14 hours Ago
Much has been written already since the election about the lack of qualifications of many of Trump’s picks for important cabinet positions. Individuals such as Pete Hegseth , Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Kash Patel have all been rightly singled out for not possessing the requisite experience and expertise to serve in the role for which they were nominated.
Hegseth, for example, has never led an organization anywhere near as large and complex as the United States military and his stint at the helm of a couple of small non-profit veteran organizations did not end well. However, relatively little attention has been given to another troubling issue—the fact that so many of the people that President-elect Trump has indicated he intends to nominate for cabinet positions are billionaires—one that raises conflict-of-interest and other ethical concerns. Among the class of billionaires is hedge fund mogul Scott Bessent for treasury secretary, Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick for commerce, WWE CEO Linda McMahon for education secretary, and Doug Burgum for interior.
According to some reports, at least half of Trump’s picks for his incoming administration are either confirmed billionaires or widely speculated to be. Numerous other picks are considered multimillionaires. On top of all the billionaires and millionaires tapped to serve in the second Trump administration, we should also mention that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy have been hand-picked by the president-elect to head up the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In light of President-elect Trump’s picks to serve in his cabinet and the advisors he has surrounded himself with, the incoming administration can legitimately be called a government of the wealthy, also known as plutocracy. Yet what is the problem with the rule of the wealthy? Why is turning American democracy into a plutocracy so troubling? The problem with plutocracy is that billionaires are typically removed from the struggles of working- and middle-class citizens, ordinary folks who share neither the goals nor system of values of the ultrawealthy. For instance, according to widespread reports, DOGE, the task force headed by Musk and Ramaswamy, is assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs, and slash federal regulation.
We should be clear-eyed that the workers that will be terminated on Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s watch will not come from the rich and that the federal programs they will seek to trim—like social security, Medicare, and Medicaid—will impact mostly working class Americans, the vulnerable, and the poor. The selection of a billionaire, Scott Bessent, to serve as treasury secretary suggests that Trump will likely follow through with his plan to extend his 2017 tax cut, which disproportionally benefited corporations and wealthy individuals like Bessent. Likewise, given Howard Lutnick’s connections to Wall Street, the President-elect’s pick to become the next commerce secretary will probably not be able to dissuade Trump from following through with his threats to impose significant tariffs on countries like China and Mexico .
Many experts believe that Trump’s tariff policy will raise prices for Americans and will have an overall negative impact on the economy. It is hard to see how the interests of the tens of millions of working-class Americans who voted for Trump to be the next president coincide with those of the roster of billionaires that he has assembled to lead this country. How does weakening the regulations on banks or on stock market trading benefit ordinary citizens? How does cutting the federal workforce or opposing an increase to the minimum wage help Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make ends meet? Such proposed initiatives will largely benefit the class of billionaires and millionaires that Trump has aligned himself with and selected to lead his administration while hurting the rest of the citizens of this country.
Perhaps the biggest problem with embracing a plutocratic form of government is that it reinforces the cynical view that American democracy is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful and that ordinary citizens can do little to change the status quo. The merging of wealth and power—greatly exacerbated by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that enabled corporations to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—will now be fully realized in the next Trump administration. When billionaires and millionaires are selected to head some of the most consequential branches of the United States government, then we should be concerned that the common good like public education and healthcare will suffer.
When the ultrarich like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are making huge donations in order to receive a seat at the table of the next president, then we can be sure that there will not be seats left for the rest of us. When an incoming president solicits influence from the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the country, then the institutions that support our democracy like the judicial system and free press need to be extra vigilant. Welcome to American plutocracy.
Mordechai Gordon is a professor of education in the school of Education at Quinnipiac University.
