The book is refreshingly clear, well written, entirely scholarly yet very engaging.
Parenti then goes into how our political system is very much run by and for this tiny owning class and how the rest of us are affected by it. Taking into account their debts and mortgages, 90 percent of American families have little or no net assets." (page 9) True, some 40 percent of families own some stocks or bonds, but almost all of these have total holdings of less than $2,000. The richest 1 percent own 60 percent of all corporate stock and all business assets. The top 10 percent of American households own 98 percent of the tax-exempt state and local bonds, 94 percent of business assets, and 95 percent of the value of all trusts. One of the central facts discussed in the book comes right out of the IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin, 1999-2000: This same ratio applies relatively throughout the remaining chapters. In regard to "credible sources," the first chapter alone of 'Democracy for the Few' refers to mainstream publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post 36 times and judiciously utilizes 14 references from alternative publications such as Multinational Monitor and The Nation whose bias is merely the undoing of the blatant anti-labor, pro-plutocracy bias of the mainstream corporate owned media. The fact that such facts are not discussed in most school textbooks is very much a political issue. The fact that Spiro Agnew resigned in exchange for the dropping of charges of bribery, extortion and income tax evasion is not discredited by evasive angles.
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