In teaching political science courses in American government, public policy, and public administration, students have considerable difficulty in conceptualizing the complexity of the two essential values of democratic capitalism.

Those values are equality, espousing the values of democracy, and efficiency, depicting the rationale of capitalism.

The purpose of this brief essay is to conceptualize more clearly the setting of the infrastructure of public and private relations in the United States. These clusters of power and influence will enable students to comprehend more easily the dynamics of political economy in the United States.