On Conspiracy Theories

 (Originally published 6 November 2010 on Facebook Notes.)

I used to think that a conspiracy to seriously screw with the American economy would take an impossibly large broad-based conspiracy, but I've rethought that.  After looking at the relative distribution of wealth in the US today I think such a conspiracy would not necessarily need to be all that broad-based. 

 

Wealth in the US is overwhelmingly concentrated at the top.  Depending on who you ask and what criteria you look at, the top 10% own somewhere between 70% and 80% of the nation's wealth.  Going further to the top, the top 1% owns around 40% of the nation's wealth.  As you go further toward the top the relative share of the wealth gets greater.  The top .001%, around 3100 people, own a whopping 15% of the nation's wealth. 

 

Because of this greatly unequal distribution of wealth, it would only take an actual "conspiracy" of a couple of dozen people at the very tippy top, with the cooperation, knowing or unknowning, of a couple of hundred more slightly lower down, to have enough influence to seriously monkey with the economy. 

 

That, scarily enough, begins to reach the realm of plausibility. 

 

Is it actually happening?  I can't begin to tell you.  But notice this: After the Republican wave of the last election, when Republicans have taken more power than they've had in the past century, economic indicators are already on the uptick, even though the Republicans have not yet taken power, and have not yet changed one smidgin of government policy.  And those movers and shakers up there in the top .001% are almost entirely Republican.  Is that a coincidence?  I'll leave that decision as an exercise for the reader.