This Is The Real Reason People Are So Angry
This election season, Americans are not really mad because of guns or immigrants, they’re mad because they feel like they are falling behind.
People don’t always know the real reason they are angry. Anger is subversive, subconscious. Anger can manifest itself in disproportionate ways that appear to make little sense. Take road rage. There’s no way people are that pissed about traffic. This man ran over a motorcyclist in Florida last week — on purpose! 😦 — and found himself charged with attempted murder. Take away the anger, and I would guess this gent is no killer.
A season of rage
But alas, America is an angry bunch. Racial, class, political, religious and now even transgender tensions divide us, driving fear and hatred, not to mention oh so many murders by firearm.
And then there’s Donald Trump.
Call him what you want, but to millions of people, Trump makes sense. To millions more, he is evil incarnate. You can say his followers are racist, xenophobic, or authoritarian, but you cannot escape this truth: the anger that he has tapped into is real, regardless of Trump. Trump’s just popping the cork.
This Trumpian anger, like road rage, is also misdirected. Sure there are some racists, but not everyone who’s voted for Trump is one. Trump is simply leveraging a classic political strategy: 1) give people someone to blame for their problems, and 2) promise to fix it.
It’s best to take this seriously, because it’s worked before.
But if we go below the surface, is somebody else’s religion or skin color really a reason to get so mad? Let’s take a breath, and take a look at the data.
Income growth is unequally distributed
Economically, things are worse than they used to be for a large number of Americans — and feel increasingly unfair.
During the last 10 economic expansions, the most recent four saw a majority of the growth going to the top 10%. And in our current expansion, ALL of the growth has gone to the top 10%. In fact, the bottom 90% — which includes me, and likely, you — have actually experienced a decline in income growth.
Something to be angry about? You bet. This is the post-partisan truth: since the late 1970s, economic policies have largely benefited the rich.
Real wages aren’t rising fast enough
The long term inflation rate in the United States since 1913 is 3.13%. This means that goods, over time, will cost more on a dollar (“nominal”) basis. Wages must keep up with inflation in order to buy the same things, because a gallon of milk costs more dollars today than it did in 1965.
But that’s not what’s happening. On a nominal basis, wages have gone up 651.2%. On a real basis, wages have only gone up 21.2% in 45 years, which would be fine if bread still cost 20 cents. Perhaps this is the real reason people are so mad: they feel like they are falling behind (because they are!), and it sure is nice to have someone to blame.
Now what
Data tell the story: people are mad for good reason. But their wrath towards immigrants is misdirected. It should be directed at the economic policies (and politicians) that got us here.
An overlooked irony of this election season is that the movements on the left and the right are related: the feeling of falling behind economically, of losing power, of being treated unfairly. Even if their prescriptions differ.
There is no easy way forward, but here’s a start:
1/Recognize the anger is real. They can’t all be racists. They can’t all be illegals. Derogatory expressions against another group solve nothing. Recognize the anger is real, and…
2/Support policy based on data. This means policies that helps the middle-class and lower-income Americans, and addresses the underlying economic issues. Without the middle-class, there’s not enough people to buy stuff. Rich people only need so many pillows.
3/Empathize, just a little. We’re not at war with each other, but we’re acting like it! The real issue is that our 20th century manufacturing economy is in a rough-and-tumble transition to something altogether different for the 21st. Let’s focus our energy on that.
We’re all in the same leaky boat. It’s up to each of us to seek out facts, not rhetoric. With truth, comes understanding, and only then can we make a real difference. This is our chance to decide who we are.
