Losing the Fight for a Better Life
How right-wing politics in the U.S. are squeezing people's future
I have been participating in a book club reviewing the 2022 book by renowned French economist Thomas Piketty -- [A Brief History of Equality - by Piketty, Thomas, Rendall, Steven. 2022] -- that was organized by Professor Dan Allosso, another Substack contributor. My postings here are an edited, updated and expanded version of mine there. Eventually, those will be made public in complete form, within the Obsidian app format.
In the book, Piketty outlines the narrowing spread between the wealthy and the poor in the United States, and the growth of the middle class, from 1940 to 1980. But this improvement has reversed since 1980, and is becoming progressively worse, nearly regaining the inequalities of 1940 and earlier times.
Some say that it is a natural result of globalization and free markets. While not discounting those factors, Piketty puts the causes clearly on ideology and politics.
"You write that inequality is not the result of economics or technological change, but is rooted in ideology and politics" says a Harvard Gazette interviewer of Thomas Piketty, in [Piketty’s new book explores how economic inequality is perpetuated – Harvard Gazette], about his book, [Capital and Ideology : Piketty, Thomas, Goldhammer, Arthur: 2020].
Piketty responded:
What I do in this book is take a very long-run look at the inequality regime in a comparative perspective. I define “inequality regime” as the justification [used] for the structure of inequality and also the institutions — the legal system, the educational system, the fiscal system — that help sustain a certain level of equality or inequality in a given society.
. . .
The dominant groups always tend to be conservative and always tend to define the existing inequality as being natural, coming from some natural scheme or natural institutions or from rules that cannot be changed.
. . .
. . . in the ’50s and ’60s, the Democratic Party in the U.S. and social democratic parties in Europe were able to convince voters with lower education, lower income, lower wage[s] that they are the platform for them. . . . Then, what we see is that gradually over the past four decades, these parties have become the party of the educational elite. So while the right-wing parties and the center-right party are still the parties of the business elite or the high wealth elite … [W]e have moved from this class-based system to what I describe as a multi-elite system, where basically the educational elite votes for the Brahmin left and the wealthy elite votes for the merchant right or the business right. This rise of elitism, in effect, has left a lot of voters feeling abandoned [by] the main two parties, and I feel this has largely contributed to the rise of what is sometimes known as populism.
Donald Trump tapped into that feeling of being abandoned, and convinced enough people that "only he" could make things "great again" for them, to win the 2016 presidential election, not by a majority of the popular vote, but by the Electoral College, which skews to the rural (and Republican) states.
Then, Trump and the Republican Congress cut taxes for the rich and corporations, and did their best to cut healthcare for about 24 million of the poor — [Affordable Care Act - Wikipedia]. Like so many other of Trump's activities, it was just a giant scam! Most of them still haven't figured that out, and continue to support him and the Republican Party.
An article a few days ago, by Thom Hartmann, explains how the political changes of the past 42 years have been destroying the "American dream;" read it here: [Opinion | A Personal Apology to Young Americans for Failing to Stop Ronald Reagan.
He writes, “The bottom line, my dear millennial friends, is that you've been had by the GOP.
And . . . its [sic] getting harder and harder to do anything about it.”