Who benefits from a discredited and dysfunctional government?
Profiteering corporations that would like not to be regulated. For example,

* profiteering corporations that would increase profits by dumping toxic waste into rivers and streams, the ocean, the air, the soil.
* profiteering corporations that would jam toxic chemicals into the earth and ground water to unlock natural gas – for profit.
* profiteering corporations that would increase profits by endangering their workers – mine operators, for example.
* profiteering corporations that would increase profits through predatory lending.
* profiteering corporations that would increase profits by using tricky and complicated contracts.
* profiteering corporations that would increase profits by selling low quality food-like products that cause chronic illness.
(This is certainly not the complete list).

Who profits from paying bribes (and rewards) to politicians?
All those corporations that enjoy weakened or non-enforced regulations.
All those corporations that receive subsidies and targeted tax breaks – corporate jets, oil companies, corporate farms, etc.

Who would benefit from privatizing social security?
Financial institutions and profiteering brokerage houses.

Who would benefit from killing social security?
All those companies that have to pay the employer’s share.

Who would benefit from raising the age of Medicare eligibility?
Profiteering medical insurance companies.

Who benefits from killing city services?
Big money investors who would like to profit from owning cities and city services.
Having had ever increasing amounts of money rolling in for 30 years, they now have more money than they know what to do with. They need to find someplace to invest it.

Who benefits from tax system loop holes?
Wealthy persons who can afford clever lawyers.

And this!

Why did the debt ceiling debate produce so much dysfunction? It was the intransigence of corporate originated Tea Parties and corporate owned Republicans. The downgrade of U.S. Treasury bonds increases the relative desirability of corporate bonds.