It's an obscene, dangerous amount of power for one person/family.
There's a huge amount of blame to be had for overall culture in the United States largely perpetuated by the larger Wall Street network and policy regime. It's pretty much a Capital Bro Cult.
Never before in all of human history have such a small handful of people had access to such an acute and voluminous propaganda machine. You could almost, ya know, make people vote against their own interest over and over and over and over.
"Trickle down economics, my boy!" - "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" - "Greed is good, don't you know!?"
More people really, really, really need to be aware of this: if someone owns stock in a company or has a pension/retirement fund, they - in fact - DO NOT actually own those shares (i.e. they are, unequivocally, not in their own name), contrary to popular and widespread belief. This is tangentially related to the "free trades" you get at brokerages now when buying/selling stocks.
Cede technically owns substantially all of the publicly issued stock in the United States.[2] Thus, investors do not themselves hold direct property rights in stock, but rather have contractual rights that are part of a chain of contractual rights involving Cede.
Furthermore and more importantly, those shares are are, very, very, very, very likely, being used against you in convoluted derivative schemes (similar to 2008 Housing Derivative Meltdown; same deal, different financial instruments) andor actual non-delivery and ownership of shares made possible through aforementioned Wall Street lobbying and associated loopholes.
Importantly, combine not actually owning shares with something called Payment-for-Order-Flow (see: "How Redditors Exposed the Stock Market" | The Problem with Jon Stewart - timestamped to relevant portion) and, subsequently, with stock lending and something called a Failure-to-Deliver, it's truly not an exaggeration to say that there's a network of drunk, coked out Wall Street psychopaths skimming off the top billions and billions of dollars that should be going to the middle and lower classes.
Payment-for-Order-Flow is illegal in Canada, the U.K, Australia, and Europe - because it's exceedingly easy to commit fraud under such a system. Singapore recently announced they'll be banning it, as well, in early 2023.
Big surprise - it's legal in the U.S. Furthermore, it was invented by Bernie Madoff, too.
For what it's worth and a form of defense, this video may be of interest to some - give it a chance, it's pretty good - and this website provides clear direction and guidance on what we can do to hold some of these practices and, maybe, people accountable.