The US is more of a corporatocracy, a plutocracy, an oligarchy, or similar but it is not a democracy. The only time we have a voice in politics is if we're voting on silly local ordinances or laws. Most of our state and federal politicians accept money from those with money. Corporate lobbying has its tentacles in everything in our government. There's a reason we have the most imprisoned in the world...prison-for-profit. We've allowed private corporate prisons of which the companies have lobbied in Washington for stiffer penalties. They don't make money from vacant prisons. They also make money from the phone card scams in those prisons, charging obscene amounts of money for those people to call family or friends. The prison system is deliberately set up to ensure most of them eventually go back, from the probation system to solitary confinement. It's not for rehabilitation whatsoever, like the places you'd see in Sweden and elsewhere. Once a felon, it's hard to find work (everyone does a background check for work in the States), they resort to stealing again, et cetera. It's designed for people to fail.

That's just the prison system.

Whatever you can say about the US, it is not a democracy and the people have no voice. I'm surprised we even scored as high 76 on the Corruption Perceptions Index.