The Amercan Oligarch Soft Coup That Doubled Their Wealth

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected he instituted the New Deal which included Social Security, and that made American Oligarchs like the Rockefeller, DuPont, and Pew families jealous of their counterparts in Europe that lived in Fascist countries and didn't have to share the wealth with peasants, so they launched what is known as the Business Plot to overthrow Roosevelt and his New Deal. They asked Major General Smedley Butler to lead a coup backed by the Army Reservists at least three times in the first year of FDR's presidency, but he refused and testified about the Business Plot before Congress in 1934. Though they failed to have an official coup, after FDR died in 1945 the American Oligarchs pulled off a soft coup by gaining control over both political parties and all US media. They created term limits, destroyed unions with "right to work" laws, and outsourced American jobs, which doubled the wealth of the top 1% from 10% to 21% of everything in America over the next 80 years, while union membership plummeted from 33% of all workers down to under 10%.

FDR’s New Deal strengthened unions to win cost-of-living raises, breaks, and safer workplaces, by 1945 (the year of FDR’s death) union membership peaked at 33% of the workforce. A 1968 National Institute of Education study found that when more than 25% of an industry was unionized even non-union workers earned 10% -15% higher wages as employers offered similar pay and benefits just to avoid a union forming in their business. Only 2 years after FDR’s death the American Oligarchs behind the Business Plot pushed through the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, paid for by DuPont and Rockefeller through the National Association of Manufacturers. The act banned closed union shops and enabled “Right to Work” laws, allowing workers to skip union dues while benefiting from contracts. In 1951 term limits for president were established in order to avoid having to deal with another FDR for multiple terms that would actually try to help the American people.

By 1955, 12 states had adopted Right to Work laws, backed by roughly $10 million in today's dollars from DuPont, Rockefeller, and others via the National Right to Work Committee. If given the chance about 3.5% of people in a Union Shop will stop paying Union Dues, and so Union membership fell to 23% by 1972, below the 25% tipping point which wiped out the non-union wage bonuses and allowed the American Oligarchs to keep the extra 10% - 15% instead of the workers. In the 1970s my father was chief union negotiator for his teachers union, and I remember him talking about COLA, which is when I learned that an automatic raise tied to inflation is called a Cost Of Living Adjustment or COLA.

After World War II the American Oligarchs shifted chemical and plastics manufacturing from sour crude feedstocks to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, using $4 billion in U.S. aid and Chase loans from 1945 to 1970 to build the factories. Then NAFTA in 1994 and China’s WTO entry in 2001 were the final nails in the coffin, stripping away millions of union jobs. Manufacturing employment plummeted, leaving 129 million American workers without raises tied to inflation or COLA in 2025. Post pandemic inflation totalled 20% in a little over 3 years and 90% of all American workers got no COLA, leaving them only 1 choice, either go into debt or quit for better pay somewhere else which leads to an unstable workforce.

But in 2015 everything changed, Donald Trump announced his run for president, and as soon as it looked like it was going to be successful all of the media on all sides and everyone moved against him, even neutral media became anti-Trump which made it clear that the American Oligarchs were afraid of him, he was another billionaire like them, but his family didn't participate in the Business Plot, so not all billionaires are oligarchs. Trump's 2018 steel tariffs at 25% added 400,000 jobs for United Steelworkers per Bureau of Labor. And Trump’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund is being funded by tariffs in his second term, and will be managed by experienced fund managers, and is designed to replace Income Taxes entirely. And his One Big Beautiful Bill eliminates taxes on tips and overtime, which both help the working class, not the oligarchs.

Trump is patriotic, the American Oligarchs are not patriotic, in fact no oligarchs are patriotic, they're only interested in big yachts and being able to show off their yacht when they go to some harbor like in the Dominican Republic. Trump is a patriot and took out a full page ad in I believe it was the New York Times when NAFTA was going through with the same rhetoric and language he uses now, "this is a bad plan, it's going to lose American jobs, and destroy unions," all of which was true. Trump has been opposed to the American Oligarchs his entire life, but because they were able to set term limits after FDR, and they were able to manipulate almost all of the media they broke up Trump's terms, which is okay, he'll have four years now to really enact things. But then it will be for sure back to American Oligarchs controlling everything, unless Trump is allowed more terms.

At the beginning of FDR's presidency the top 1 percent’s wealth hovered around 10% but more than doubled to 21% by 2025, which is valued at $45 trillion, meaning they stole over 21 trillion dollars from American workers over the last 80 years. How? Well if you look at what the average worker made in 1972, "according to CNBC, American workers earned an average of $27.45 per hour in June 2022. Back in 1972, the same workers made an average of $3.88 an hour," and if you account for inflation that comes out to only 12 cents more an hour than in 1972. So none of the last half century of manufacturing innovations including robots, computer aided design, the internet, and AI have benefitted modern workers at all, at the end of a half century of modernization workers only get paid 12 cents more per hour adjusted for inflation, and because less than 10% of Americans now belong to a union there are ever increasing reports of workplace injuries. Astonishing what a loss of unions will do.

Note that I am not citing the Pew Charitable Trust, because it is funded by the same Pew family that tried to overthrow FDR, and their main means of control is by asking questions about public opinion, like do you approve of unions, have mixed feelings, or do you disapprove of unions? This allows them to steer public opinion about unions, and they are the only source for polls about race, unions, and all the topics the American Oligarchs like to control. By 2024 3/4 of all Democrats still supported unions, but 2/3 of all Republicans now have a "negative view" of unions, and in total now only 55% of Americans favor unions, while 40% "disapprove" of them, which is all drawn from Pew data, making the Pew Charitable Trust the key to the entire Soft Coup over the last 80 years.