Tag: justified

President Joe Biden’s farewell address included a stark warning about the danger of what he called abuses by the ultra-wealthy, particularly what he called the “tech-industrial complex.”

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” he said Wednesday night.

“I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well,” he said.

Biden’s remarks came as President-elect Donald Trump has strengthened his ties with Big Tech executives such as Elon Musk, co-chair of his outside-government commission to recommend spending cuts, as well as with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Trump has invited all three of the powerful CEOs to his Monday swearing-in ceremony, now moved to be inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Historians and economic experts told ABC News that Biden’s warning echoes a long-building problem that people on both sides of the aisle are already sensing.

“When you have the three richest men in the country on the dais … you cannot overlook how much influence the billionaire has on the government,” Sarah Anderson, global economy project director for the non-profit research group Institute for Policy Studies, told ABC News.

While it is too early to determine how the public will respond to Biden’s warning, the experts who spoke with ABC News contended that history has shown that Americans have traditionally pushed back against oligarchies, and in some instances, businesses have been forced to scale back their influence with government and political leaders to escape economic consequences.

Turbocharged oligarchy

Daniel Kinderman, associate professor of political science at the University of Delaware who has researched how businesses respond to right-wing populism, said current income inequality in the United States constitutes “oligarchic conditions.”

“Since the late 2000s, the top 1% of Americans, roughly 3 million people, have owned upwards of one-third of the wealth and capital in our country. It’s now about 35%. The bottom 50% of Americans, which is about 150 million people, own about 1.5% of wealth,” he said.

Biden likened the current situation to the “robber barons” and industrial monopolies of the 19th century. Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other leaders on Capitol Hill have welcomed the alliances with the tech CEOs, particularly Musk, contending that their ideas will help to make the government more “efficient.”

While acknowledging the corporate elite has always influenced government, Kinderman noted that the country is now in uncharted territory because the current top CEOs have more control over the public discourse.

“There is a sense in the business community that there should be efficiency and that the government should have that same goal,” he said. “There definitely is a role there for [the CEOs], but what you don’t want is for them to write their own rules that just benefit their own industry.”

Musk and Zuckerberg have scaled back and removed content moderation tools against misinformation on their social media sites X and Facebook following criticism from Trump, who was banned from their platforms after the Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capitol.

In recent interviews, they have also expressed more conservative viewpoints.

Bezos and other CEOs have come under fire for removing DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — initiatives, a target of conservative scorn.

“This is oligarchy 2.0,” Kinderman said. “It’s kind of a turbocharged technological oligarchy that has control over media and technology.”

Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News that Musk’s deep involvement with Trump, from the campaign trail to his appointment to DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the outside advisory board aimed at cutting government waste, has been largely unprecedented.

The fate of government agencies and billions in spending could be in the hands of Musk and fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, he noted.

“This goes beyond influence, this is close control to government matters to someone who wasn’t elected,” Hanson said.

Hanson and the other experts warned that the consequences are not going unnoticed, especially among those who voted for Trump.

Public pushback inevitable

While Trump and the tech CEOs have not immediately responded to Biden’s speech and warning, early search data indicate it has sparked interest in oligarchies.

Google searches for the term oligarchy rose sharply after Biden’s speech and have remained higher than usual throughout the week, according to data from the search engine.

Eight of the 10 states that saw the most rise in searches for oligarchy as of Friday afternoon were Republican “red” states, including Wyoming, Arizona and Oklahoma, according to Google data.

“It has gotten some attention across the political spectrum,” Kinderman said of Biden’s warning. “It could have a bit of an impact especially if things move in a direction that a lot of Americans perceive as problematic.”

Hanson agreed, noting that exit polling has shown many people who voted for Trump said they were most concerned about the cost of living and income inequality. Candidate Trump cast himself as the champion of the working class.

“There are a lot of people who voted for Trump feeling the economy was better under his first term, and they will feel alienated by his allegiances,” he said. “If he continues his policies from the first administration that don’t tackle inflation and benefit the CEO class, people will notice.”

New labor movement?

During his speech, Biden noted that Americans stood up to oligarchs in the past by rising up and forming labor unions.

“They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy … play by the rules everybody else had to. Workers won rights to earn their fair share,” he said.

Anderson predicted similar pushback not only when it comes to organized labor movements, which she said have grown and gained support in the last few years, but also in consumer choices, something that could hurt the CEOs’ companies.

She noted that over 250,000 people ended their Washington Post subscriptions after Bezos vetoed the paper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Millions of social media users have fled Meta platforms and X for other social media sites since they rolled back their content moderation policies, according to Anderson.

“There is an aura around these billionaires, and when people connect the power of these oligarchs to the harmful impacts on everyday lives, people will change quickly,” she said.

How long will this alliance last?

Kinderman said the real test will come if Trump or Republican congressional leaders cross ethical lines that are perceived to harm the public. He noted that CEOs, including Musk, and businesses backed out of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum in 2017 after he left the Paris climate agreement and after Trump’s comments following the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.

“It’s anyone’s guess really, but will the administration’s agenda clash with some powerful American business interests? It’s quite radical, so I think it almost certainly will,” Kinderman said. “The new oligarchs are in a strong position, and they seem to be allied with Trump, but that alliance could break.”