plutonomy means the study of the production and distribution of wealth, or a society seen as dominated by such concerns. It carries an Arena rating of 1297, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, plutonomy ranks #1,020 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,245 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say, #5,522 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #6,052 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words.
Why “plutonomy” is a great word
The study of the production and distribution of wealth, or a society dominated by such concerns. From the combining form pluto- (from Greek ploutos, "wealth") and -nomy (from Greek -nomia, "management, law"), coined in 1851 by John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow. Unlike economics, the broad social science of scarcity and choice, or plutocracy, the explicit rule by the rich, plutonomy isolates the cold machinery of wealth itself—how it concentrates, circulates, and commands. It is the gilded elevator that bypasses every floor, the policy crafted in boardrooms that echoes in empty kitchens, the particular silence that falls when money answers questions before they are asked—a world so perfectly arranged around capital that its logic feels like nature.
Etymology
From pluto- + -nomy. Google’s n-gram search suggests the Plutonomy was coined in late 1800s. References to the term using n-gram can be found in books as early as 1851, in a book written by John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow titled “Christian Socialism and Its opponents”, where it was used in the context of wealth. In modern use popularized by Ajay Kapur in a series of papers published during his tenure as Citigroup’s global strategist.
noun
- The study of the production and distribution of wealth, or a society seen as dominated by such concerns.e.g.“On this side it [Socialism] is a crude compromise between the claims of labour and of capital — the hybrid child of Plutonomy and Communism.” — 1866, Frederic Harrison, “Industrial Co-operation”, in The Fortnightly Review, volume III, page 499:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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