“WINTERS: Yeah, you know, its current interpretation in the United States is quite negative. I teach a course at Northwestern and on the very first day of this oligarchs and elites course, some years ago, one of the students said, Russia has oligarchs and the United States has rich people. And there was this sort of interpretation, right? But it turns out, the word has a lineage that goes back more than 2,500 years. And the meaning is simply persons who are super powerful because they are super wealthy. And it is the use of wealth power as political influence that has always defined oligarchs throughout history.”

'Oligarchy' is being used more to describe American society. We ask one professor why

“In the simplest of terms, oligarchy attempts to explain the convergence of economic and political power.”

Defining Oligarchy: The Fusion of Wealth and Power in American Democracy