage to Rome’s foundilng selected the members of the government. These original citizens were referred to as patricians. The remaining citizens had no voice in government during Rome’s early history.

Feudal states in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire were sald to be composed of the monarch who fulfilled executive powers and of three ‘estates’. The first estate consisted of the aristocracy, or nobility, individuals whose families were entitled by the sovereign.

European feudal aristocracies in the middle ages typically arose from social conflict. A victorious king rewarded his military chieftains with a noble title. The titles were Duke, Baron, Earl, and so forth. Noble titles carried responsibilities. Nobles were expected to serve the King in times of war.

Each noble was given a fiefdom, a landed estate which included the peasants attached to the land. The only other way for a commoner to enter the aristocracy in the UK was and still is to be recognized by the sovereign for outstanding performance in some capacity by knighthood. The male individual’s name is predicated by ‘Sir”. The title carries no heredity and cannot be passed on.

Noblemen supported the king, maintaining order in the kingdom and defending it from attack from outside. Wars of succession occurred when offspring with different claims on a dying or deposed king were supported by different factions within the aristocracy. The factions battled for supremacy. The winners constituted the new aristocracy. Its role was to support and protect the monarch and to manage civil society.

Over time, European nobility was able to entail its fiefdoms, and, through primogeniture (that is, to the first born son of a nobleman), control their lands in perpetuity, creating a hereditary aristocracy. This arrangement kept the aristocracy cohesive. (In Turkey, by contrast, Sultans denied their supporters a hereditary aristocracy.)

The second feudal estate consisted of the clergy. The clergy embodied the teleological justification for the secular order and a narrative whereby the life of every member of society had meaning and purpose.

The first and second feudal estates, the clergy and the nobility, fit this essay’s definition of aristocracies. The two aristocracies coexisted as counterweights to the monarch. The relationship between Christian Churches and the nobles was more complicated. The two estates were in competition for resources. But there was cooperation. Aristocrats were patrons of the clergy, and both groups could be patrons of the arts and letters.

From the middle ages up to the present time, religious authorities have provided moral justification for the rule of European kings and queens. The dogmas of Christian churches and Muslim mosques alike historically portrayed rulers as designees of a heavenly order. In western Europe, the Sovereign was seen as the earthly representative of God. In England today, the phrase “God save the King (Queen), remains in regular usage.

The third estate was the mass of common people who did the work, raised the coming generation, and had custody of the inherited customs which defined the culture of the society. The feudal classification was embodied in France in the Estates General, a political body which existed until the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.

Observers of the political systems which were evolving from Europes feudal societies during the Renaissance provided a definition of nobility that differed from ancient Greece and Rome. The later writers considered aristocracies from a realistic rather than an idealistic perspective. Their alternative definition of aristocracy draws upon the experiences of Italian city states such as Florence and Genoa.

Niccolò Machiavelli, recalling his experience in statecraft during the 15th century, supports the idea that only three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are possible. Each is flawed, and each eventually fails and is replaced by one of the other two in a ‘circle of governments’. He is critical of aristocrats as personally acquisitive and willing to oppress the citizenry.¹⁰

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, commonly referred to as Montesquieu, discusses aristocracy in “The Spirit of Laws. (1748). Carruthers, in ‘A Montesquieu Dictionary’, describes Montesquieu discussing aristocracy as a governance structure, and writing that ‘they have a natural impulse to ignore the laws themselves, and apply them only to the people¹¹. That is, aristocrats are primarily self-seeking. Montesquieu argues that ‘they take care to mask their privileges’. This enables them to stay in power by avoiding stirring envy among the commoners.

Baruch Spinoza, in his Tractatus Politicus¹², compares the stability of autocracy, of aristocracy, and of democracy as the three forms of political organization. Spinoza believes that democracy and aristocracy are more stable forms than autocracy. There is disagreement over how Spinoza views the relative merits of the former two, but some observers believe that he prefers an large and diverse aristocracy. Spinoza writes that those commoners who are materially comfortable and enjoy sufficient personal freedom, may be content to accept rule by an entitled aristocracy. Aristocracy may thus be a stable feature of an otherwise democratic society.

The 20th century witnessed a wave of national communist governments. In Communist China, and in the Soviet Union, Mao Tse Tung and Vladimir Lenin found power vacuums created by WWI and the Japanese invasion prior to WWII respectively. Brilliant military strategists, each defeated an opposing army to establish Communist Party rule. Ruling power was vested in members of the Party. The Party was an aristocracy chosen by the two leaders. In each case, the aristocracy was the Party membership. Members were bound to enforce Communist Party rules and to carry out the policies of the Party

In eastern Europe the USSR supported communist insurgencies. and installed regimes that were satellites of the USSR. Throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, during the cold war, a number of strongmen came to power with communist support to rule unstable regimes often riven by ethnic dispute. Today, only a handful of functionally communist regimes, run without important private economies, linger on under the dictatorship of powerful communist regimes.

In Islamic countries such as Iran, religious leaders wield political power. They constitute a theological aristocracy. The common citizens in Iran must obtain the support of a Mullah counselor, who is paid for his patronage. The religious dues funnel though the religious hierarchy to the highest level of the clergy.

The Definition of Aristocracy

We now define aristocracy and contrast it with an ’elite’. Consider the definition of aristocracy in a modern dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines aristocracy as a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats.

Definitions of aristocracy: Merriam-Webster

1: government by the best individuals or by a small privileged class

2: a government in which power is vested in a minority consisting of those believed to be best qualified: a state with such a government

3: a governing body or upper class usually made up of a hereditary nobility: a member of the British aristocracy

4: a class or group of people believed to be superior (as in rank, wealth, or intellect): an intellectual aristocracy

The first dictionary definition above provides two classifications. The first type is government by the best individuals. This is the Platonic ideal. The second type, government by a small privileged class, is closer to the practice of Feudal Europe.

The second dictionary definition is, again, the expression of Plato’s ideal.

The third dictionary definition is the one used by Machiavelli, Montesquieu and Spinoza. This essay employs the third dictionary definition above.

The fourth dictionary definition above is indistinguishable from the term ‘elite’. The differences between the words aristocracy and elite are explained below. We will not use this fourth definition.

Specifically, we characterize an aristocracy as “a group of individuals entitled to specific benefits by the state, either by virtue of one or more personal characteristics of birth, or by having entered into a contract with the state.” Therefore, the term employed in this essay is a political construction, and it will be designated a ‘political aristocracy’. When the term aristocracy is used henceforth, it will mean a political aristocracy. Political aristocracy connotes political entitlements. Consider what it means to be ‘entitled’ with a few examples.

Example 1. The first example of aristocracy was discussed above as the second estate of European feudalism.

Example 2. The second example of aristocracy is US citizenship. In the US the title of citizen confers the right to vote and legal rights enshrined in the constitution and the courts. An individual is a citizen by birth, or by fulfilling certain duties and being granted legal citizenship in a formal ceremony. The citizenry are members of an aristocracy of individual freedom. As discussed above, US citizens are entitled to rights enumerated in the US Constitution and in the US Bill of Rights.

Example 3. Military veterans are the third example of aristocracy. Veterans make up a type of US aristocracy within the general citizenship. One attains this status by serving in a branch of the US military, and by receiving an honorable discharge from duty.

Example 4. The fourth example of aristocracy are the US indian tribes. In 2019, there were 574 tribes entitled ‘Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs’. Individual membership in each tribe is determined by heredity. In 2013, the national conference of state legislatures defined Tribal sovereignty as…’the right of American Indians and Alaska Natives to govern themselves. The U.S. Constitution recognizes Indian tribes as distinct governments.¹³ and tribal governments have, when located on a reservation, the same powers as federal and state governments have in US territory.

Tribal reservations are the remainders of the original tribal lands guaranteed by treaty with the US government as the United States encroached on the tribal lands. Indian reservations have since been subject to forced renegotiations as the federal government acquired, mostly by armed force, land from the original treaties.

Tribal sovereignty includes the right to establish their own form of government, determine membership requirements, enact legislation and establish law enforcement and court systems.

These four examples illustrate the difference between an aristocracy and the common meaning of the term ‘elite’. The differences are three. First, a member of an aristocracy is entitled by law to power and benefits excluded from the rest of society. A member of an elite has social status with but no legal enforcement of entitlements.

Second, an aristocrat does not earn the title by personal achievement. It is confirmed upon him or her by societal rules, based upon his or her membership in the aristocracy. Conversely, a member of an elite is so because of wealth, from personal achievement, or both, and not from birth or through a contract with a government.

Economic progressives view the world through the unipolar lens of ‘rich and poor”. In a number of publications from the economic left, the wealthy and the ‘aristocracy’ are treated as the same thing. In practice the wealthy comprise an elite, but they may or may not be members of an aristocracy. In like fashion, the entitlements of an aristocracy may or may not include the access to property.

Today’s wealthy, whether members of an aristocracy or not, may buy influence over politicians, and they move in exclusive circles. This gives wealthy individuals elite status. But the rich in today’s democracies lack common legal government entitlements which give them rights not available to others. A professional athlete, for instance, also is a member of an elite by virtue of his or her ability to perform at the top level of a sport. The athlete may draw an enormous income. But his or her membership depends upon ability and drive.

Just as the member of an elite is not entitled by the state, so an aristocrat may possess neither wealth nor elite status. Members of “Indian Entities” discussed above have less than average incomes as groups, and their ancestors were historically mistreated by the US government. The tribe’s political entitlements are designed to preserve the distinct tribal culture. The tribe may enjoy economic advantages from its treaties with the US Government, but tribal entitlements stem from inheritance, not wealth.

The third difference between an aristocracy and an elite is that an aristocracy is defined by its membership and by the political entitlements that membership enjoys. When a political faction acquires political power and entitlement, it has become an aristocracy. Aristocracy thus stratifies society, creating politically enabled groups who have rights and power unavailable to the common members of the public. Elites, by contrast, are defined by wealth and by individual accomplishment and not by entitlement.

How Does an Aristocracy Work as a Political Entity?

To understand how a specific aristocracy operates, one must know three things about it. First, what determines membership? Second, what are the aristocratic entitlements? The third distinguishing feature of an aristocracy is how it stays in power, because every aristocracy employs tactics to allow members to act in concert to preserve its entitlements. The aristocracy induces political parties to create economic winners and losers, and an organized and united minority can control a disorganized majority.

The aristocracy must maintain group solidarity. Joint action ensures that the opinions of a substantial fraction of the group support the aristocracy and its conduct. Aristocracy develops behaviors and traditions which engender its social superiority.

Societal acceptance is granted foremost by tradition. And group solidarity allows aristocracy to speak with a united voice. Cohesion is furthered by membership organizations, and by the hosting of events such as rallies, marches, pilgrimages and public celebrations, which may become society-wide holidays.

As with society’s wealthy elites, an aristocracy sets trends which the wider society adopts and copies. Thorsten Veblen, writing in ‘The Leisure Class’ gives many examples of behavior designed to justify aristocracy to the lower classes. This is helped by the fact that the poor do not wish to eliminate elites and aristocracy but to join them.

A final characteristic of aristocracies deserves mention. There are no aristocracies but whose members believe in their bones that they are deserving of their entitlements, and are constantly on the lookout for ways to consolidate and to extend them. Examples are rife with the lengths that aristocracies have gone to defend themselves. A prime example is France in the 1780s. French aristocrats had, over several generations prior the French revolution, had won, by financing their kings, rights to share public revenues with the monarchy. In 1789 economic conditions and mismanagement during Louis XVI’s reign caused a shortfall of state revenues. The government was unable to function. Rather than surrender its control of tax revenues, the aristocracy precipitated a revolution which violently overthrew it.

The US is a ‘Polyarchic Republic’: Democracy and Specific Aristocracy.

It was noted in Chapter 2 that the original Roman republic was an aristocracy with democratic rights only for the Patricians. The City states of renaissance Italy incorporated elements of democracy. These aristocracies divided one class of citizens, the aristocracy, from all other non-aristocrats in all aspects of public life, and conferred democracy only on aristocrats.

In the US, as we noted above, there is no separate group of citizen rulers; all citizens are theoretically entitled to self-rule by the country’s founding documents and by subsequent legislation. Nevertheless, the US has a continuous history of aristocracies which operate across specific demographic groups and confer entitlements to specific groups in specific areas of public life. These are referred to in this document as ‘specific aristocracies’.

One such aristocracy was given above as US military veterans, A second example of a specific aristocracy, given above, was of affiliation to a native American tribe. Tribes are an example of an identity aristocracy.

There have been aristocracies of personal identity in the US from before the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. We will discuss identity aristocracies more fully in Chapter 4. They have used political power to relegate other groups to incomplete citizenship. And they have prevented the US from becoming a full democracy. It was noted in Chapter 2 that Robert Dahl labeled governments with incomplete citizenship as polyarchys¹⁴,¹⁵.

How do aristocracies stay in power?

The temporal stability of European aristocracies, many of which lasted from 1300s through WWI and beyond, is unusual. Historians of classical Greek and Roman society find that landed aristocracies lasted for less than 100 years or so^16,17 Dissolution may have come from struggles within the aristocracies themselves, as they were buffeted by natural events and wars. Modern political aristocracies have also been relatively short-lived

As noted in the last section, the power of a specific aristocracy abridges democracy if its actions limit other individuals’ rights of free speech, free association, property rights, and other avenues of personal behavior that are not covered by its specified entitlements. The power of a specific aristocracy can be amplified if it is accepted by the general public. Acceptance, as Spinoza observed can occur when the general public is not negatively affected by the activities of the aristocracy, or if the aristocracy is able to form coalitions with other specific aristocracies to increase its political or economic power.

An identity aristocracy is a specific aristocracy. In an otherwise democratic society, an identity aristocracy may stay in power by controlling the voting process. It may do so when it encompasses a majority of voters, who vote the interests of the aristocracy. In the antebellum south, slavery was legal. White landowners were aristocrats who were entitled to hold slaves. Slaves had no vote. Political machines in US cities have been further examples of political single issue aristocracies. Political machines elected political leaders by controlling the voting process in US urban areas. The machines worked on a system of patronage in which the machine employed individuals that controlled the activities of local governments.

An aristocracy which is a minority of the population can remain in power without voter support when it controls the machinery of government. The police and military of the country may be used to suppress discontent by force. Secret police are employed by strongmen in many non-democratic countries to silence dissent.

Totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China, in the last century, famously perfected the use secular propaganda to ensure that the general population supported the Communist Party. Propaganda continues in use by authoritarian states in the current century.

And not only in one party states. In democracies political parties have used the state security organizations to support aristocratic privileges, and have run public relations campaigns to hinder and to malign political opponents.

Not all members of an aristocracy need condone the conditions that the aristocracy imposes on the rest of the citizenry. But, as long as a dedicated and powerful fraction of the aristocracy is willing to support its legal entitlements, the aristocracy can preserve them. The white aristocracy justified its existence by a widespread belief among white citizens of their racial superiority. This changed in the mid-twentieth century. The US had just fought a war against just such racism in Germany and Japan, and the belief in racial superiority lost its appeal. Given the chance, the majority of US citizens supported the Civil Rights Movement.

To maintain its entitlements, a specific aristocracy that neither constitutes a majority of the voting public nor can use police power and state propaganda to protect itself, must succeed in influencing the general population to support it and to acquiesce to its privileges. That is, it must ensure widespread societal acceptance of its validity.

Single purpose aristocracies are therefore keen to control public opinion, especially opinion concerning the aristocracy itself. In democracies, modern aristocracies engage legions of writers, academics and freelance intellectuals to produce a political narrative which supports their continued importance and viability.

Establishing and maintaining control of the political narrative of a society is equally important in influencing the electorate, ensuring majority vote to keep aristocracies in power. Group solidarity allows individual members to pool the resources necessary to control public opinion.

Many aristocratic advocates in the US today are trained at and employed by academic institutions. While many marketing majors and psychologists work for private corporations to sell products, many more propagandize for special interest groups which serve various single purpose aristocracies.

The level of propaganda has increased with the advent of social media. Freelance political advocacy abounds on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Much of it, of varying degrees of objectivity, is posted by unpaid amateurs. There are ‘fact checkers’ who track down what they believe are inaccurate or inappropriate statements and actions by business representatives, or by major and minor celebrities, and excoriate them over the internet. Needless to say, there is much inaccuracy floating about the blogosphere on both sides of any political topic. Paid commentators that work for political websites and unpaid bloggers are not above posting biased, inaccurate material. True or false, political posts are read by many and believed by some.

Aristocracies also secure entitlements by influencing the legal system. Entitlements can be defended and extended via the courts. Once an aristocracy wins a favorable verdict, it will be defended against challenges at all levels of jurisprudence.

Crucial for the continued power of an aristocracy is the funding of its activities. An aristocracy may succeed in creating a legal environment in which its activities are established in law. If this is accomplished, it may fund itself by imposing its agenda upon government, to be supported by the tax paying public, or built upon state owned enterprises who fund their activities as part of their cost of doing business.

Aristocracies will be allied to fundraising organizations. Organizations raise cash through contributions of its members and from sympathetic supporters in the general public. They may fund through lawsuits, by providing services for their members, or from nonprofit organizations outside of the aristocracy. And importantly, media organizations give the aristocracy positive coverage.

In the US, religious organizations have traditionally supported traditional secular virtues, including the privileges of aristocracy. However, church attendance has declined since George Gallup first measured it in 1937 at 73 percent of the population. It slowly declined to 70% in 2000. The most recent generations have quit attending church in large numbers. Measured church attendance fell below 50% for the first time in 2020. With the waning of religious sentiment, secular aristocracies have enjoyed waxing influence.

A Brief History of US Aristocracy

The history of the US is that of embedded specific racial and gender based aristocracies which have prevented inclusive citizenship.

At the time of the American Revolution only English persons or their descendants were considered full subjects of the King of England. The resident status of other aliens was unclear. The founding fathers were unable to remove the institution of slavery from the country’s new constitution. Therefore, slavery remained an accepted political institution. Thus, at its founding, the new United States inherited the institution of human servitude. Its incorporation into the US constitution was an example of factional pluralism, through which the voting majority abrogated the rights of American Indians and African Americans. White racial entitlements were the first realizations of Madison’s warning against factions.

Slavery was the lot of most African Americans until the civil War^18. Most slaves lived in the southern states. The vast majority slaves were Africans trafficked to the US, In 1790, the first census of the United States counted 697,624 African American slaves. An additional two to three percent of the new nation’s workforce consisted of indentured servants. Indenture was not made illegal until the passage of the 13th Amendment in the wake of the Civil War.

The antebellum southern aristocracy was founded upon a system of plantation agriculture. That system was based on slavery. Many white Americans in the northern states, conscious of the conflict between the US constitution’s claim that ‘all men are created equal’ and of the fact of human slavery, supported abolition.

The conflict between abolitionists and the planter aristocracy in the south came to a head with the election of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th US president in 1860. Running for office against Stephan Douglas, Lincoln had stated that he was personally against slavery.

Subsequent to Lincoln’s election, eleven southern states seceded from the United States, forming the Confederacy, an aristocratic state, rather than admitting the eventual end of slavery. Thus, the southern planter aristocracy willingly attempted to destroy the United States in order to preserve its economic system. The US civil war was an example of the political divisions that may arise from the entitlememnts which form in an aristocracy.

During the US civil war, the role of aristocracy in the schism was clear to the Boston railway magnate John Murray Forbes, who suggested in a letter to President Abraham Lincoln before the latter’s Gettysburg Address, that he should “…teach your great audience of plain people that the war is not North against South, but the People against the Aristocrats¹⁹”.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln issued an Emancipation Proclamation as part of his effort to reunite the country. The Proclamation did not constitute an abolition of slavery in the entire country. It included only slaves in the Confederacy. The move was meant to undercut the Confederacy.

With the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, the Federal Government followed a policy of reconstruction. The policy pursued two parallel agendas. First, slavery was abolished in 1868 with the passage of the 14th Amendment to the US constitution, which granted citizenship to all African Americans. (American Indians were not granted universal citizenship until 1924.)

Policies intended to introduce African Americans into society as equal participants led to the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The Act divided the south into 5 military districts in which there was to be universal male suffrage. (The passage of the 15th Amendment to the US constitution guaranteed voting rights to all regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.) Reconstruction was designed to create an interracial democracy in the US.

The second objective of Reconstruction was to reintegrate the states of the Confederacy back into the US. First, under President Andrew Johnson, all land confiscated during the Civil War, much of which had been distributed to African Americans, reverted to its original owners. Moreover, other than pledging to uphold abolition, and swear loyalty to the Union, southern states were given full liberty to rebuild their economies and their social conventions. They used this freedom to control legislatures and courts, and white voters enabled the continuation of white aristocracy, which imposed a system of segregation and discrimination across the country upon the new African American citizens that lasted until after WWII.

Nor was racial equality present in the remainder of the US. The plurality of white voters, as the majority, embedded its entitlements in law, and segregation and discrimination prevailed throughout most of the US. Due to the unequal representation o non-white citizens, political scientist Robert Dahl would label the US a polyarchy.

Dissatisfaction with discrimination and segregation of African Americans and other ethnic groups considered to be ‘nonwhite’ was ongoing. The Civil Rights Movement, as a response to the white racial aristocracy which preceded it, was initiated in the 1880s at the end of Reconstruction.

By 1909, for example, blacks and whites citizens together had formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which became a leading organization in the cause of civil rights for African Americans. But the political forces backing racial discrimination were successful in resisting its removal until the end of WWII.

Current identity interest groups and specific aristocracy.

After the disruptions of WWII and the following demobilization which returned 16 million soldiers to civilian life, formerly marginalized demographic groups expressed a renewed desire to enhance their political, social and economic situations. Supported by anti-Vietnam war sentiment among the growing populations of college and university students they, led a generational challenge to the existing US political majorities.

The inclusion of formerly marginalized groups was a godsend to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party during the first half of the 20th century was a party of labor and a party of government. In 1945 the labor movement was centered in unionized workers. Union members comprised about 22% of the total US labor force. Changes in the nature of business led to a decline in union membership. In 2000 union members made up 12% of the total workforce, about 6% of which belong to trade unions. The decline in union support left the Democratic Party with a dearth of voters. The Party found that it needed to replace declining union membership to win elections.

The solution for Democrats to the loss of labor votes came in the 1950s and 1960s. A new voting bloc coalesced groups of individuals who held briefs against the US as it stood in 1945. These voters found inspiration in a range of existing conditions that were being widely challenged. The new bloc is often referred to as ‘the counterculture’. Members of the counterculture vote, along with Liberals and trade unionists, for the Democratic Party.

While counterculture opinion was inchoate in the sixties, it developed into a coherent political narrative over the following three generations. The counterculture has lobbied for continued departure from the legal, social, and economic norms of traditional US culture. It is now characterized by its enduring opposition of the traditional view of American society.

The largest and most politically active members of the counterculture constituency are composed of three generations of US citizens who identify as members of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, LGBTQ organizations, and the handicapped.

Each composes a single purpose aristocracy, and each possesses a sense of group solidarity arising from a history of social disadvantage. They have joined the 574 tribes of indigenous native Americans to form new, single purpose identity-based aristocracies.

Identity aristocracies have secured entitlements not available to those who are not members. As with the aristocracies of the past, current day aristocrats are capable of controlling narratives about modern society, and of setting trends of belief and behavior for the broader society. As with Montesquieu’s aristocrats, modern American ones take care to mask their privileges. They violate the requirement of inclusive citizenship necessary to insure full democracy.

Their common quests to gain social and political advantage explain their present roles in the counterculture, and their confrontational relationships with the US polity as it existed prior to the 1960s. Voting patterns in national elections reflect the polarizing impacts of the identity aristocracies on the Democratic Partu and the Republican Party.

The first of the modern aristocratic groups to establish itself was the US Civil Rights movement, which pioneered a combined strategy of popular protest and legal action that in the 1950s and 1960s ended the long history of de jure segregation in the US. Protests by African Americans intensified during the decade of the 1950s and gained legal force with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Following the template developed in the Civil Rights Movement, identity aristocracies have been established by feminists, by the LBTGQ community, by the advocates for the disabled, and by the elderly. All five of these voting blocs, and the political organizations which represent them, attained their current status during the formation of the counterculture during the 1960s and 1970s. Each possesses a sense of group solidarity arising from a common perception of social disadvantage.

As aristocracies, they have acquired legal entitlements not available to non-members, and, through these entitlements, they enjoy exclusive personal rights and benefits excluded to other citizens. In doing so, they have violated the requirement of inclusive citizenship required to turn a polyarchy into a full-fledged democracy, by Robert Dahl’s definition. Their quests to secure social and political advantages have divided the country by race and gender.l The results are apparent in the preceding Table 3-1.

Table 3-1 reports the voting patterns of men and women by ethnic group in the national presidential election of 2016. The table shows that party allegiances are divided along demographic lines. White men voted republican by a 2-1 margin. White women voters were more evenly divided. Black voters opted overwhelmingly for the demographic candidate, as did Asian voters. Hispanic voters preferred the democratic candidate by a wide margin.

Table 3-1 Voting by Demographic Group in the 2016 Presidential Election

Chapter 4 America’s Identity Aristocrats

Chapter 4 considers each major identity voting bloc in turn, in the order in which it secured its entitlements. The discussion begins with the Civil Rights Movement, followed by Feminism, Gay Rights, the Disabled, and the Elderly

The Civil Rights Movement

The US Civil Rights Movement has been and remains an organized protest by and for members of the African American community against racial segregation and discrimination.The following definition of the term ‘civil rights’ was posted on the Encyclopedia Britannica website:

_{Civil rights are an essential component of democracy. They’re guarantees of equal social opportunities and protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or other characteristics. Examples are the rights to vote, to a fair trial, to government services, and to a public education. Apr 14, 2021}

Britannica’s definition of equal rights is very close to Robert Dahl’s requirement of ‘inclusive citizenship’, described in the topic heading “A Pluralistic Democratic Republic’, in Chapter 2 of this essay. The gist of equal rights is that “Every citizen must have equal access, under the law, to economic, political, and social civic society”.

In the 1950s residents in African American communities formed new alliances at the community level to defend one another and to coordinate their activities. Beginning in the 1950s, a wave of protests from within African American communities highlighted discrimination and segregation by the white majority. These protests became known as the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement is by, for, and about African Americans.

The most influential arm of the early protests advocated non-violent civil disobedience. Protestors confronted authorities with marches, ‘sit-ins’ at segregated businesses, and by a broad appeal to all Americans for an end to segregation and discrimination and equal opportunity for African Americans. The nonviolent philosophy was verbalized by an iconic sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, referred to as the ‘I have a dream’ speech.

As an identity aristocracy, the Civil rights Movement is defined by the entitlements that it possesses. These are defined by an edifice of legislated entitlements which has been extended by a growing body of civil law and by court decisions.

The Movement advances three types of benefits, which are available to all members of the African American community. The first benefit offers legal protection for equal opportunity with white Americans in society. The second benefit is referred to as affirmative action. Much affirmative action is designed to increase the number and types of jobs available to African Americans and increase their renumeration relative to white employees. The third goal, under the banner of social justice, is to broaden the Movement’s impact in the decision-making processes of organizations across all business and governmental organizations. Equal opportunity, affirmative acton, and social justice have made possible the largest and most influential identity aristocracy in the US today.

* The first phase of the Civil Fights Movement: Equal Opportunity

The objective of Dr. Kings’ sermon was the achievement of equal opportunity, defined on the Encyclopedia Britannica website (equal opportunity, Encyclopedia Britannica, 5/3/2023)

_{Equal opportunities refer to an equal distribution, among individuals, of opportunities for education, training, employment, career development and the exercise of power without their being disadvantaged on the basis of their sex, race, language, religion, economic or family situation, and so forth.}

The Civil Rights Movement secured legal force for equal opportunity with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act had seven titles. Title I prohibited the non-equal application of voter registration requirements. Title II outlawed discrimination in all public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce. Title III mandated state and local governments guarantee access to all public facilities. Title IV mandated desegregation of public schools. Title V expanded the powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was established in 1957. Title VI prohibited discrimination in federally funded programs and activities.

Title VII prohibited discrimination in employment for employers who have 15 or more employees. Title VIII conferred upon the EEOC the authorization to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act. An employer is enjoined to evaluate each applicant solely on the basis of the individual’s ability to perform the assigned duties of the job, based upon objective criteria including education and training, skill, hours of availability for work and other work-related factors.

Title VII.7.g of the 1964 Civil Rights act has been interpreted to mandate that private business, government organizations, and educational institutions demonstrate to the EEOC that they do not discriminate. Title ViI created and maintained enforcement mechanisms which measure compliance with with Title 7 of the 1964 Act as amended and expanded. Employers are legally required to provide equal access to employment for African Americans, women, the LGBTQ community, and for the disabled. Freedom from discrimination is enforced at all educational institutions.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act declares discrimination by employers against African Americans and other protected groups illegal. Under the provisions of Title VII, employers must prove their innocence when charged with discrimination. Christopher Caldwell discusses the impact of the Civil Rights act of 1964 on the labor market.²⁰

The Provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been expanded by subsequent federal legislation, by conforming state and local legislation, and in the courts. They have been extended to discrimination based upon gender, gender identity and transgender status, and to persons with physical and mental disabilities. The 1991 Civil Rights Act established the right of trial by jury of discrimination claims.All individuals are able to challenge job discrimination in the courts. Discrimination against non-protected white individuals is referred to as reverse discrimination. Federal courts differ in what the plaintiff must prove to establish prima facia reverse discrimination.

Employment guarantees are the most important entitlement that eligible, (that is protected) individuals receive from civil rights legislation.

The Act has impacted the labor force in African American communities. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the leadership of African American communities was shared by African American Christian Churches and by the black owners of minority businesses that served black communities. However, racial Integration in the 1960s and 1970s exposed minority businesses to increased competition, as African Americans patronized larger, better capitalized national firms. Most minority businesses, with the exception of small personal services establishments such as hair salons and funeral parlors, were driven out of business.

With the options for business ownership reduced in African American communities, the new path to high value jobs for African Americans led through government employment, jobs in civil rights organizations, and jobs in civil rights offices in private industry.

Equal opportunity offices have opened new career options for advancement for women and minorities to managerial occupations. Consequently, largest area of well-paid managerial style jobs for African Americans has become ‘equal opportunity’ occupations, most of which are funded by taxpayers. President Barak Obama, fore example, began his career as a civil rights activist. Employment opportunities are the second entitlement afforded to those groups protected by civil rights laws.

Many of the civil rights jobs reside in the equal opportunity offices of businesses and educational institutions, and government bureaucracies. The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics computes employment and wage estimates annually for nearly 800 occupations. (www.bls.gov)²¹. The OEWS provides wage and employment statistics for approximately 200,000 jobs in the US who are defined as ‘compliance officers’.

Compliance officers monitor the actions of their employers’ organizations to ensure that they are complying with government regulations, legal rulings of courts, and the firm’s mandated standards of racially based behavior.

The largest numbers of compliance officers are in the areas of finance, environment protection, and equal opportunity. Thousands of organizations maintain equal opportunity offices in which a compliance officer oversees operations to be sure that the organization fulfills its civil rights obligations to minority and women employees. The expenditures are paid by corporate revenues, and by student tuition, or are line items in university and government budgets.

Equally valuable to the Civil Rights Movement are the employment opportunities that have been created for operation and expansion of civil rights organizations. The revenue to support employment in the civil rights industry is not borne by the African American Community. The costs of enforcement are built into the structure of the general society. Jobs in government are supported by government revenues. Jobs in education and in private industry are funded by the organizations who must meet the legal requirement of equal opportunity for the African American community. These costs are part of the entitlements secured by the Civll Rights Movement.

As a result of equal opportunity legislation and its enforcement, retail and service establishments, public facilities, transportation and entertainment now serve all segments of US society. Customers from different ethnic backgrounds, religions, gender, and ages interact everywhere in the public square, mainly with courtesy and compassion for one another.

Today, most neighborhoods now have as residents African American households. And public schools have been integrated since the 1980s. In the workplace, one expects to see employees of all ethnic backgrounds. This is the case in the service industries, in manufacturing, in construction, at financial institutions, in legal professions, in medicine, across all industrial classifications.

This mixing of people by ethnicity, sex, and physical characteristics is what is approvingly referred to as diversity. It is the lasting contribution of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and 70s.

* The second phase of the Cvil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action

As the regimes of segregation and discrimination were addressed by the Civil Rights Movement, civil rights organizations expanded their focus from equal opportunity to the improvement of the relative economic, political and cultural situations of African American communities across the nation. The following quote is also from the Encyclopedia Britannica website:

^{Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant Black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression. April 21,2021.}

The resulting entitlements are popularly referred to as affirmative action. Affirmative action mandates legally entitled racial preferences built into the US workforce, These preferences are widely built into hiring practices in government and business, and in admissions to colleges and universities.

To comply with the legal force of the Act, employers are motivated to maintain legally established hiring quotas for black applicants, and more commonly, to use race, sex and gender as positive factors in hiring and admissions. Set-asides in government contracts and in dispensing of government benefits are also widely practiced. Expanded employment opportunities are the second entitlement available to protected groups.

The Movement lobbies to promote increased access for its members to entertainment venues, in music, film, and even in television commercials. In doing so, it demonstrates its usefulness to African Americans, and its success in promoting its visibility in the media and entertainment industries.

* The third Phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Social Justice

A large subspecialty of the Civil Rights Movement is legal action. It is known as “social justice”. Lawyers for civil rights organizations argue on behalf “social justice” to defend existing entitlements and to extend legal entitlements into new areas.

The US civil rights aristocracy is cognizant of its need to maintain support for its entitlements. It controls the narrative on race relations in the US. It has used its influence in public education to imprint its narrative on public education curricula, to underline racial politics in events such as Black History Month, and to include the historical narrative of Critical Race Theory in the public schools.

To this end the Civil Rights Movement has mainstreamed the alternative narrative of Black Separatism from the 1960s. Black Separatists in the 1960s believed that the majority of white citizens would never accept the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. Influential leaders such as Elijah Muhammed, Louis Farakhan, and the Black Panthers demanded independent governance and complete separation from white America.

This 1960s narrative has been repackaged to conform to the Black Lives Matter agenda. Legacy civil right organizations such as the NAACP now work together with Black Lives Matter. Their narrative remains that the white population is racist, and that white racism remains as the source of the many problems encountered in minority communities across the county. The control of the narrative by social justice advocates, and the institution of critical race theory as the proper measure of race relations is the third entitlement conferred upon African Americans under the regime of social justice.

Under the banner of social justice, civil rights advocates have moved beyond non-violent resistance to the intimidation of commercial businesses. Boycotts against the goods and services of firms that do not conform to, or do not openly support, the claims of Black Lives Matter, or share BLM’s opposition to local or state law enforcement agencies, are designed to inflict economic damage.

These expansions of legal and economic authority are the result of a legal asymmetry created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Prior to the 1964 Act, a business owner was able to choose his customers. He or she could exclude a disliked person from the premises. An individual consumer could also refuse to patronize the business run by someone he or she disliked. This arrangement served to limit conflict between buyers and sellers, which could erupt where law enforcement was weak. Prior to the 1960s, a white aristocracy employed the right of exclusion to racially discriminate against other ethnic groups.

The 1964 Civil Rights act prevented discrimination in employment. But it did not prevent customers from disrupting the newly accessible businesses. A symmetric change in the law would have prevented the intimidation or disruption of a business for personal or political gain as well. As a result, the country is witnessing the reappearance of discrimination and segregation as a means of enforcing racial entitlements. The outlawed white aristocracy has been replaced by the Civil Rights Movement.

A school system in the northeastern US recently introduced, “affinity spaces” in public schools, spaces which excluded students on the basis of race, as a priority of the school district’s ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ plan. Such ‘affinity spaces’ are a revival of the racial segregation in education that was ended by the Civil Rights Movement in the last century, this time directed at white instead of black students. The changed discrimination is an extension the racial entitlements claimed by the Civil Rights Movement.

The new definition of minority rights makes it permissible for a group of young people to enter a restaurant and harass diners as an exercise in political power and control, or to boycott businesses whose policies they disagree with. In another example of the assertion of new entitlements, under the Biden Administration, social justice advocates were successful in writing racial preferences into legislation providing Federal subsidies for farmers. The courts have so far struck down this legislation as being discriminatory.

The US civil rights aristocracy is cognizant of its need to maintain support for its entitlements. It controls the narrative on race relations in the US. It has used its influence in public education to imprint its narrative on public education curricula, to underline racial politics in events such as Black History Month, and to include the historical narrative of Critical Race Theory in the public schools.

The Civil Rights Movement engages in all of the activities described above in the section ‘How Do Aristocracies Stay in Power?’. Its rationale continues to be that US society is unfair to African Americans. It labels America as a racist country. This is because the Movement’s continuing relevance in an integrated US society depends upon continued conflict between the majority of Americans and the African American minority. Racial conflict is a central tenet of the Civil Rights Movement.

Through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the Civil Rights Movement enforces its hegemony over the narrative of race relations on the entire population. Views which depart from the narrative are actively challenged by civil rights organizations as well as by education bureaucracies at all levels of government. Major media organizations accept and report the narrative uncritically. To oppose any detail of the narrative is to be called a racist or a white supremacist. The Civil Rights Movement generates national membership organizations with an overarching philosophy and a unified voice. The NAACP alone has approximately half a million active members nationwide.

The FBI has closely monitored white supremacist groups since the early days of Civil Rights movement. The Bureau identifies about 2,500 neo-nazis who organize and actively promote a continued ideology. The Bureau estimates the existence of about 4,000 Ku Klux Klan members in the country. In short, the political power of the Civil Rights Movement dwarfs that of its remaining opponents.

A Summary of Evidence of economic and social discrimination.

The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights act has eliminated de jure discrimination and segregation. By doing so, it has resulted in ethnic diversity in public places and in equal access to commerce and to government. Equal opportunity, affirmative acton, and social justice have made possible the largest and most influential identity aristocracy in the US today.

If the country no longer tolerates racial discrimination and forced segregation, can it be a racist society? The answer is yes in one sense. The US is home to distinct ethnic groups. And they segregate themselves in a number of ways. Some groups celebrate Kwanza, some Hanukkah, some Christmas, some Ramadan, and others none of these. Different groups listen to different strains of pop music. Beauty parlors, funeral homes, food stores serve specific ethnic clienteles. And public schools recognize distinct racial groups and genders in their curricula.

This all indicate a racist and sexist society that is based upon individual preferences for association, but not upon forced segregation or discrimination. To forstall the latter the US public sector enforces an omnipresent compliance system that covers major employers in private business, government, and education.

The Civil Rights Movement disavows nationwide race-blind uniformity. Rather it stresses white racism, and now bases its charges of racism upon observed earnings and income inequality. Civil Rights advocates cite as proof of endemic racism, the inequality of average earnings of workers by broad-based racial categories, reported in employment statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. The inequality is manifest in Chart 4-1. ²²

Chart 4-1

Empirical Evidence for Wage Gap

Chart 4-1 reports median earnings of White, black, hispanic, and Asian workers from 1967 to 2017. Median black and hispanic earnings are currently approximately 75% of the average earnings of white workers. While all earnings have increased over time, the gap between white wages and wages of blacks and hispanics remains. What factors cause income disparity of this magnitude?

Civil right advocates argue that disparities in median earnings stem from racial discrimination. But there is reason to doubt this conclusion, because the data in the wage gap charts compares ‘apples to oranges’. Pay differentials are determined by age, productivity, (as measured partly by education), measured aptitude, type of occupation, work experience, cost of living by location, and a number of other factors besides gender and ethnicity.

The earnings computation compares, for example, an employee in a fast food restaurant who earns $37,000 annually with a popular heart surgeon who earns $500,000 annually, 13.5 times as much. If there are more white heart surgeons and other high earners among white workers than among black and hispanic workers, they could explain the earnings disparity.

Also, US regional average personal incomes (PI) vary by place and over time. A higher percentage of the labor force in the the south region is black than in the west region, Earnings are lower in the south census region than in the west census region. lf a worker’slocation is not accounted for in the earnings gap equation, the racial earnings gap will be over-estimated. To account for these non-ethnic earnings differences, other methods of computing the earnings gap are required.

There have been many studies that attempt to improve the measure of earnings discrimination by including factors such as occupation and residence of employees. One such study is described in more detail in Appendix A4-1. That study found that incorporating other factors halved the earnings gap during the years 1970 to 2010.

Certain conclusions emerge from the research on this topic. One finding is that the more detail a data set provides on the employment characteristics of individual employees, the more accurate will be its of earnings discrimination and the smaller the unexplained earnings gap. In general the more recent the study, the better the data set is available to the researcher.

A second finding is that the closer alike the individuals studied are in their job qualifications, the closer are the mean or median earnings and income measures for black, white, and hispanic individuals. (Studies reported in refereed academic journals are more rigorous in methodology than those conducted by public interest groups.)

Recently, employment consulting firms have collected detailed data on earnings which enable them to make comparison between individuals who have the same level of experience and identical job titles. Such data is compiled by companies that assist individuals in their job searches. Earnings estimates are computed annually by Payscale, a compensation software and data company which helps employers manage employee compensation and to insure that employees understand their worth in the job market. The company produces an annual report which reveals the pay for all covered occupations relative to that of white men. Table 4-2 below reports Payscale’s earnings per dollar during 2021.

Properly measured, today’s earnings gap between black and white workers is on the order of 1% to 2%²³. The Payscale data show that the racial pay gap diminishes as one gets closer to comparing apples to apples. By this calculus, the effort to ensure equal opportunity in pay for equal work has been largely successful.

Table 4-2 Payscale wages for employees with comparable duties, education, and job expeerience

The performance of median earnings Asian workers over time presents another reason to question the assumption that the median earnings gaps in Chart 4-1 are the result of white racial discrimination. Refer again to Chart 4-1. Median earnings of Asian employees are not reported prior to 1977 in the chart. The truncated series results from a change in the definition of US Asians in 1977 by the US Census Bureau. In that year the definition of Asian was changed, removing “Eskimo” and “Aleut” and adding “Vietnamese”, “Asian Indian”, “Guamanian”, and “Samoan”. As a result of these changes, the series ‘Asian’ is not now reported prior to 1977.

Fortunately for understanding of Asian earnings, a paper written by Nathaniel Hilger, published as an NBER working paper, was designed to shed light on this very question. Hilger finds that prior to the 1964 Equal Opportunity Act, Asian earnings were below those of blacks and Hispanics. His historical evidence shows that Asians were subjected to greater racial discrimination than were blacks and hispanics. However, over the past 80 years, the earnings gap for Asian Americans has been eliminated. Today average earnings of Asian Americans are higher than earnings for white Americans.

When one looks at the causes for average earnings inequality, the performance of Asian Americans in Chart 4-1 becomes manifest. What is behind the higher earnings of Asian Americans? When the median earnings of US ethnic groups are compared over time, the one measurable characteristic that stands out is that Asian Americans have a higher level of formal education than other US ethnic groups. The data show that Asians outperform all other racial groups in measures f educational attainment.

Possibly, Asian American earnings are influenced by other family traits which are not measured in the earnings data but are related to earnings. The difference in an employee’s value to his employer, regardless of race, is likely to come from the attitudes toward work instilled by parents and their social milieu. Families headed by educated persons who take their parental duties seriously are more likely to produce educated children who also take their personal economic success seriously, and are able, through education, to achieve it.

Readers who wish to see additional information about the US Asian income gap may read Appendix A4-2, which reports the results of Hilger’s NBER working paper in more detail.

Feminism and the Women’s Movement

Beginning in the latter half of the second millennium, advances in science and technology have led to similar advances in the standards of living of the peoples around the globe. Economic ell-being has risen from very low levels at an exponential rate for the last two centuries. Freed from economic poverty, citizens of many nations have championed democracy over kings and nobility, religious freedom over sectarian loyalty, and increased social equality over class distinctions. In many natiions, economic progress has fostered an elevated role for women in civil society..

Mary Wollstonecraft presented a modern views of sexual equality in 1792 with the publication of the ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. In the US, women’s rights became a major issue in the years prior to the civil war. Margaret Fuller, who was associated with New England’s Transcendentalist community, published ‘Women in the Nineteenth Century’ in 1845.

The contributions of early feminist writers to expanding women’s rights bore political fruit. In 1848, just before the first conference to deal with women’s rights in the US was held in Seneca Falls, NY, the New York legislature provided an early victory by granting legal status to women in owning assets within marriage. During the Seneca Falls conference, Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented a document entitled “A Declaration of Sentiments” . That document, based upon the US Declaration of Independence, contrasted the expansive rights held by men with the limited ones that women enjoyed. Women had inferior status under the laws governing marriage. In divorce, the law delivered a couple’s children into the hands of the husband. Women lacked property rights granted to men. Employment opportunities were restricted, and women’s renumeration was lower than that offered to men. Women’s education was in general inferior to men’s. And women’s role in organized religion was circumscribed.

The Seneca Falls conference was followed by conferences across the country. These generated a sustained demand for sexual liberalism embodied in the Women’s Movement. The leadership of the Women’s Movement in the 1850s examined the causes of women’s inferior legal, economic, and social position. They well understood the role aristocracy played in preventing political equality. They believed that the only way to rid the country of this aristocracy of men was to dismantle the legal entitlements which supported it. And to accomplish this goad they understood that they must establish women’s franchise to vote.

When Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1868, granting the vote to African Americans, but not mentioning the vote for women, Stanton wrote, “This government is not a democracy, it is not a republic, it is an odious aristocracy; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe…an aristocracy of sex.”

Stanton and Susan B Anthony were among the feminists who founded the National Woman Suffrage Association to establish the vote for women. Some of the desired changes came slowly. Stanton and Anthony did not live to see the vote enshrined in law in 1920.

With the vote, the program of liberal feminism turned to increasing the participation of women in the country’s political and economic institutions.

Following the strategy of the civil rights movement, women’s’ rights activists launched nationwide protests to gain entrance to areas of the economy dominated by men, and to eliminate the perceived wage inequality between men and women.

But not all the changes in US society have been strictly economic. Feminist influence in public education, the opening up of higher education to women, and increased numbers of women in the workplace have brought three additional issues to the fore in which Feminism seeks to alter social norms.

One issue is the role of childbearing in society. The role of reproduction on sexual equality divides women voters politically. Feminism maintains that sexual equality had been hindered by women’s’ traditional roles in conception and motherhood. Feminists have supported birth control, as, they argue, motherhood puts women in a disadvantage in the workplace. Birth control is now an accepted norm across party lines.

Feminists support the unrestricted right to terminate pregnancy. In this they clash with religious groups, notably the Catholic Church, which argues for the sanctity of human life from conception to death. The disagreement over abortion has been unreconcilable, and has exacerbated the rift between the counterculture and traditional US culture. It is visible in the division of the woman’s vote between the two major political parties, which has blurred the lines of conflict over women’s rights.

A third issue in which feminists seek change is the balance between work and family. The expectation that women devote more energy to the workplace places new demands on those women who wish to have children. Demands of the workplace combined with family responsibilities now may crowd out other pursuits. Working women seek new family benefits such as pregnancy leave and assisted childcare.

A fourth issue for the Women’s Movement is a continued concern with sexual relations between women and men. The women’s’ movement seeks to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace, in schools, and in all public places where men and women gather. Feminists have acted to identify and punish sexual misconduct by men. The ‘Me Too’ movement focuses on sexual misconduct both in the workplace and in society as a whole.

The most influential political organization in the US Women’s movement is the National Organization of Women (NOW), founded in 966. NOW has been influential in using political activism to secure the passage of legislation mandating sexual equality in the workplace. The 1963 Equal Pay Act made unequal pay for similar work in any workplace of 15 or more employees illegal. Equality is enforceable by law, and gives the EEOC the power to bring lawsuits and to levy penalties for noncompliance. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. The Civil Rights Restoration Act passed in 1988 expanded Title IX to cover all government and educational institutions. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 tightened anti-discrimination enforcement procedures. It also expanded the legal mandate to cover employment conditions and sexual harassment.

As with racial workplace equality, the legal entitlements conferred by Federal legislation have been buttressed and extended in the courts, and monitored by equal opportunities offices resident in each large organization. Moreover, federal right to work legislation is replicated at the state and local level. A rigorous legal framework of gender-based equal opportunity programs now governs all organizations which employ large numbers of employees.

The Women’s Movement does not in itself explain the changes in gender relationships, including the narrowing of the gender wage differential, which have evolved over the past century. The Women’s movement operates against a backdrop of economic and technological changes which favor the inclusion of women in the workforce. Factors other than political protest and legal action have operated to open labor markets to women. One factor is jobs in the US economy, which after WWII migrated from manual labor to machine assisted and automated production.

The introduction of technology-based employment has required workers to acquire more training and education, and new technology demands less physical strength, which benefits working women.

During the same time period, the availability of labor-saving household appliances has reduced the time and energy required to maintain a residence. Families today are better able to maintain households while holding full-time jobs. Job mobility and with mobility an increased spatial mobility of the workforce led to increased urbanization.

The extent to which increased participation of women in the workforce and rising wages for women have been the result of technology rather than from the efforts of the women’s’ rights movement is unknown, but the confluence of technological and political changes lifted the status of women in the US workplace dramatically in the second half of the 20th century.

Certainly, similar gains in sexual equality in the workplace have been achieved in postwar WWII societies around the world; in the far east, in Latin America, in Europe, and in Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, there remain other societies around the world where sexual equality has been thwarted by social and religious forces, and by legal restrictions. Whatever the relative importance of social and economic trends in increasing women’s earnings, they have complemented NOW’s efforts toward enhancing the economic status relative to men.

The rationale for equal opportunity programs for women, as for those for the Civil Rights Movement is the existence of a large gender wage gap. This gap is offered as proof of a correspondingly large sexual inequality of opportunity for women which remains to be eliminated. The feminist position on gender wage inequality is typified by a July 2021 article entitled ‘Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap²⁴ posted on the website of The Center for American Progress. The article leads off with a chart comparing median earnings for full time year-round workers during 2018. For every dollar earned by a white male, the table reported earnings by a white female of $0.79, by black females of $0.62, by Latino women of $0.54, and by Asian women of $0.90, and by American Indians/Eskimos of $0.57.

As with racial wage disparities discussed previously, the wage statistic includes unaccounted disparities in occupation, spatial location, experience, and hours worked. The website notes these factors do exist, but does not report the results of accounting for them. Moreover, as is the case with explanations of the racial wage gap, the gender pay gap shrinks when factors other than discrimination are factored into its calculation.

The Center for American Progress study recognizes the importance of occupation in the wage gap, but the authors argue that occupation is simply another form of sex discrimination. The report states, “By calculating a wholistic wage gap, researchers can see effects of occupational segregation, or the funneling of women and men into different types of industries and jobs based on gender norms and expectations.”

If one considers the importance of the family in a person’s economic status, one might conclude that the funneling process mentioned above occurs at the other end of the wage spectrum. Wealthy and educated families are more likely to funnel their children, both male and female, toward private schools and elite universities than are poor families to do so. Wealthy and educated families congregate with other wealthy and educated families. Here is where the privilege lies in America. And how do these privileged people vote?

A very different estimate of the gender wage gap was reported above in a study by Payscale in 2021. As discussed on page 48, the company utilized its database to estimate the gender pay differential in 2021 It finds that a female employee earns on average $.02 less than a comparable male employee. The controlled gender pay gap is the same as last year.

Payscale’s measure of the controlled gender pay gap has closed over time. The closing has slowed in recent years, shrinking by only a fraction of one percent year over year. It has shrunk a total of $0.01 since 2015. Payscale’s estimates of the gender pay gap, once other compensable factors such as experience, industry and job description are accounted for, suggest that gender wage equality will soon be achieved.

Affirmative action entitlements pioneered in the Civil Rights Movement, including hiring and admissions preferences, were made available to women as well as African Americans. Affirmative action employed government entitlements, and the enforcement of diversity programs, and lawsuits, to access careers and educational opportunities.

Liberal feminism in US society, discussed above is not the only course of action advocated by American women. Two other schools of thought in modern feminism are gender based Marxism, and radical feminism. In the 1960s, some feminists adapted the Marxist class struggle model to depict the US society as a fight for women’s rights against capitalism. Capitalism, they argued, enabled men to dominate of the means of production, depriving women of equality before the law, and codifying sexist social traditions. Thus, capitalism results in inferior economic opportunity, and lower incomes for women.

The Marxist contention of conflict between men and women does not take into consideration the universal fact that sons have mothers and that daughters have fathers. Familial bonds are arguably more basic and more powerful than class and gender identifications. This is the reason that children of successful and caring parents are privileged over those who come from dysfunctional homes. In sum, the traditional family breaks the iron chain of feminist dialectics.

Radical feminists favor a clear division between me and women, Radical feminism argues that changes in traditional society will not suffice to end their concept of male domination. They recommend that women separate entirely from male society and form their own parallel institutions.

None of the schools of feminist thought emphasize increased difficulties that face US men. This silence is an example of the tendency of aristocracies to focus on extending their power and entitlements to the exclusion of the rest of society. Hannah Rosin, in the 2012 Book ‘The End of Men” notes that women currently occupy numerous high income technical occupations, such as pharmacy and accounting, that were recently dominated by men²⁵. She predicts that the high-skilled 30% urban, high income segment of the US population will soon be predominately female.

She sees men in the future as losing ground in higher education and incomes, and relevance in their role of father and husband in the American family. She notes that these problems are largely confined to the 70% of households middle and lower income households. Male suicides, death rates, incarceration and drug abuse in this section of the population are also at alarming levels.

Political aristocracies develop strategies to garner the support of the entire society for their entitlements. To this end, the women’s movement maintains control over the national discussion about gender roles and sexual relationships through its advocates in the national media, in public schools, universities, and colleges.

As the Civil Rights Movement is based upon the fact of racial conflict, the relevancy of the women’s moment stresses continuing conflict between the sexes over the issues important to it.

Today, the edifice of women’s rights constitutes a gender aristocracy that is closed to men. If men enjoyed aristocratic status in the past, it is being eliminated. But the women’s rights aristocracy and its entitlements, like the civil rights aristocracy, remain ascendant.

LGBTQ

Homosexuality has in the past been unacceptable and at one time also illegal in traditional western societies. In the 1950s sex between consenting homosexuals was illegal in the US. Gay men and women were barred from military service, and were not allowed to adopt children.

Gay Rights associations were formed to address discrimination against homosexuals. Gays and lesbians used the same strategy of protest and legal action as had the civil rights movement and feminism to challenge the social status quo, invoking the 1964 Civil Rights acts, bringing court cases against governments and businesses that discriminated against gays and lesbians, and seeking revocation of laws limiting the legal rights of gays and lesbians. Groups with other non-traditional sexual behaviors have added their demands to those of gays and lesbians, who are joined by bisexuals and transsexuals. The movement is now often described by the acronym LGBTQ.

As with feminism, the objective is a society that eliminates discrimination and violence against a sexual group, in this case homosexuals, and attains the acceptance LGBTQ lifestyles across society on equal terms with heterosexuality.

However, the LGBTQ rights movement differs from the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s Rights Movement in that it has not sought to redistribute income and wealth away from the rest of society toward the LGBTQ community. Nor has it expanded its push for equality to affirmative action and social justice. In this matter the gay rights movement does not behave like an identity aristocracy.

There has been a literature linking discrimination against the LGBTQ community with economic inequality. A research consensus formed after 2000 was that Gays suffered wage discrimination of 5% to 10%, but that lesbian women commanded wage premium over heterosexual women.

The consensus held wage discounts for men and wage premia for women reflected different impacts of familial responsibilities. That is, that gay men had less spousal support and that gay women had fewer spousal responsibilities than their straight counterparts.

Studies since 2015 have used the National Health Interview Survey²⁶ to compare wages. The findings of the survey contradict previous research. Both gay women and gay men, according to this data, receive wage premia over their straight counterparts.

As with the Civil Rights and Women’s’ rights movements, the use of better information, allowing ‘apples to apples’ comparisons, has narrowed the estimate of a wage gap for LGBTQ individuals, and lessened LGBTQ calls for affirmative action and social justice.

Gay rights issues reflect a division in society. But this divide may be explained by social, not economic, considerations. As was the case for women, gender rights programs have been opposed by religious organizations. Also as with feminism, demands have escalated as homosexuality entered the mainstream of secular society.

A question of rights of association by lifestyle has been raised and must be adhjucated. The plaintiffs in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. (2018) argued that businesses must provide the same services to homosexuals as to the rest of society. A baker who had religious views opposed to homosexuality refused to produce a wedding cake with two male figures atop, rather than a man and a women. In the lawsuit claiming illegal discrimination, the court held that the baker was within his rights to refuse to decorate the cake as requested.

There is ongoing conflict over the rights of transgender individuals to cross the gender divides in participation in sports and in access to restrooms reserved for their biological opposites. As do the civil rights organizations and feminists, the LGBTQ community provides disproportionate support for the Democratic Party. The community votes democratic by a ratio of 3-to-1.

The Disabled

The number of disabled persons in the US depends upon the definition of a disability. The Census of population estimate is 13.2%. The American Community Survey estimates disabilities at 26%. The National Service Inclusion Project estimates 19.4% . According to the website Statistica, the percent of disabled persons rises with age. Statistica reports that 5.5% of children of 5 to 15 years of age have a disability. The percentage of individuals over 75 years of age with a disability rises to 47.5%.

Persons with disabilities have utilized the 1964 Civil Rights Act to address employment discrimination, and to increase access to public venues. The Act has been supplemented at the federal level by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Telecommunications Act, the Fair Housing Act, as amended in 1988, the Air Carrier Access Act, the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Rehabilitation Act.

The cumulative effect of this body of legislation has been to make it illegal to discriminate against people with handicaps in employment and access to public services. Inaccessibility to both public and private establishments is now recognized as a form of illegal discrimination.

Have the handicapped become an identity aristocracy? Disabled persons as a class are entitled to protections both in employment and in matters of pubic access not available to the general public. And a number of US organizations represent the interests of disabled persons. The largest is the American Association of People with Disabilities. In addition, specific physical disabilities have support organizations, and many other organizations confront individual diseases and illnesses. Several organizations focus on access to employment and equal treatment in the workplace for handicapped citizens as a group. Thus, disabled Americans belong to an aristocracy as defined in this essay.

However, unlike the Women’s’ movement and the Civil Rights movement, organizations representing the handicapped make no aristocratic claims of systematic economic discrimination from the non-disabled. Moreover, the ADA does not sanction affirmative action. (Although, the Rehabilitation Act does require affirmative action on the part of federal contractors, a relatively small subset of all employers.)

The disabled do not differ from the rest of society on social policy. Their demands have not lead to social divides currently centering about race and sex. Partly, this is because voting patterns of disabled persons mirror those of the general society. Consequently, neither major political party trades votes and money from the disabled for political favoritism.

The lack of national political partisanship over the disabled may also reflect the general societal acceptance of programs which benefit the disabled specifically, The country is increasingly wealthy, and it seems reasonable that many voters opt to live in a country where life is safer and less complicated if one suffers a disability.

As any couple may have a child with one or more disabilities, and any person may be permanently injured in an accident or in a criminal act, equality of access can be viewed as a form of social insurance rather than solution to social discrimination. Thus, voters across political parties sympathize with equal opportunity for the handicapped, and the social conflict associated with race and gender has not occurred through the ADA.

The Elderly

One final identity aristocracy is that of the elderly. Age is unique in that it comes to anyone fortunate enough to survive childhood and adulthood. But one cannot be a member of the aristocracy until one enters the period of decline known as ‘old age’. It is an aristocracy in the US largely because the Federal Government enacted Medicare. The Medicare program is expensive, and it involves transfers of income from the working age population to the elderly. Medicare is a valuable asset to those over 65 years of age. And it offers security to younger people who can look forward to affordable health care when and if they reach 65 years of age. On the other hand, the resources dedicated to Medicare decrease their availability. to working families who are responsible for their young children’s health. Either way, Medicare is a factor to consider as one votes.

Democrats are likelier to support and extend the benefits offered by Medicare than are Republicans. The American Association of Retired People (AARP), the largest organization representing the elderly had over 39 million members as of 2018. AARP provides its services inexpensively to the individual member. For a low membership fee, AARP lobbies for the protection and expansion of Medicare.

AARP’s membership magazine and newspaper have the largest circulation of any US periodicals. Through them, AARP provides authoritative and understandable articles on issues important to older people. It’s a powerful political player due to its extensive membership, and it supports the Democratic Party on issues relevant to aging.

Older persons and the AARP have no political programs designed to change the behavior and curtail the privileges of younger generations. There is no body of protest over issues of aging, and consequently no political conflict between the young and the old. Moreover, membership is available to all who manage to survive youth and middle age.

Summarizing Identity Aristocracies Today

There is a national consensus on avoiding discrimination against the identity groups discussed above. Nevertheless, the polarization of society has increased over time. Some friction between the identity groups and social conservatives may be inevitable as society be comes more inclusive, and as traditional mores change. The problem is that, as the power of identity aristocracies increases, they become reactionary, and utilize ever more resources in protecting their entitlements and expanding them.

Members of aristocracies wish to keep their entitlements, and oppose themselves to those who do not belong. Their activities have caused public discourse to become acrimonious and distracted. The nation is forced to look backward to address problems that were confronted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Distracted by disagreement, the nation cannot fully address the new challenges facing it in the twenty-first century. The US is changing quickly, and the new problems facing it are growing fast. US society needs a new approach to addressing the drug culture which is embedded within it, and which is causing much greater damage to addicted citizens of all genders and ethnicities and to their families than are racial and sexual differences. Social media has created another set of problems which are not being adequately addressed. The education system, which has not been rethought in 100 years, must be updated to prepare youth for the new century. The Federal Government has embarked upon a vast program to quickly replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and nuclear power. Civil society, the economy, and governmental organizations must mobilize to support new climate commitments.

None of these issues are being adequately addressed on a societal basis. It is time for the country’s identity aristocracies to relinquish their elevated status, to rejoin the rest of society, and to help the nation redirect its pubic priorities.

Chapter 5 Government Enterprise and Monopoly

The US is a mixed economy. It has a private sector which consists of businesses that are owned and operated by private investors. It also has a public sector which conducts the business of government. Public sector businesses are managed either by a government entity or by a state owned enterprise (SOE).

The first difference between SOEs and private enterprises is in the internal objectives of the organization. The internal objective of a private business is to market the company’s products or services at a price which exceeds the cost of producing them. If they succeed in doing so, the company’s owners receive profits. Shareholders of private firms want large profits. The long term viability of the firm, however, sets limits on profits. If profits lag, shareholders can sell their ownership, and the value of the firm declines.

SOEs are not owned by private investors. They are run by a cadre of managers who are government employees, and who are appointed by elected officials who represent the voters. These managers do not answer to shareholders of a corporation. Instead, in their role as government officials, actions of the managers of SOEs reflect the interests of groups of stakeholders.

Stakeholders of SOEs want to participate in the income from the SOE’s activities. Customers want low prices. Workers want high wages. Suppliers want high prices for their inputs. Overall, politicians want the activities of the SOE to please their voters.

The second difference between private and public firms lies in the nature of the environment in which they operate. Most private enterprises operate in markets where they face competitors. Prices, and therefore profits, are limited by the extent of competition the existence of which allows consumers to choose similar products sold by other companies. Other factors equal, consumers select the least costly comparable products and services. In competitive industries, unprofitable firms will be sold or run out of business. Agricultural products and raw materials, which tend to be the same across sellers, are examples of pure competition. However, when products and services compete but are not identical, there is room for some price variation, and some excess profits. Most competition is therefore referred to as imperfect competition. Manufactured products and services industries which market different brands are imperfect competitors.

Industries which are limited to a small number of firms are referred to as oligopolies. In privately owned oligopolistic private industries, there is more scope for monopoly profits. But excess profits invite competition. As an example, the big three Detroit automakers in the 1950s and 1960s shared excess profits with their labor forces and with the public sector. However, when foreign competitors began to to make inroads into the US market, firms were forced to return to competitive operations or face going out of business. Domestic prices declined to meet the foreign competition. Profits fell with prices, as did the excess rents earned by autoworkers.

A private firm with no competitors is referred to as a monopoly. A monopoly, that is, is a business for whom a private market does not support a competitor. Examples of natural monopolies are water and sewage systems and electric power grids. Also, the state can create private monopolies by, for instance, granting patents for the sole right to sell a private good or service.

Economics demonstrates that monopolists who operate in the private sector are able, by limiting the quantity of goods and services they provide, to raise the price of its product or service above the total cost of its provision, including the expected risk adjusted rate of return. This ability can result in large profits. Monopolies misallocate resources and lower the productivity of the economy. But business monopolies are difficult to preserve in the absence of governmental support. They attract competitors who often use new technologies to compete business away from the monopolies.

Private monopolies are problems for society. Government may address privately owned natural monopolies by regulating their activities as public utilities. Alternatively governments may run monopolistic economic activities either as government agencies funded by taxes, or by operating them as SOEs.

Legal systems and correctional facilities are examples of natural monopolies. Civil society cannot function in the absence of a system of laws and of correctional facilities in every political jurisdiction. They are natural monopolies. Law enforcement and the operations of civil and criminal courts are tax supported government agencies, notwithstanding the roles of private security and of much of the legal profession. Many other public services are supported by taxes as well. Their operations are line items of the government responsible for providing their services.

All levels of government in the US also operate SOEs–monopolies that exist as legal business entities. A perusal of the federal budget identifies SOE involvement in almost every segment of the economy, from income redistribution to land management. In the US, the programs and employees of many SOE-operated public facilities address market externalities that impact the environment, the provision of the country’s safety net, and shield individual citizens from mental, physical, or economic hardship.

SOEs, as public monopolies, do not face competition. Therefore, the US economic system provides no information on the dollar value of the services the SOE’s provide, and so can determine neither the cost nor the quantity of those services. SOEs unlike private monopolies, do not have to reduce output to earn excess profits.Whether and SOE is funded by taxes, by sales of its products or services, or by a mixture of both, SOEs can be operated to earn excess income over costs. This excess income is likely to be divided among the stakeholders.

Stakeholders are those individuals and groups who directly produce or consume the SOEs output. They may also include business groups and identity aristocracies Stakeholders are motivated to vie with each other to increase the value that each extracts from the SOE. Stakeholders may exercise political power over the government which controls the SOE, or over the SOE managers themselves. In either case, stakeholders are fighting over the monopoly profits of the SOE. Stakeholders can directly influence the the way SOE resources are employed, or change the beneficiaries of the SOE’s activities. Or stakeholders may influence the government managers through influencing voters and through lobbying. The social and political fallout from stakeholder activity can be significant.

For example a local school system must provide education to its school age children, who in turn are lawfully required to attend. How do the managers of the school system determine the level of expenditure required to provide its educational services? Managers realize they must cover the expenses incurred by its stakeholders The school district’s stakeholders include the district’s employees, its suppliers of properties and materials, its sources of capital, the students and their parents, the district’s voters, and all others who are impacted by the SOE’s activities (residents of the neighborhoods in which the district operates, for example). Stakeholders can join forces to create political interest groups, which may then use the districts’ resources to benefit themselves, thereby changing the nature of the district’s activities.

The third difference between SOEs and private firms is political. Voter support for a SOE depends upon where and how a voter’s income is earned. Most Americans who work in the private sector resist the state’s taxation of their incomes and the limitations that government places on their economic freedom. For this reason, voters who work in the private sector consistently vote to limit the size and scope of government.

Employees of Federal, state and local governments, however, find that their personal objectives align with a larger and more empowered role for the state. In line with their economic incentives as stakeholders in a nationwide network of SOEs, a majority of public employees are members of public employee unions. They vote for and provide economic support for the Democratic Party. Those who own or work for businesses that benefit from Democratic Party support, recipients of services provided by SOEs, nonprofits corporations, and government contractors likewise find it in their financial interest to support the Democratic Party. The Party repays their votes by increasing the financial welfare of the stakeholders.

The effects of public ownership on SOEs are discussed again in Chapter 7 as part of a case study of the education industry, where he question to be answered is ‘how does public ownership impact the cost and output quality of primary and secondary education in the US?

Privatization in Britain.

This section provides an example of the political importance of SOEs, and of the political conflict they inspire. The example, from the United Kingdom in 1979, illustrates the magnitude of the economic impacts of SOEs on individuals and private businesses.

In the UK, after WWII, the British Labour Party was voted into power. The Party instituted a program to replace important private industries with SOEs. The UK’s large industrial firms, the “commanding heights” of the economy, were nationalized. The objective of management ceased to be maximization of profits for shareholders. Objectives were to be determined by the representatives of the electorate, that is, by the British Government. Ministries were established, headed by political appointees, and staffed by civil servants. The objective was deceptively simple: to produce high quality goods and services as inexpensively as possible.

In the USSR as theSoviets had discovered two generations earlier, without markets to determine prices, required rates of return on capital, and returns to labor, land and capital, efficient allocation of resources was elusive. Information came to each industry through each industry’s “stakeholders”, Management under Labour had to balance the interests of all “stakeholders” in the firm. The labor force, suppliers to the industry, local governments, and consumers all had a voice in operating, pricing, and investment decisions. Laborers demanded high wages and generous benefits, suppliers high prices for inputs, and consumers low prices of product. These demands were mutually exclusive. Management was motivated to operate at a deficit, and UK voters paid the losses with higher taxes. There was widespread labor rest. And the UK’s economic growth rate had stalled.

Voters were divided. But there was enough political unrest to vote for large changes in economic policy. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher led the Tory party in the United Kingdom to power over the Labour Party. Ms. Thatcher was a devil-figure for the Labour Party because she was seen as an agent of change and as a threat Labour’s voters. The management of the companies, their workforces, and their suppliers feared the loss of monopoly economic power and decline in income that would come from privatization.

Ultimately Tories abolished most of the UK’s SOEs which the Labor Party had created after WWII. After Ms. Thatcher’s government won a subsequent parliamentary election by a narrow margin, her program of privatization was carried out. British Steel, British Air, British Communications, and many other SOEs were privatized. Still operating as state enterprises are the public schools and the British Health Service, as well as British Rail.

Consider the case of British Coal. Managed by the Coal Board, British mines were operating at a loss. Every ton of coal produced cost 3£ more than its market value of about 25£ per metric tonne.Under Thatcher, the Coal Board proposed to close 20 high cost coal mines and make 20,000 miners working in them redundant. The miner’s union was run by Arthur Scargill, a fire-breathing marxist. Many of Britain’s mineworkers struck, and fought the regime’s shutdown of the mines. There were pitched battles between police, called in by the Tory government, and the miners. Britain abolished British Coal in 1994 and closed the coal mines. Closing the mines left coal miners out of work, and devastated mining communities.

The Thatcher government’s restructuring of the British economy led to a recession in which output fell for four years. Employees of the once-subsidies industries suffered losses in income, employment and pension benefits. Nevertheless, British per capita income grew twice as fast per year in the following twenty years as it had for the years 1960-1980.

Britain’s experiment with socialism after WWII provides lessons about the relationship between SOEs and private business in the US. First, Labour and its supporters recognized Thatcher as an agent of change, and opposed her with a fury equal to that directed recently against US ex-president Donald Trump. During the 1980s, the battle lines were drawn against those who benefited from the British SOEs and those who did not.

Britain’s experiment with socialism after WWII provides lessons about the relationship between SOEs and private business in the US. First, Labour and its supporters recognized Thatcher as an agent of change, and opposed her with a fury equal to that directed today against US ex-president Donald Trump. During the 1980s, the battle lines were drawn against those who benefited from the British SOEs and those who did not. Britain’s experience also exposed the magnitude of the transfers of wealth and economic power that are generated by the replacement of private business with SOEs. The transfers are often subtle. The UK coal miners enjoyed better health benefits and enhanced job security. They worked less hard. As the Soviet Union’s economy languished in the 70s and 80s, Russian coal miners repeated the joke that, ‘the government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work’.

The division of interests between SOEs and private enterprise is the same in the US as it was in Britain in 1979. The Republican-Democrat divide reflects the opposing interests those who operate in the competitive areas of the private sector and those whose interests are connected to the activities of local, and state governments and of the Federal government.

Chapter 6 How Identity Aristocracies and Public Monopolies Combine with Political Parties to Set Government Policy

The present chapter, Chapter 6, discusses the mechanisms employed by the interest above interest groups to influence governments at the Federal, state, and local levels to benefit their members at the expense of the general public. The chapter then turns to the role of the national political parties to reward its supporters.

Political Interest Groups Control the National Democratic Party

There are four avenues through which private interests may influence the political system and its representatives. The first avenue is through the voting process. The second is through provision of money and other resources. These transfers are effected through donations. A third avenue consists of the multifaceted activities known as lobbying. The final method is the identification and support of allies in complementary organizations with whom the interest group can cooperate to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Consider each in turn.

Government policy, like all organizational policy, is the sum total of actions by the politicians who run them. It is the politicians who are subject to the influence of interest groups. The political parties support the interests of the factional interests that in turn support them.

As governments control vast sums of money, and as government affects a large slice of national life, elections are deadly serious business.The voting process is contested by both parties, and impacted by the actions of many interest groups.

At the national level citizens elect the chief executive and the vice president in elections held every four years. Congress is selected in biennial elections. At the state and local levels, issues are less likely to be contested by the two national parties. Nevertheless, state and local elected officers can be influenced by interest groups with local, regional or national memberships. At the state level, state governors are elected every four years, and state legislators are generally affiliated with one of the two national parties. One can run for office as an independent, but because of the ubiquity of the two party system, almost all offices at the state and national levels are filled by either Democrats or Republicans.

One way in which all citizens, as individual voters and as members of interest groups, seek to influence political power is through contributions which flow into one of the two major US political parties. Democratic money flows to groups who support government intervention in socio-economic matters to achieve their ends. Its supporters include trade unions, liberals, socialists, environmentalists, SOE stakeholders, and identity aristocrats. Republican money argues for limited government intervention, and attracts economic and cultural conservatives.

In the US, political factions maintain grassroots organizations which solicit funds from members and to use them to support the two major political parties. Donations and campaign contributions are the conduits via which both individuals and interest groups attain political influence with elected officials.

Donors must abide by the laws governing financing of political parties and their elected officials. Political Action Committees (PACs) and Super PACS are the vehicles through which voters legally provide money to political candidates, to ballot initiatives, and to legislators.

According to Wikipedia,

^{a political action committee (PAC) pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to election campaigns for or against candidates, to ballot initiatives, anmd for or against proposed legislation..(1)(2) The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign reform in the US.}

• Campaign Finance laws impose limits on donors and require disclosure. The website ‘Open Secrets’ reports campaign donations of the top interest groups giving to members of congress during the 2022 election cycle. The website USA Political Database provides an inclusive list of interest groups which provide active financial support to the two major political parties. In June, 2022, the list of organizations grouped by area of interest, totaled 572.
• At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state’s election laws. Contributions to PACs from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though these entities may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising. Union-affiliated PACs may solicit contributions only from union members. Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.⁽⁴⁾
• a super PAC, officially known as an “independent expenditure-only political action committee,” is unlike a traditional PAC in that it may engage in unlimited political spending (on, for example, political ads) independently of the campaigns, and may raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size. However, they are not allowed to either coordinate with or contribute directly to candidate’s campaigns or to party coffers . (Source: Wikipedia.)

– a 501 (c 3) organization tax exempt organization is a non-partisan charitable, educational literacy organization,

– a 501 (c 4) organization is a tax exempt chartable organization for which some partisan electoral activity is permissible.

The financial support of interest groups seeking to influence elections is growing. The total cost of the 2020 election cycle was $14 billion, over twice the cost of the 2016 elections. Although this is a large number, it is not large relative to total program expenditures of local, state and Federal expenditures. Public employee union PACs, though a small percentage of all democratic voters, loom large in financial support of Democratic candidates for political office by virtue of union contributions from membership dues.

Voters have a much larger impact upon public policy through their contributions to grassroots organizations. Identity aristocracies such as the NAACP and NOW, and organizations representing the SOE stakeholders, support the Democratic Party. Prominent among the latter are public employee unions which along with their contributors engage in partisan political advocacy over a wide range of social and economic issues. Contributions to these advocacy groups are not subject to government regulation. Interest group advocacy encompasses lobbying, which is the lawful influencing of elected officials and public employees. Lobbying is a major function of labor unions. Unions are funded by membership dues. Unions use dues to support social and economic causes as well as to support their members. Teachers union PACs, for example, may expend union dues without government regulation to lobby for educational issues that affect the union’s members. The Democratic Party, in reciprocity, actively works to oppose right to work laws across the country. Advocacy is also conducted by grassroots organizations such as the NAACP and AARP, who solicit funds in support of political parties, and work to further sympathetic social, economic, and political causes.

The major impact of Identity aristocracy and SOE stakeholder advocacy, however, may be the cultivation of allies who work for governmental agencies, private businesses, nonprofit enterprises, and membership organizations. These allies are in position to influence the decision making processes of their employers. Leslie Finger emphasizes the importance of this type of advocacy in the blog American Politics and Policy. She argues that “Interest groups’ influence on policy comes through the presence of faithful legislative allies – not gifts to their campaigns.” She provides evidence of the effectiveness of allies vs. financial contributions a study of teachers unions.²⁶

The process of turning political fireworks into votes has motivated interest groups to concentrate resources on lobbying, political fundraising, and public relations activities as described above in the section ‘How do aristocracies stay in power?’

To muster public acceptance for their programs, SOE monopolists must do the hard work of political organizing to:

1. Coordinate a joint strategy to control the SOE which includes all Democratic Party stakeholders.

2. Gain control over organizations which are accepted as the policymakers and program leaders for SOE stakeholders.

3. Install volunteers or employees into the entities in 2. who will replace the elements opposed to the interest groups with individuals who pursue groups’ objectives.

4. Confront and influence SOE management so that it will adapt its operations to accommodate interest group goals.

5. Keep the general electorate separated and removed from the levers of power and control.

If SOE interest groups can accomplish these 5 tasks, they can silence opposing individuals and parties and control important organizations from within.

Identity interest groups and progressives must fund and staff organizations which carry out the economic, political and legal activities necessary to further their interests. Democratic Party organizations must promote friendly policies, lobby politicians, and sway those in opposition.

Coalition building at the national level is important. The aristocracy, SOE activists, or the progressive group must identify existing institutions that may be used, and bend them to the desired policies. It must promote the interests of grassroots members of the identity group or progressive voters and lobby nonmembers for their support. It must get out the vote of supporters and minimize opposition voting.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to fully discuss the structure and impacts of the SOEs and aristocracies throughout the entire US society. Rather, in Chapter 7, the study uses the US public education industry to provide an example of the full Party apparatus. One sees a clear example of interest group cooperation and how it controls a nationwide system of education SOEs. We discuss public higher education, and then turn to the k-12 public schools.

Identity aristocracies and SOC stakeholders organizations also utilize activities such as protests, rallies and media events to promote their narratives. They advocate for friendly voters, as well as against other voters and organizations whom they oppose. They lobby for new federal state and local expenditures that benefit their members.

In addition to getting out the vote, campaign finance lobbying of elected officials, and directly engaging public organizations, political interest organizations agitate for changes in the legal system. Interest groups work to change laws and to influence their interpretation via the judicial process. Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, as stated in the Constitution. Interest groups may lobby against sitting judges. They may lobby the politicians who are involved in the selection of judges. In 39 states local judges are elected to their positions, where interest groups may influence voter selection of judges.

Finally, Interest groups may institute court action, fund plaintiffs and defendants, and supply legal council and other legal resources in the interests of members of the interest group.

There has been a recent surge in identity group activism in private corporations. Activist investors have sought control of corporate boards. They seek to influence the investment strategies of large mutual funds. Vocal academic voices have been pressuring university administrations to impose speech and behavior codes on campus and to influence the curricula of academic departments. Private businesses are under pressure to adopt programs supporting antiracism and ‘me too’ codes of sexual content. Best-sellers appear on bookshelves touting these philosophies. School boards and medical associations are pressured to implement programs to do the same. The spread of “woke” philosophy has been rapid and wide-spread.

The Democratic Party Supports its Political Interests Groups.

All the activities described in the preceding section enjoy the support of the Democratic Party. The funds provided by interest groups to the Democratic Party and its elected members is responsible for the surprising speed with which the Party has secured a commanding lead in the implementation of public policy at all levels of government.

Much Federal spending over the past 4 years has been in response to requests from interest identity groups and SOE stakeholders. For example, in a press statement in August, 2022, the NAACP announced that black college students had 50% more student loan debt on graduation than white students, and called for student loan forgiveness to mitigate the difference. This debt indicates that black students had received over half again the amount lent to other students. In response, in August 2022, the Biden Administration announced a $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.

Democratic control of the presidency and the US senate over the covid years has been used to boost government spending. During the Covid years of 20,22-23, the Democratic Party crafted spending programs of $5 trillion. Much of the expenditure was financed by the Federal Reserve, leading to a 35% increase in the money supply over two years and a surge of increased inflation.

The special interest organizations that craft and promote public policy to benefit their members are the pyrotechnicians, identified at the beginning of this essay, who produce the daily fireworks which are set off by the elected officials and for the officialdom of governmental organizations. The fireworks themselves will successfully attract support among the majority of voters if most voters are not impacted by the actions of the entitled parties, and if they accept the parties’ narratives supporting them. Rather than being radical, public policy supported by Democratic interest groups has been in defense and extension of the entitlements already secured by SOEs and identity aristocracies. The policy actions have been, in essence, reactionary.

However, the activities of both SOEs and identity aristocracies actively impact many voters adversely, white voters in the case of the civil right movements, men in the case of the women’s’ movement, and consumers and many taxpayers in the case of SOEs. The natural divergence of interests between identity aristocracies and public monopolists on the one hand, and the general public on the other, has resulted in an approximate balance of opposing interests at the national level.

None of the core Democratic voting blocs, on its own, commands a majority of the total voting public. Moreover, the Democratic Party cannot simply add the percentages of special interest voters together, because voting groups overlap. Many voters, for example, will be both women and African American, and also have progressive economic interests. The Democratic party faces the following arithmetic:

Government employees are about 17% of all employees. About 13% of the US population identifies as African American, and roughly 50% of the US population is female.

The LGBTQ community comprises around 6% of the entire US population. It believes that its goals are supported by the Democratic Party, and votes Democratic by a ratio of 3-1.

Economic progressives, who comprise perhaps one quarter of all voters, lobby for the transfer of income from the wealthy to lower income groups. Income redistribution resonates with a large percentage of the nation’s households, as a large percentage are net beneficiaries of existing income transfers. Tabulations from the Congressional Budget Office reveal that 60% of US households receive considerably more in Federal Government transfers than they pay in. The next highest quintile receives just about as much back as they pay out (Tax oundation.org).

But the programs of the interest groups who purport to represent the above demographic and economic groups themselves are only one factor determining the which party the voters select. Many of these voters may support the Republican Party for other reasons Not all African American’s support the program of the Civil Rights Movement. And not all women support feminism.

The question remains, how can the democratic-leaning factions together command a voting majority in order to implement and maintain entitlements and achieve its economic goals?

The Democratic Party’s answer to the splintered nature of its core constituencies has been to become the broker for all the Party’s interests: for the identity aristocrats, the stakeholders in SOEs, economic progressives and the other voting blocs. And also, for segments of business whose welfare coincides with those of the Democratic Party.

Together these segments of the population constitute today’s existing counterculture. As a broker, the Party must incorporate a plank for each bloc of supporters in its overall platform. It is the job of each voting faction to craft policies, programs and legislation for the Democratic Party to implement. Democratic Party officials then ‘log-roll’ the separate demands to combine them into a single winning political agenda.

To control the political agenda, this amalgamation of the counterculture must be sufficient to generate a voting majority at the national level after accounting for overlap. Thus, Democratic office seekers must not only appeal to voters in their voting districts. They also must court the national interests of the counterculture which contributes to their campaign coffers. A large majority of congressional Democrats therefore adheres to the same set of political positions, and supports the same interests which promote the agenda. With a few exceptions, Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and in the US Senate vote all issues as a unified party. The same holds in Democratic statehouses around the country.

Chapter 7. A Case Study: US Public Education

The effects of public ownership on SOEs is discussed here with a case study. The question to be considered is ‘how does public ownership impact the cost and output quality of education in the US?’. We consider first primary and secondary education, and then post secondary education.

K-12 Education

In the US, primary and secondary education are predominately delivered by 13,800 school districts at the municipal and county level. Local public schools are organized into individual school districts as branches of local public monopolies. School districts are overseen by local school boards which have wide authority over curriculum, teaching, students, and relations with parents and community. Most school board members are elected by local voters, although some are appointed. A superintendent of schools and staff manages annual operations.

Each school is run by a principal who oversees teachers and a variety of professionals, including psychologists, speech therapists, middle management, nurses, dietitians, and nonprofessionals who manage among others, food preparation, cleaning, maintenance, and security.

States and the Federal government each have a role in providing public school education. The Federal government primarily administers student financial aid programs²⁸. The Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education enforces equal opportunity in the public schools and institutions of higher education. State governments have oversight, regulatory, and leadership responsibilities.

It is possible to make several generalizations about the quality and the quantity of educational services delivered to US school children. First, because attendance is compulsory for most students, schools do not have to compete for their customers. In most instances, families must send their children to the nearest school. Second, schools located in districts where parents have higher incomes and higher levels of education tend to have greater parental support, to be more responsive to parents and to provide better educational services. Housing studies show positive correlation between housing prices and school quality. A third generalization is that school governance and management systems tend to be similar across school districts.

There are also objective measures of educational performance available. Public sources of educational resources and money expended indicate that, nationally, these are neither exorbitant nor restricted. School employment has increased over time proportionately with the economy. Local government employment of primary and secondary school educators in the country has increased by 100%, from 4 million in 1970 to 8 million in 2019, a growth rate comparable to both total private sector employment (up 125%) and government employment (up 77%).

According to a 2018 survey by the OECD, US spending on primary and secondary education was $14,400 per full-time-equivalent student, the fourth highest of reporting counties²⁹. The cost of k-12 public education in real terms, measured as annual expenditures per pupil, has grown by 150% percent from1970 to 2019, only half as fast as the increase of real personal income, which, over the same time period, has increased by 300%³⁰.

The numbers indicate that US public educational resources are on a par with other countries; On average, public schools are neither overfunded nor underfunded. However, they appear to be positively correlated with the socioeconomic characteristics of the local residents.

The educational outcomes produced by public schools are of greater importance than are their resources. Outcomes are not limited to education; they are multidimensional, as many schools run meal programs, provided counseling and psychological support, manage security programs and large real estate portfolios. Of all these activities, only academic performance is broadly measured, and the measures are limited to standardized achievement tests. (Critics argue that standardized exams fail to measure important dimensions of student learning.)

Two tests are widely administered across school districts. The National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP) is administered to students in the US. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), is international, permitting comparison of US students to students in other countries. The overall performance of US schools on the PISA program can be summarized by average scores on reading, mathematics, and science in the US compared to the average for students in the OECD countries. The PISA results for 2018 show that US student scores in all three disciplines are close to the average scores of all OECD country students.

While test score averages are useful for comparing performance across student populations and over time, they are not designed to measure students against a quality standard of performance quality. The PISA results also provide a quality measure. They report top student performers (in one or more subjects, and low performers (in all three subjects). The following figures compare the fraction of US high and low scores against other industrialized countries³¹.

Student Performance Pct. PISA OECD and US

Results of the international PISA tests indicate that US education performs at the average of industrialized countries. In addition, time series of performance indicate that the spread in performance from low achieving students to high achieving students is of long standing.

In other respects, however, generalizations about public schools are difficult, as schools vary across political jurisdictions in size, students, and measured performance. Given the large variety of individual elected officials and governing bodies that deliver public school education in the US, and the specific allocation of responsibility and control over nation’s public schools, it is not surprising that a great deal of controversy swirls around the value of a public school education.

One issue of concern is that student test results differ widely across US school districts. The chart below reports differences in average performance for Detroit, Chicago. Charlotte, and Miami, FL. Such differences in performance may be explained by the different political environments in the four cities, and their impacts on the individual schools and their classrooms.

NAEP Assessment of Student Performanced 2019

As for the educational practices which deliver course content in the US classrooms, most have hardly changed in 100 years. Teachers present the approved material to classrooms of similar-aged students in day-long increments with a break for lunch. While the implementation of “no child left behind” has lowered class sizes somewhat, long-term academic performance has not changed.

There have been significant changes in the role of US public education in US society. These changes stem from the fact that, because public schools are state-owned enterprises, their stakeholders have become dominant factors in determining the content of public school curricula.

Education is a labor intensive activity, and one effect of public ownership has been a growth in the political clout of teachers’ unions. National teachers’ unions are the best funded and most influential public education stakeholders. The largest public school unions are the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. The expressed objective of both organizations is to represent the financial welfare of school teachers as stakeholders. They lobby for higher incomes and for enhanced job security. Teachers unions support the expansion of government’s role in public education as a source of jobs and higher salaries.

Nationwide, teacher pay has not outstripped growth in similar occupations. Total annualized wages, for all private industries in the US for the 1st qtr 2019 were $62,244. By comparison, average annual salaries in 2019 were $68,050 for elementary school teachers and $69,480 for secondary school teachers. Management is higher paid. Educational managers earned $109,400 per year, and the average for all managers nationwide was $131,200³².

The preponderance of evidence indicates that unionization has a moderate impact on teachers salaries, other things constant. Winkler, Scull, and Zeehandelaar show that there are many factors besides collective bargaining itself which impact teacher salaries in the 50 states³³ .

It is a fact, however, that eacher salaries are higher than those paid to less unionized private school teachers. Full-time teachers in public schools earned about 30 percent more annually than private school teachers, which was $46,400, according to a survey from the National Center for Education Statistics in December, 2022^34. Statistics show that teacher pay has not outstripped growth in similar occupations. Total annualized wages, for all private industries in the US for the 1st qtr 2019 were $62,244

Moreover, salaries are higher in school districts which mandate or permit collective bargaining than those in which collective bargaining is not permitted. Teachers unions in many school districts are politically powerful. Annual salaries are much higher than the national average in heavily unionized New York, $89,580, and California, $90,470.

Teachers’ unions defend the public schools from criticism. And unions work to eliminate the competition from private and charter schools. Teachers’ unions are the enemies of a choice of home schools by parents of charter schools, and other, non-public providers of education. Increased competition resulting from private schools reduces the monopoly profits to public school SOEs, and hence the incomes and benefits accruing to public school teachers. Unions coordinate with school administrations, moving union members into management positions, and providing research opportunities for university faculty.

Other changes in public schools are the result of a lack an overall philosophy behind US public education. US Public schools are a legacy of the progressivism of the last century. Ever since the beginning of the post-civil war era in public education, there has been ambiguity about education’s proper role in society and about what its goal should be. The ambiguity is reflected in John Dewey’s foundational book “Education and Society’³⁵. Dewey’s stated goal was to turn out productive members of a progressive society. Dewey did not specify what educational attributes that these progressive citizens would possess. Nor has there been subsequent agreement on or clarification of the objectives of public education. Because public schools lack an overriding primary objective, the nature of public school education has changed.

From the 1950s, as a result of the Cold War, public schools placed an increased emphasis on teaching science and technology. In the 1970s, the introduction of computers and the internet have led educators to include coursework designed to increase interpersonal and communication skills. Traditional civics instruction, which historically dealt with US political system and how the individual student is to be involved with politics, and with the rights and responsibilities of US citizens, and with the political history of the country, has been redefined. The nation’s powerful identity aristocracies have the decline of traditional civics programs to replace civics instruction with narratives of their own design. The new narratives are designed to picture the nation as a battleground of conflicting racial, sexual and gender-based populations.

An instructive example of stakeholder cooperation is the alliance between school teachers unions at the local, state and national levels and civil rights advocates to advance the narratives of the civil rights movement and feminism in both public and private schools nationwide. The national teachers’ unions have taken positive actions in support of critical race theory and the 1619 project. In return the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s movement join public school employee union in opposition to the extension of charter schools. (The NAACP in July 2017 extended its call for a moratorium on charter schools for a second year³⁶.)

Unfortunately, in their zeal to infuse the schools with the ideology of these powerful identity aristocracies, public school systems have failed to defend the professional rights and obligations of teachers. Teachers have been trained in their college studies to impart subject knowledge to their students. Once teachers have mastered the subject matter of course they are teaching, they are quite capable of developing and presenting the subject matter in their classes. But, over time, the delegation of ability to design the curricula has shifted away from teachers. Teachers’ unions have not been able to oppose other stakeholder interests in the choice of form and content of instruction. These functions have been largely taken over by local school boards and administrators who run local school districts, and by school management at the state level with support from education departments in universities, and national education administrators.

Consequently, the prestige and authority of public school teachers has been degraded. The decline in teach authority has been accompanied by an increase in student misbehavior. Disciplinary problems cited by teachers as a major reason that many leave the profession. Public school teachers in many districts have lost the authority to maintain discipline in their classes.

Traditionally discipline had been in the hands of public school teachers. Indeed, prior to the 1960s, it was common for teachers to administer corporal punishment to recalcitrant students. Teachers in many public schools today have no recourse to address profane or violent student behavior. Old ties between students and teachers have loosened. Instead, the student-teacher relationship is controlled by school administrators who are often influenced by identity aristocracies.

The politicization of public school curricula has resulted in increasing conflicts between public school administrations and parents groups. Programs espousing black power narratives and transgender programs in schools have led to conflict between parents and political parties across the nation.

Parents in many school districts are in opposition to their public schools. As an example, consider the venerable national PTA organization, founded in 1897 in Washington, D.C. as the National Congress of Mothers. The Congress’s focus on parents and teachers was clarified in the first 30 years of its existence. In 1908 its importance was recognized in the change of name to the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations.

In 1913 ties were developed with NEA Department of Superintendence (now American Association of School Administrators). In 1924 the name of the organization was changed to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. PTA organizations were established in most states by that time.

Over the past 60 years, public school teachers unions, school administrators and identity aristocracies have combined forces to coopt the national PTA organization. From the 1960s forward, teachers unions and school administrations moved to assert control over the statewide PTA associations, and identity rights advocates have replaced PTA organization influence over school administration and curricula.

The central role of parents in local PTAs has been ceded to school boards and school system administrators. Activities in many local PTAs are restricted to holding ancillary fundraisers. On the issue of private schools, the national PTA parrots the positions of teachers unions. The PTA also supports the curricula sought by the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement.

Partly as a result of these changes, parents have been leaving the PTA associations. National PTA membership more than halved since the 1960s, falling from over 12 million members to around 5 million today. Parents in many school districts have disbanded their PTAs and replaced them with independent organizations. These organizations are referred to as Parent Teacher Organizations (PTOs) ^37,38

What are the overall impacts of governmental ownership and management on public schools? In general school systems appear able to attract adequate resources from their local voters. Teachers’ salaries appear higher in areas where the economic power of stakeholders, especially teachers’ unions, is greater. Curricula are set by professional educators, but also by political interests; identity aristocracies, local, state and Federal governments and social services, and law enforcement organizations. Teachers and parents are no longer adequately represented in the learning process.

ln other respects, public schools have failed to innovate and to adapt to social and economic change. Not low salaries, but school violence and lack of student discipline is driving many teachers out of the profession and taxing administrators.

. Countercultural acceptance of drug use and a loosening of behavioral norms Not have led to increased school violence. Not low salaries, but the lack of student discipline is driving many teachers out of the profession. It is also taxing the ability of school administrators to control student behavior. Threat of violence has led to fenced-off schoolyards, which are now divorced from the neighborhoods they inhabit and from the parents of their students.

Post Secondary Education

Public higher education, state run colleges, junior colleges, and universities, are SOEs. Unlike the public schools, college attendance is voluntary. Indeed students must qualify for attendance, and must contribute financially to their college education. State governments provide the bulk of support financial for higher education. Higher education is the states’ third largest item of general funding.

Federal government support of higher education is primarily financial. Beginning with the GI Bill after WWII, public policy has used Federal support for higher education. Most Federal funding flows through the individual states. Federal dollars support the National Science Foundation, the Veterans Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services in their programs for higher education.

Partly because of governmental financial support, US higher education is recognized internationally for its excellence, and has contributed substantially to the country’s economic growth. An undergraduate college degree today has become the entry to the professions of law, medicine, and technical jobs in engineering, and computer science, artistic ones such as art and music, and careers in the media, finance, and management. It is associated with higher incomes and career advancement.

Private schools and universities are important entities in higher education, but due to their small fraction of national enrollment, they operate within the confines of public finance and public oversight of US higher education. (79% of colleges students attend SOEs) .

The nation devotes 5.4% of national income to higher education, a substantial percentage which is comparable to other high-income countries. Because of this support, higher education has grown in size and importance in terms of employment and cost as well as in the number of college graduates. In 1950 college graduates comprised only 7.3% of the male population, and women college graduates were 5.2% of all women. By 2019 those percentages had risen to 35.5% and 36.6%³⁹.

These gains have been partially effected through changes in the educational process. Class sizes in colleges and universities have increased, aided by the use of televised and computers to expand offerings, and by the employment of adjunct faculty and graduate students to offer classes. There is increased interest in for-profit degree granting institutions, who tailor their education programs for working individuals.

Total spending on US higher education has grown from $23 billion in 1970 to $657 billion in 2019, an annual growth rate of about 6.5%⁴⁰ . Rising expenditures have been reflected in increased costs of a college education, which have exceeded general inflation. Over the past 20 years the US consumer price index has increased 50%. The cost of a private college four year degree, which was $17,938 in 2001, is now $43,775, 144% higher. The in-state cost of a state run institution rose over the same period rose from $3,738 to $13,631, an increase of 264%⁴¹. The difference between the cost of attending a private university and a public one is explained by the fact that state-run higher education has been partially underwritten by state governments and by pu

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blic grants.

In addition to taxpayer support, college expenses are financed through publicly funded student loans, and by tuition paid by students. Student loans are made at risk free rates, and the defaults, which run at 25%, are paid for by the taxpayer. Whether the borrower pays or the taxpayer, student loan monies flow directly into the coffers of universities and colleges to the tune of $100 million per year, to whom they are ultimately an indirect subsidy. (See “The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe” by Josh Mitchell⁴²).

How have education SOEs utilized this massive inflow of resources? Some of the increase in expenditure reflects a growing number of college and university teachers, which has grown more rapidly than total government employment, which in turn has outpaced general inflation. The excess reflects an expanded role for education in today’s society. There were 183,758 college teachers in 1951, 652,517 in 1972, and 1,573,653 in 2019⁴³. The increase from 1972 to 2019 was over 241%. While this number is not strikingly higher than the growth in primary and secondary public school employment, it was noted above that there has been a larger percentage increase in the number of graduates with bachelors degrees.

Much of the rapid increase in the cost of and expenditure on higher education has been incurred partly to support two activities that are not directly related to instruction. The first, academic publishing, stems from the requirement that a teaching position in most four-year colleges and in universities includes, in addition to teaching undergraduates and supervision of candidates for masters degrees and doctorate degrees, the publishing of research in scholarly journals.

Consequently, the demand for publications in which to publish mandatory academic research is high, and it has been answered by a proliferation of journals with ever narrower fields of disciplinary study. Academic publishing in most disciplines does not serve a paying clientele outside of higher education itself. Academic publication is an example of the ways that SOEs often end up generating activities that do not conform to their original missions.

There is more to higher education than teaching students and publishing learned articles. Much increased spending in higher education results from the employment of increasing numbers of non-instructional staff who are devoted to the production and desemination of new information, and who work in labs or in academic study centers. Thus the total increase in employment in higher education is much greater than the increase in the number of instructional staff. For example, 1951, total employment in US colleges and universities was 244,448. By 1972, this number had grown nearly eightfold, to 881,665. In October, 2019, the reported figure was 3,602,258, a fourfold increase over 1972⁴⁴ .

The change reflects a large increase in support staff. The number of non-instructional staff members in higher education in 2019 was over 8 times that in 1970, twice the growth rate of teaching staff. A large fraction of support staff work in independent organizations, or on outside research grants from outside the institution. Funding for academic study centers covers the entire range of academic interests represented in an institution’s faculty departments.

Funds may be built into the university’s budget. Also, study centers have financial grants from nonprofits, still others by private or public donors. Much of the grant money comes from public entities such as other SOEs. And, study centers may earn income for services provided to business, governments, or other academic institutions.

Academic study centers produce much research that is not published in academic journals, but that provides support to projects undertaken by governmental entities and advocacy organizations. Transportation studies, climate studies among other topics, are produced to provide support for public policies and programs. When they are produced at universities, the research results possess an academic imprimatur and are apt to carry additional weight. Political parties and the interests who control them expend vast amounts of effort and money generating information to influence voters, and to attract votes. They value the imprimatur of an academic study.

US identity aristocracies also know this, and eyeing the large increases in resources flowing into higher education, have established themselves as stakeholders, and have moved to access university resources to extend their influence in the greater society. Their influence in higher education dates back to the beginning of the counterculture in the 1960s. The first academic Africana studies program was formed at San Francisco State College in 1968. More than 500 new departments were added in the next few years. The first Women’s’ Study program followed two years later at San Diego State University. The first LGBTQ study followed at the City College of Ss an Francisco in 1986.

US identity aristocracies have fostered new academic disciplines that produce new PhDs who publish in new disciplinary journals, and have trained new cadres of scholars in the disciplines. Identity aristocracies also have an important presence in university administrative affairs. Every US university is subject to the authority of the US Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, and each one has an equal opportunity and affirmative action program.

Quite recently, university equal opportunity offices, academic Africana departments, study centers and research centers have combined, together with university administrators, interested faculty members and student organizations, to implement Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs (DEI).

DEI is an ambitious nationwide project which seeks to refocus the running of nearly all business organizations, and their social behavior and economic rewards systems through the lens of the Civil Rights narratives on race, sex, and gender. Higher education is included on the DEI agenda.

DEI’s methodology redefines diversity, equity and inclusion as required best practices, and establishes the revised definitions as mandatory practices for the academic community. The unspoken objective of DEI is to support affirmative action programs, which have come under criticism as violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Blogs and professional academic organizations network through the internet to make DEI nationwide. When this happens, DEI will put the identity aristocracies in charge of the management of the university’s personnel, replacing policy-making in state government, in university boards of regents, and in university administrations. DEI will increase the status of favored groups, and create an atmosphere where those who disagree with the new order are marginalized.

The DEI agenda places higher education at the vortex of public debate. As higher education has, since the 1970s, become the preserve of the counterculture, it is worthwhile to point to the role that education plays in today’s culture wars.

Chapter 8. Summary

At its outset this essay observed that Americans as a people do not agree on the basic nature of the country in which we live, that we fail to agree on what needs to be done to eliminate the divisions, and that we are divided over many issues that face our nation. Moreover, this study maintains that the US political system is in the grip of powerful interest groups, whose power is exercised through the political system itself.

In Chapter 2 the US is described as a pluralistic representative polyarchy, in which certain groups of voters have succeeded in getting the country’s elected representatives to grant them legal entitlements which are denied to other voters. These groups of voters are referred to interchangeably, as either factions, or, interest groups. They have denied other voters inclusive citizenship, and have therefore violated the democratic process.

Chapter 3 discussed the historic role of aristocracy as a form of governmet. The chapter specified the entitlements which have led to the failure of inclusive citizenship and the ways in which that failure prevents full democracy by denying full citizenship to other voters and broadening the factions’ impacts on governments and the larger society.

Chapter 4 considers the large segment of the US voting public that belongs to one or more of the nations’s identity aristocracies. Preceding generations of each aristocracy were victimized by the voting majority prior to the 1960s. Each subsequently gained approximate social and economic parity through both peaceful and violent protest.

The current strategy of each group is to pursue the narrative of past and present exploitation, and their main political goals are to maintain and extend the entitlements that define them. To this end, identity aristocracies support membership organizations that have secured and preserved political entitlements not available to other voters. Therefore, the other voters now lack inclusive citizenship.

Identity aristocracies have become reactionary. Each harkens to the past in order to secure its future. They claim that the country is hopelessly racist, sexist, and homophobic, and their political stance is outrage, against which there can be no discussion. They have failed to adapt to current political and economic conditions. There are historical instances in which political aristocracies in other societies have protected their entitlements even which it has led to their ultimate destruction.

Chapter 5 discusses a second important source of our societal divisions, the drive by SOE stakeholders to defend and extend their shares of monopoly profits that are generated by public enterprises. SOEs supplant private businesses and earn monopoly profits. Major actors in this endeavor are public employee unions, subsidized businesses, the managers of SOEs and subsidized consumers.

As an example of the importance of the value of SOEs to their stakeholders, Chapter 5 reviewed the societal conflict in the early 1980s when the Thatcher government privatized the UK’s SOEs. In Chapter 7, the education industry was offered as an example of the conflict that can be generated over public monopoly and embedded aristocratic benefits.

Chapter 6 outlined the relationship between organized political factions and the political system. The relationship is a two way street. On one side lie the entitlements which governments provide to the voting factions themselves. On the other side lie the benefits that the political factions provide to the political parties and to their representatives.

It was noted at the beginning of this essay, that there is less communication between the two political parties than in recent memory, and less cooperation. Conflict replaces cooperation when the Democratic Party crafts its annual budget, its political positions, and its economic programs to reward the interests which vote it into power. Political capital and programmatic resources are limited, while the demands for the party’s supporters are vast.

Chapter 6 also summarizes the strategy used by the Democratic Party to broker its various interests and to resolve conflicts among Party voters, who may disagree on individual parts of the Party platform. The major obstacle that the counterculture interests, and hence the Democratic Party, faces, is internal dissent. The largest source of dissent is between liberals, including the stakeholders in SOEs, and progressives. This dissent has become more insistent. It is muted when the party is threatened by its enemy, the Republican Party. It grows as the Republicans are defeated. If the Republican Party were to cease to be a threat to the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party would doubtless splinter into two competing factions.

The economic interests of Chapter 5, which have motivated employees of state owned enterprises to vote for the democratic party, have not changed over time. Nor has the fraction of the electorate which is employed by governments changed significantly over the last 50 years. Meanwhile, the role of the state in economic enterprises has increased steadily over the past 60 years as a result of business regulation and of taxation and subsidies. The growth of SOEs has added to the number of voters whose economic interests align with the Democratic Party. At the same time, it has driven blue collar workers toward the Republican Party andDonald Trump, whose economic policies are more populist in a Jeffersonian sense.

Appenndices

APPENDIX 3-1 Aristocracy and the transition from Feudalism to modern European Liberalism.

Aristocracy has played a central role in the evolution of European societies from feudalism into modern western pluralistic, representative democracies. Francis Fukayama, in his perceptive volume, “The Origins of Political Order”, lists three requirements for a successful modern and democratic society. First the government must have the means to keep order. Second, it must be accountable to the population. That is, if it fails to serve its citizens, there must be redress; a way remove a government if it fails to do so. And finally, the citizenry must be protected by the rule of law.

Fukuyama places hereditary aristocracy in a critical role in the historical development of many European nations. Hereditary aristocracies were replaced, of course, by constitutional and parliamentary democracies. They fell under the assault of common citizens; peaceably in some countries, and through physical force in others.

Fukuyama’s presentation contrasts the ways in which the three estates in European feudalism interacted with the monarch and with each other to produce modern societies. He selects Denmark as an example of a successful modern society. How, he asks, did the Danes achieve modern Denmark?

Fukuyama reviews the ways in which nations succeeded or failed to “Get to Denmark”. The solution, he argues, was to allow the third estate, its commoners, to control the state and hence their own destinies. Part of his discussion of western feudal societies is briefly summarized briefly here.

In Germany and in Russia, the monarch and the aristocracy joined together to suppress the peasantry. In Germany the aristocracy was swept away in WWI. In Russia, violent revolution installed autocrats and a new aristocracy, the communist party.

In Poland, the aristocracy controlled the monarch, and the country was unable to defend itself from its neighbors. It suffered recurrent invasion and foreign domination. In France, the aristocracy gained control of public revenues. The regime of King Louis the 16th was hobbled by insolvency, and anarchy ensued. France experienced violent revolution. The French aristocracy was eliminated. But democratic institutions could not be replaced quickly. Rather, the country was subsequently ruled by the autocrat Napoleon, after which it retreated to monarchy.

England, beginning with the Magna Carta, was able to create a balance of power between its ruler, its aristocracy and its commoners that remained stable as England gradually replaced aristocratic rule with a democracy of individual liberty and, in 1918, a broad right of suffrage. In England, the aristocracy kept the monarch from tyranny, but the monarch was able to provide the basis of civil society by aligning with the church, by supporting towns whose residents were not indentured with the land, and and finally, by establishing broad civil rights for commoners. The result was a parliamentary democracy ruled by ordinary citizens.

APPENDIX 4-1. Two Studies of Racial Wage Inequality.

Consider an academic study, published in 2016 by Hadas Mandeland

Moshe Semyonov ⁴⁶. Their research reports pay gaps for white men and black men and white women and black women over a 40 year period. The study compares racial pay gaps for men and women. In part, the gaps are explained by differences in employment characteristics,. They are reported in Table A4-2 for five decades.

Table A-4.1 Racial Pay Gaps 1980-2010

Source: Going Back in Time? Gender Differences in Trends and Sources of the Racial Pay Gap, 1970 to 2010 Mandel and Semyonov, American Sociological Review, 2016

The explained portion of the gap refers to factors such as age and occupation, that are included in the study. The unexplained portion is due to items not measured in the study, including but not necessarily limited to, racial and sexual wage discrimination.

The results are suggestive. The total measured pay differences for men narrowed since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by about 25% over the study period. The unexplained wage gap, which may be at least partly attributed to racial discrimination, has halved from 22% to 11.4%.

The estimated total wage gap between white and black women is more than halved, and wages for black women rose above white women’s wage in 1980, then rose between 2000 and 2010 to 4.3%.

However, in the Mandel and Semyonov study, individual observations are still defined as members of a larger pool of observed workers. For instance, the study assigns individuals to a 2-digit occupational classification, reported along with other individuals in the same 2-digit occupational classification. And the employee’s location is represented by one of 4 regions, not adjusted for population size of an individual’s residence.

Appendix A4-2. Earnings of Men by Ethnicity. Hilger

Affirmative Action is designed to reduce inequality in occupations and residence. Affirmative action is designed to provide more access to high-earnings jobs, many of which reside in the professions, in science, and in high-tech occupations. The awareness of the importance of occupational differences in explaining the earnings gap induces increased emphasis on affirmative action.

Supporters of affirmative action base their claims for preferential access to education and employment on the existence of white

racism. But reliance on racism for an explanation of occupational differences must explain the earnings performance of US Asians.

Refer back to Chart 4-1. In Chart 4-1, the average median earnings of Asians in years 2000 to 2021 floated 12% above those of whites. What is the meaning of this positive earnings differential?

Note also that median Asian earnings in Chart 4-1 are not reported before 1977. The reason that earlier Asian earnings are not reported is that the Census Bureau changed the definition of Asians. In prior years, Asians had included Hawaiians and American Eskimos.

Asians and native Americans are defined as a separate entity in years after the change. Asians are now defined as those whose ancestors lived in the Asian continent. Fortunately for our understanding of earnings inequality, academic that studies address this issue are available. We may rely on the results of these studies to address the relation of Asian to white earnings.

There is a great deal of historical evidence that Asians were subjected to racial discrimination just as were blacks and hispanics prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Why, then, is there no earnings gap for Asians in the US?

A paper written by Nathaniel Hilger, published as an NBER working paper, was designed to shed light on this very question .Hilger used a 100% sample of the 1940 US Census to link individual records to data sets for white prejudice, test score data, and educational attainment. He generates log estimates of earnings for whites, blacks, asians, and native Americans for census years 1940-2000, for males aged 25-65 in the paper’s table 8a. These data are redrawn here as Chart A4-2.

Chart A4-2 shows higher convergence of whites and Asian incomes than earnings of whites with blacks and native Americans. A difficulty arises because the numbers for Asians mix results for US-native born Asians and immigrant Asians. As Asian immigration was large relative to the native population, the aggregate number does not compare earnings behavior of native US Asians to US whites, blacks and native Americans. Native Asians are the proper group to compare with blacks and whites over the relevant period.

Chart A-4.2 Average Earnings of Men by Ethnicity: Hilger

Table A-4.2

Hilger:Upward Mobility and Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans

Asian Earnings: California Men

Chart A4-3 Annual Earnings of California Born Men 1040-2000

Chart A4-3 shows that the log of California-born Asian earnings converged and surpassed California-born white incomes during the observed period, while those of California-born blacks and native Americans did not.

Hilger also links individual earnings in census years with observations of individual skills, measured by test scores and education. He concludes that lower Asian earnings in 1940 reflected institutional prejudice, while lower black earnings reflected prejudice and lower skills. In subsequent years lessening prejudice was associated with rapidly closing Asian earnings, while lessening prejudice was not associated with a falling earnings gap for blacks.

The difference in an employee’s value to his employer, regardless of race, must come from his or her parents andimmediate family. Families headed by educated persons who take their parental duties seriously are more likely to produce educated children who also take their personal economic success seriously, and are able to achieve it. Data show that Asians outperform all other racial groups in measures of educational attainment.

Despite the declining controlled earnings gap and the earnings experience of Asian Americans, protagonists in civil rights organizations maintain that white supremacy is an existential threat to the country. The FBI has closely monitored white supremacist groups since the early days of Civil Rights movement. The Bureau identifies about 2,500 neo nazis who organize and actively promote a continued ideology. The Bureau estimates the existence of about 4,000 Ku Klux Klan members in the country. Their numbers are dwarfed by the members of civil rights organizations. The NAACP alone has approximately half a million active members nationwide. In short, the political power of the Civil Rights Movement dwarfs that of its remaining opponents.

Chart A4-3 Average Earnings of Men Born in California1940-2000

Footnotes

Footnote 1 “Essays, Second Series,” Ralph Waldo Emerson VII Politics,Page 114. Project Gutenberg Ebook: Essays.

Footnote 2. The Declaration of Independence 1776 ( website(:www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript)

Footnote 3 The Constitution of the United States of America, In Congress 1787 ttps://website: www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/constitution.htm

Footnote 4 “Robert A. Dahl’s Philosophy of Democracy, Exhibited in His Essays”, M. Bailey and D. Braybrooke, Annual Review of Political Science, 6:99-118, June 2003).

Footnote 5 Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition. by Robert A. Dahl Yale University Press. 1997

Footnote 6. Fundamental Rights in a Democratic Order, Robert Dahl. 1997, p. 208.

Footnote 7 Library of Congress Research Guides: “Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History: Federalist Number 10: James Madison, November 22, 1787.

Footnote 8 Library of Congress Research Guides: Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History: Federalist Number 10: James Madison. November 22, 1787 “If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control.”

Footnote 9 ‘Robert A. Dahl’s Philosophy of Democracy, Exhibited in His Essays; Michael Bailey and David Baybrooke, Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 6, 2003 Bailey, pp 99-11

Footnote 10 “Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy”, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. See: Inequality and Tulmultio in Maciavelli’s Aristocratic Republics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), Tejas Parasher, Home Polity Volume 49,Number 1

Footnote 11 “A Montesquieu Dictionary” Aristocracy (fr) David W. Carruthers http://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/137761476/en/

Footnote 12 ‘Spinoza’s Political Philosophy’’ ; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (website: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-political/

Footnote 13 National Congress of Native Americans: (website: https://archive.ncai.org/about-tribes)

Footnote 14 Polyarchy, Pluralism, and Scale, Robert Dahl 1997, p. 121

Footnote 15 Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition, New Haven: Yale University Press. Robert A. Dahl 1971

Footnote 16 “The Trouble with Aristocracy”, Van Wee and Fisher. (website:https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/152420/1/Ch1vanWeesFisher.pdf)

Footnote 17 Political Science: The State Theoretically and Practically Considered, Volume 2 Chapter IV Aristocracy; Scribner, Armstrong and Company 1878 Theodore D. Woolsey, (website: https//archive.org)

Footnote 18 “The Spread of Slavery in the U.S. “ January 2014; Jenny Bourne (website:https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states)

Footnote 19 (The Civil War, a Narrative, 40th Anniversary Edition: Volume 5, Page 37 Shelby Foote

Footnote 20 The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Christopher Caldwell; Simon and Schuster, January 21, 2020.

Footnote 21 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)(website:https://www.bls.gov>oes)

Footnote 22 Median annual earnings by sex, race and Hispanic ethnicity US Department of Labor, Womens Bureau: 1967-2022, (website:https://www.dol.gov>agencies>wb>data>earnings>median-annual-sex-race-hispanic-ethnicity)

Footnote 23 “The State of the Gender Pay Gap in 2021” (website: www.Payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pau-gap)

Footnote 24 “Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap.” Center for American Progress (website: www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020)

Footnote 25 The End of Men and the Rise of Women, Hannah Rosen Penguin Random House, 2012

Footnote 26 National Health Interview Survey: an annual nationally representative survey of approximately 35,000 Americans employment status.

Footnote 27 “Interest groups’ influence on policy comes through the presence of faithful legislative allies – not gifts to their campaigns.” Leslie Finger,

Blog. AMERICAN POLITICS AND POLICY,London School of Economics, Phelan United States Centre; (website:https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/about-usapp/).

Footnote 28 State Departments of Education Role and Function, The US Department of Education, State Governments role. (website: www.Study.com. /academy/lesson/the-state-governments-role-in-public-education. (study.com is a private company offering study programs).

Footnote 29 “American Schools vs. the World: Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math” , Julia Ryan, December 3,l 2013. (See OECD Report, Spending by countries on Education OECD? (website: www.theatlantic/education/)

Footnote 30 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait; National Center for Educational Statistics; Growth in Spending on Public Education (Table 22 : Total and Current Expenditures and Expenditure Per Pupil in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools by Purpose,1869-70 tp 1989-90)

Footnote 31 PISA: Source information on public school achievement test results. (website; www.oecd.library.org/sites/b25ab7e2-en/index.html?itemid=content/component/b) PISA 2018 Results Volume I. What Students Know and can do.

Footnote 32 BLS Occupational and Wage Statistics, May 2022 (source: BLS (website: bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm)

Footnote 33 How Strong are U.S. Teachers Unions? A state by state comparison Winkler, Scull and Zeehandlaar, 2012). )

Footnote 34 Institute of Education Sciences (website: nces.ed.gov/pubs20220/22022113.Summary.pdf) Characteristics of 2020-21 Public and Private K-12 School Teachers in the United States; National Center for Education Statistics.Dec 13, 2022

Footnote 35 John Dewey’ The School and Society THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 1900

Footnote 36 Page 101 NAACP Again Calls for Moratorium on Charter Schools US News and World Report, (website: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/ articles/2017-07-27/naacp-again-calls-for-moratorium-on-charter-schools)\

Footnote 37 (website:https://education.stateunlversity.com/ pages/2286/Natiional-Pta.html//#ixzz7CCwFFVUl)

Footnote 38 “What Does a Parent Teacher Association Do?” US News and World Report, Anayat Durrani, May 23, 2023 (Website:www.usnewss. com/education/what-does-a-parent-teacher-association-do?)

Footnote 39 Statistica: Percent of US Population Who Have Completed Four Years of College. Chart 7.(website:www.statistica.com/statistics /184272/educational-attainment-of-colleges-dip0)

Footnote 40 IES: National Center for Education Statistics: (website: nces.ed.gov/fasstfacts/displlay) Expenditure of public and private colleges and universities in the United States from 1970 to 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Footnote 41 National Center for Education Statistics, Tuition costs of Colleges and Universities, Average’ (website: nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?):

Footnote 42 The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe Josh Mitchell Simon and Schuster 2021

Footnote 43 A retrospective Look at U.S. Education Statistics (website: nces.ed.gov) NCES publication #20220890EV)

Footnote 44 Page 107 ‘3 to 1: “That’s the Best Ratio of Tenure-Track Faculty to Administrators, a Study Concludes” Jenny Rogers, The Chronicle of Higher Education. November 1, 2012

Footnote 45 The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution; Francis Fukuyama, 2012, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux

Footnote 46 “Going Back in Time? Gender Differences in Trends and Sources of the Racial Pay Gap, 1970 to 2010” pp.1039-1068. Mandel and Semyonov, American Sociological Review, 2016

Footnote 47 “Upward Mobility and Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans”; Nathaniel Hilger .Working Paper 22748 (website:http://www.nber.org/papers/w22748)