Matt Stroller at Naked Capitalist asks whether the United States is gradually transforming into a resource extraction economy with a more oligarchic political structure, and presents some compelling charts on changes in investment spending since the Clinton administration to support the case for.
According to Stroller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, “if American politics seems more and more oligarchical, that’s because the American political system is beginning to reflect the Middle Eastern oil states its economic investment implies it should.”
Since the Clinton administration, when manufacturing and hi-tech products and mining were at parity in terms of investment, extractive industries have continued to boom while technology investment has dipped.
