Have you ever watched the TV show Undercover Boss? Here’s the premise. The CEO of some big company — it has to be big enough that the rank and file workers wouldn’t recognize the head honcho if they met him (and it’s nearly always “him”) — beams down to spend a few days incognito among the “little people”. He quickly finds himself out of his depth, struggling to keep up with the minimum wage and entry level workers whose hard labor makes him a millionaire. They cover for him, while wondering if he has any experience at all in the industry. During breaks, they spill their hearts out about illness, unaffordable health care, crushing student debt, and other problems of the 99%.

After a few days of this routine, Boss Man beams back up to corporate HQ, summons the four or five people he has interacted with during the week, and does the big reveal. Even though the series has been running for several years now, and the cover story involving a fake documentary is wearing pretty thin, people are always shocked and surprised that the new guy who bumbled his way through the workday alongside them is actually “Undercover Boss”.

If the chosen few are lucky, the CEO showers them with favors. A promotion to manager. Debt paid off. Prime tickets to a football game. A dream vacation. In one episode, a young man from Pakistan — who hoped to save enough money from working the night shift at 7–11 to go to medical school, then return to Pakistan and open a clinic for the poor — was bought off with a managership so that he would continue slaving away selling gas, jerky and slurpies.

Meanwhile, of course, thousands of equally deserving employees continue to toil away in obscurity, because they were never noticed. They weren’t lucky — their number didn’t come up when Undercover Boss came calling.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, this is kind of a metaphor for American democracy, isn’t it? Consider how over a fifth of Americans, and almost two fifths of those with incomes below $25,000, are counting on the lottery to fund their retirement. (PDF) Personally, I lost all interest in playing the lottery when I had this sudden realization:

That is to say, zero.

Let’s face it, the American Dream has become a cruel joke. If you’re born into the 99%, you are increasingly unlikely to achieve financial independence in your lifetime. You have to keep working to make someone else rich until you die, or suffer some illness or accident that bankrupts you.

There is another model for a successful, prosperous democracy. A type of society which recognizes that those who create the wealth by their hard work have a right to share in its benefits. Where access to education and healthcare is universal instead of being doled out to the privileged few who can afford it.

Countries that embrace this model aren’t third-world hellholes — they are thriving, highly developed countries with some of the happiest citizens in the world. Their workers aren’t lazy — they are just as productive per hour worked as American corporate slaves. But they have the security of knowing that an illness or injury won’t rob them of everything they have and dump them on the street.

This model is called social democracy.

For decades, the wealthiest 1% in the US has played a con game on the rest of us, getting us to freak out at the word “socialism”. Bernie Sanders, the self-identified democratic socialist, shouldn’t have a chance. And yet the huge interest in his campaign, the enormous crowds at his rallies, the flood of small donations amassing together to amounts that rival the sums invested by Super PACs, show that the con game is no longer working so reliably.

Jackpot democracy has had its day, and more and more people are refusing to accept its fruits: massive and growing wealth inequality, unfairness and injustice. It’s time to tell the real “Undercover Bosses” — the Koch Brothers and the other plutocrats who have turned One Person One Vote into One Dollar One Vote and corrupted our democracy — “You’re fired!”