The United States presidential election campaign will end in November 2016 with the election of a new US leader. And the election is proving to be the most interesting and pivotal in a generation.
Bernie Sanders is a social warrior battling wealth inequality, the super rich and their elite backers. He and Donald Trump are the spearheads of a modern American revolt. The US working and middle class believe they have been short-changed by the one percent: the owners of Corporate America. The 90 percent believe that the rich and powerful have rigged the political and economic system for their benefit. And the 90 percent, especially working class whites, are very angry.
Mr. Sanders gave the establishment centrist’s dream candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a beating at the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9. Ms. Clinton is a pillar of the US political establishment. She lived in the White House for eight years as first lady, and she has been a US senator and cabinet member. Even before that, she was first lady of Arkansas when her husband Bill Clinton was the state’s governor.
Outsider status
Americans under the age of 40 do not consider Ms. Clinton an outsider. Neither do they consider her the progressive that she considers herself. Being a political outsider, however, is a great asset in the 2016 US election campaign. Being part of the political establishment is an albatross in the present US political environment.
What was even more amazing was that Mr. Sanders, the first Jew in US history to win a New Hampshire primary, and a professorial 74, won among key demographics. He won the young under-30s vote overwhelmingly. He won among young women, and even older women. And he won among voters who view trust and honesty as important virtues of the modern politician.
Interestingly, Ms. Clinton’s strongest supporters are blacks and Hispanics. But even the minority demographic appears to be in play to the benefit of Mr. Sanders after his New Hampshire victory.
Republicans
Mr. Trump won the New Hampshire primary on the Republican side. He won for the very same reason Mr. Sanders did. The white working and middle classes, especially blue-collar workers earning under $50,000, are angry. Why? Well, this segment of the US population has seen its share of the overall wealth decline in real terms since the 1980s.
Globally, the advent of the supply-side-economic model of the Chicago school of economics has since the early 1980s preached the virtues of a business-driven, trickle-down and austere social and economic policy. However, the result of such ideas has been a wholesale transfer of wealth to the top one percent, from the working and middle classes, the 90 percent.
The trickledown effect has really only benefitted the top 10 percent, or those persons who earn in excess of $100,000 per annum.
The US has become the developed world’s most unequal country. However, this inequality is not the province of the US alone. Around the world, countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, that followed the supply-side economic model, also saw inequality rise exponentially.
Today, between 60 and 80 families own over half of global wealth. The US has returned to the early 1900s. This was a time when the “Robber Barons” — men with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie — practically owned US industry, hook, line and sinker. The rest of the US population depended on these men and the corporations they owned to eke out a living.
‘Warriors’
Messrs. Trump and Sanders have become warriors fighting on behalf of the suffering working and middle classes. Mr. Trump is a populist, Mr. Sanders a socialist.
In the Fiscal Times of Feb. 9, economist Mark Thoma stated that the poor and middle class were deceived into believing that the one percent is the job creator class; that society should actually cut the taxes of the super wealthy; and that doing this will cause income to trickle down and help the working class. But that never happened. In fact, the opposite has taken place. Deregulation and tax breaks for the rich have caused wealth to trickle up instead. The wealthy classes have actually gotten richer while the rest have become poorer.
Mr. Thoma argues the case for the 90 percent. “All they want is a fair share of what they’ve earned and the opportunity to improve their lives if they work hard and play by the rules. They want the security of knowing they aren’t a pink slip away from living on the streets, that they can find another job easily if they are laid off and, if not, help will be there for them.”
None of these things is likely under the present political and economic dispensation.
Economic security
Politicians the world over would do well to heed the following words of advice. The health of an economy is not fully reflected in the unemployment rate, inflation rate, or gross domestic product per capita. The health of an economy also depends on the economic security people feel and the perception that the system, political and economic, treats them fairly.
The rise of a socialist such as Mr. Sanders and a populist named Mr. Trump are clear signs that the 90 percent is becoming increasingly frustrated. The working and middle classes are exasperated by a system that has been captured by wealthy special interests.
Consequently, the winds of change are blowing away the establishment and the wealthy donors that support that establishment.
Jack Mirkinson, writing in Salon after the New Hampshire primary, stated the following: “The world is reeling from tectonic demographic and technological changes, along with the rot of oligarchical rule and continual warfare, all of which have driven the politics of country after country into great upheaval.”
In all four corners of the globe, humanity is waking up to the reality of inequality and the negative effects it has on human welfare.
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