"The basic question: Who's in charge around here? The basic answer, according to their data analysis: The people with the money. "

The next question is: When and where has that not been true?

I'm of the opinion that it has always been true for America/USA. Although I'm willing to be wrong.
It would be nice to have a compendium of what parts of the world, and periods of history, where the power elites (kings, warlords, wealthy merchants, bankers) have NOT been in charge. And a description of what those places were like. You know, for anthropological reasons.

No real change here. America obviously has never been a democracy. It is a republic, and its representatives have rarely represented all of its people. Since the founding of the republic, those represented have generally consisted of wealthy white men.

LOLigarchy

The US has never been a democracy.

It is a Constitutional Republic. Hence, it doesn't matter who does the voting, because all must live under the same Rule of Law as established in the Constitution.

Unlike a Democracy, where all activities are governed, and hence each person demands a say, in America we have a private, non-governmental sector where government has no say. In theory this is where the majority of our daily lives are lived, outside the sphere of governmental influence.

oh fer cryin' out loud. I wish more people would read the details of studies, and take some time to understand statistics and what R-squared means.
that Princeton paper didn't prove anything. the highest R-sq was 0.07, so they couldn't find *any* significant correlation between "preferences of the elite" and "policy outcomes".
granted, it does not disprove the oligarchy claim, and you can continue to believe what you want, but the paper proves nothing.

If he was hanging around anarchist circles in Montreal, it's very likely it's other anarchists who jumped him and called him an American Faggot.