Michael Dresdale writes wisely about charges of oligarchy in the U.S. A slice:
The danger of the left’s embrace of the oligarchy thesis is that it risks blinding the public to a genuinely valuable aspect of American capitalism. “Oligarchy” does fairly describe many economies, past and present. The Economist’s crony-capitalism index captures the difference: It measures the share of a country’s billionaire wealth drawn from state-dependent, rent-heavy sectors — telecoms, mining, casinos, defense — against the share generated in competitive ones. Unsurprisingly, the 2023 rankings put Putin’s Russia at the top, with crony wealth equal to 19 percent of GDP. In the United States, the figure was 2 percent.
The left blurs this distinction, treating inequality as equally condemnable whether it springs from cronyism or from competition. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) insistence that there is no ethical way to amass a billion dollars underscores the point. Earning a billion dollars — or many times that — by building a company that hundreds of millions of people freely use is a supremely pro-social act. Of course, we can debate in good faith how much a productive billionaire ought to pay in taxes. But our scorn should be reserved for those whose path to wealth runs through a Machiavellian climb into the inner rings of power, only to use that proximity to exploit their fellow citizens rather than serve them.
One of the strongest criticisms of the Trump administration is that it, too, is blurring the lines between these two modes of capitalism through the intense personalization of the executive branch. As the Wall Street Journal has documented, Trump has taken a personal hand in the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approvals, the Federal Trade Commission’s merger reviews, and the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over broadcast licenses. The administration can offer a plausible rationale for any one of these interventions. Cumulatively, though, they leave a different impression — that the administrative state’s technocracy has been restored to a clientelist species of democratic control. Unsurprisingly, spending on lobbying targeting the White House has surged to record levels.
First comes more evidence that the lockdowns driven by teachers unions hurt student learning. Math and reading performance for 13-year-olds stagnated between 2023 and 2025 on the NAEP’s long-term trend assessment—which isn’t the same as the traditional NAEP exam—the Education Department announced Wednesday.
These children were in elementary school when Covid hit. Their scores in both subjects are lower than in 2020, before the pandemic. Some 58% performed at an intermediate level in reading in 2025 compared to 63% in 2020. In math, 70% could do “numerical operations and beginning problem solving” in 2025, down from 79% in 2020. Teachers union chief Randi Weingarten has a lot to answer for.
The news is better for 9-year-olds, who weren’t in school in 2020. Their scores went up from 2022 to 2025 in reading and math. Some 71% demonstrated at least “partially developed” skills in reading and 84% showed “beginning skills” in math in 2025, up from 67% and 80% respectively in 2022. Their reading scores caught up to 2020 levels, though they remain three points lower in math.
It’s notable that much of the 9-year-old rebound came from the lowest-performing students. That could be because the pandemic had “more dire consequences for the lowest scorers,” says Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute. Those consequences aren’t affecting the 2025 cohort.
But the data also add to the evidence of a concerning long-term trend. With the exception of 9-year-old reading, which is about the same, scores for all age groups and subjects are lower than in 2012—including by 15 points in math for 13-year-olds. That comports with declining scores over the past decade on other tests like the traditional NAEP exams and the ACT.
The Journal’s editorial board is right to be wary of Pope Leo XIV’s embrace of government in his new encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Pope Leo’s AI Manifesto,” Review & Outlook, May 28). The Holy Father hasn’t upheld the long papal tradition of rejecting the false binary of the day.
In the 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII railed against certain abuses of industrial capitalism and defended the dignity of workers before turning with equal seriousness to the socialist response then on offer.
Forty years later, Pope Pius XI, in “Quadragesimo Anno,” criticized concentrations of capital amid the widespread destitution during the Great Depression, but he also criticized the totalitarian responses sweeping Europe.
In “Centesimus Annus” in 1991, Pope St. John Paul II named the errors of “real socialism,” and then turned to the potential risks of “a radical capitalistic ideology.”
Pope Leo could have confronted the current false binary of unfettered artificial intelligence versus unfettered government control of this technology. Yet “Magnifica Humanitas” is more likely to encourage those who would stifle progress with state power. As a faithful Catholic, I hope Pope Leo’s next encyclical restores the balance that befits such important moral documents.
Mike Munger tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)
Econs of the Left, 1976: “Socialism is better than Capitalism for Growth!”
Econs of the Left, 2026: “Socialism is bad for growth, and that’s good!”
