How to Use plutocracy in a Sentence

plutocracy

noun
  • If only the wealthy can afford to run for public office, are we more a plutocracy than a democracy?
  • Some of these cities are becoming hubs of the global plutocracy.
    Emily Matchar, Smithsonian, 28 Apr. 2017
  • But in this case the opacity is obscuring the rise of a new American plutocracy.
    Dana Milbank, The Denver Post, 18 Apr. 2017
  • But the MID isn’t just a symbol of housing policy falling prey to plutocracy.
    Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 14 May 2017
  • In recent decades, as the stock market has soared, the vast fortunes amassed by some members of the plutocracy have largely escaped taxation.
    John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 8 June 2021
  • The Roosevelts saved America from plutocracy and created a golden age for the middle class.
    Robert D. Atkinson, The New Republic, 4 May 2018
  • And there are those who believe plutocracy is nothing new; America has always been ruled by an elite class, but through the decades she has marched, slow and steady, toward inclusiveness.
    Time, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Even fiscal policy, or the deficit spending favored by the left, has at least the indirect effect of promoting a plutocracy.
    Thomas Geoghegan, The New Republic, 18 Nov. 2020
  • But, almost as if to assist the cause, the plutes seemed this year to put on an extended exhibit of performance art whose plain, if unstated, thesis is that plutocracy is maybe a bad idea.
    Anand Giridharadas, Time, 21 Nov. 2019
  • The battle against plutocracy isn’t going to be won in a single piece of legislation, certainly not one against which Manchin and Sinema hold an effective veto.
    John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 2021
  • Mueller’s father was an executive at DuPont, part of a family firmly planted in the country’s plutocracy.
    Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2018
  • Inequality is one of the biggest barriers to a functioning democracy: To turn around a slide into plutocracy, Democrats need to address the fact that two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now.
    Clio Chang, The New Republic, 9 Jan. 2021
  • Once before, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, similar rhetoric about the dangers of plutocracy helped cement a Democratic majority that endured for decades.
    Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr. 2021
  • Within 40 years, California had created a new plutocracy of Eloi, whose wealth exempted them from all worries about the mundane problems of the distant and despised Morlock others.
    Victor Davis Hanson, Arkansas Online, 13 Sep. 2021
  • This odious walled vertical suburb is a civic embarrassment, the embodiment of a runaway plutocracy that places its own interests over the commonweal — and common decency.
    Mark Lamster, Dallas News, 18 Dec. 2020
  • Disturbed by vanishing jobs, rising plutocracies, melting polar ice caps, not to mention numerous other serious threats to a good night's sleep and a reasonable life for future generations?
    Deanna Isaacs, Chicago Reader, 22 June 2017
  • That way lies straightforward plutocracy, as those familiar with European social history will know.
    Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 4 Aug. 2020
  • Before stadium building became another heartless money grab for the American plutocracy, Roy Hofheinz’s Astrodome was a genuine source of civic pride and national curiosity.
    The Si Staff, SI.com, 28 Aug. 2019
  • Bestselling books predicted dystopian outcomes in which society split into a wealthy, robot-owning plutocracy and an unemployed underclass, and repressive governments would be needed to rein in social discontent.
    The Economist, 6 July 2019
  • Properly enforced and supported by other measures, such as meaningful campaign-finance reform and an effective antitrust policy, the new tax could help reverse America’s descent into plutocracy.
    John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2019
  • The term populist plutocracy might more accurately describe American politics today.
    Robert O. Paxton, Slate Magazine, 6 Apr. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'plutocracy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: