Shareholder democracy turned out to be a threat to actual democracy.

In 1950, the financial industry accounted for 9 percent of all corporate profits. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, except for a brief downturn during the Great Recession, finance’s annual share of total American profits has hovered at about 30 percent, making it by far the largest industry sector in terms of profits produced.

At the time, about 8 percent of Amherst students were in the low- and lower-middle-class income categories that qualified them for federal aid under the Pell Grant program or similar programs, even though about half of American families fell into that income category.

decline during the Great Recession it has remained at about that level.

Specifically, in 1928, the top 1 percent accounted for 24 percent of all income. In 1970 the one-percenters’ share of the wealth was down to about 9 percent, the result of multiple economic dynamics and government policies, including the New Deal reforms and the post-war growth in the 1950s and 1960s of the country’s manufacturing base and, with it

protected versus the unprotected. Enhancing the common good versus maximizing and protecting the elite winners’ winnings.

A landmark suit brought by consumer rights activist Ralph Nader gave corporations that owned drugstores a First Amendment right to inform consumers by advertising their prices. However, it morphed into a corporate free speech movement that produced one court decision after another allowing unlimited corporate money to overwhelm democratic elections

That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s: The

The protected overmatched, overran, and paralyzed the government.