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Why Sales of Pitchforks Will Soar
Trump’s Victory Is a Bad Sign for Liberals, but Even Worse for the Wealthy
978 words
By David Demers
A lot of journalists and political pundits have been talking about the adverse effects of Trump’s victory for the Democrats and progressives.
But the really big losers will be the wealthy.
This election revealed, for the first time in modern American history, that the working and middle classes have developed “class consciousness” — a term that Karl Marx defined as a state of mind where ordinary people (the proletariat) become aware of how the wealthy are exploiting them. Marx argued that class consciousness was a precursor to revolution.
The current source of this consciousness is perceived financial insecurity (PFI), which is the individual’s perception of their ability to pay their bills and get ahead. A 2024 True Cost of Living Coalition poll found that two-thirds of Americans struggle to pay their bills. Nearly half don't have $500 saved for a rainy day, and 40 percent are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck.
PFI helped elect Trump.
A YouGov poll conducted a week before the 2024 election found that 38 percent of Trump supporters rated their personal financial situation as “poor,” compared with 15 percent of Harris supporters. PFI affects every socioeconomic group, not just the poor.
“It’s not a matter of how much income or debt one has, but rather that an imbalance between income and outlay causes one relentless stress and leads to a downward spiral,” writes J. Galen Buckwalter, a research psychologist at Payoff.com, in Worth Magazine. "The resulting avoidance and denial, along with nightmares, sleep disturbances, hypervigilance and relational difficulties, follow for more than 20% of American adults. For many, hopelessness and suicidal ideation start to take hold.”
Another sign of growing class consciousness is the vote results for young Black men. A third of them cast their ballot for Trump in 2024, despite his constant disparaging remarks about them and other minorities.
“Black voters support for Donald Trump can be interpreted as an anti-establishment vote,” write professors Alessio Rebechi and Nicholas Rohde at Griffith University in Australia, who analyzed data from a national survey of American voters after the 2016 election. “The inability of the Democratic Party to address economic issues and racial disparities may have further contributed to a sense of disillusionment and resentment among Black voters. The significant reduction in Black support ... proved to be key to Donald Trump’s [2016] victory.”
Marx predicted that economic inequality would increase over time, as the wealthy hoard capital to feed their greed. Empirical evidence supports the inequality aspect of this proposition.
Over the past four decades, the working and middle classes (the bottom 90th percentile of taxpayers) have seen their inflation-adjusted income only grow about 1 percent a year, compared with about 5 percent for the top 10th percentile and 8 percent for the top 1 percentile, according to data I analyzed at RealTimeInequality.org.
Because of these trends, bottom half of all Americans in terms of wealth only has an average of $13,374 in assets, which includes home equity, savings, and retirement funds. The next 50th-to-90th percentile has only about $140,355. In contrast, the top 1 percentile has an average of $17.6 million in wealth; the top 10th percentile, $3.6 million.
These growing income and wealth gaps stem in large part from massive tax cuts that have favored the wealthy over the past four decades. Their federal tax rates on earned income, capital gains, and estate taxes have been cut about 50 percent under three Republican administrations (Ronald Reagan, George Bush 2.0, and Trump 1.0).
Americans are well aware of growing income and wealth gaps.
A recent national poll by Navigator found that “four in five Americans support raising taxes on the rich (79 percent), including 94 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents, and 63 percent of Republicans. Nearly two in three Americans who say they voted for Donald Trump in 2020 support raising taxes on the wealthy (63 percent).”
The working and middle classes voted for Trump because mainstream politicians have done little to address their financial concerns over the past four decades. This includes the fact that, in New York City, one of eight school children are homeless, according to the non-profit New York’s Advocates for Children.
The wealthy, in contrast, voted for Trump because they want more tax cuts like his 2017 tax bill, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Many corporations used this money to buy back stock, which boosted the investment portfolios of the wealthy.
Trump 2.0 likely will give them another corporate tax cut (reportedly from 21 percent to 15 percent). This cut — with or without Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods — is sure to drive up inflation and interest rates again, as they did after his 2017 cuts. This means more pain for the working and middle classes.
Although Trump is trying to find money to extend beyond 2025 his 2017 tax cuts, which included doubling the standard deduction for all taxpayers, this extension will not improve the financial condition of Trump’s non-wealthy supporters. It will just maintain the status quo. (Trump is looking at cuts to Medicaid and food stamps to pay for the tax extensions, but this will adversely affect many of his supporters who rely on these programs.)
The bottom line is that the interests of the wealthy and the proletariat will soon collide in America, and both sides cannot be placated without serious economic and political repercussions for the entire nation. The best and honorable solution is to raise taxes on the wealthy to recapture some of the wealth they have extracted over the past four decades and distribute it to the bottom 90th percentile. (The top 10 percent can afford it, as they own two-thirds of the nation’s wealth.)
But Trump will never do this.
He identifies with the wealthy, not the less fortunate.
As such, I predict that sales of pitchforks will soar over the next four years.
Unproofed drafts of selected chapters of Falling Behind are available online at www.DrDavidDemers.com
Falling Behind will be published in 2025. Demers is author of two dozen books, including The Ivory Tower of Babel: Why the Social Sciences Are Failing to Live Up to Their Promises, and worked as a tenured professor of communication and media sociology at Washington State University before retiring to spend more time writing books. He lives in Phoenix, where he teaches an introductory college-level sociology course to high school students. He can be reached at [email protected]
Why Sales of Pitchforks Will Soar
Trump’s Victory Is a Bad Sign for Liberals, but Even Worse for the Wealthy
978 words
By David Demers
A lot of journalists and political pundits have been talking about the adverse effects of Trump’s victory for the Democrats and progressives.
But the really big losers will be the wealthy.
This election revealed, for the first time in modern American history, that the working and middle classes have developed “class consciousness” — a term that Karl Marx defined as a state of mind where ordinary people (the proletariat) become aware of how the wealthy are exploiting them. Marx argued that class consciousness was a precursor to revolution.
The current source of this consciousness is perceived financial insecurity (PFI), which is the individual’s perception of their ability to pay their bills and get ahead. A 2024 True Cost of Living Coalition poll found that two-thirds of Americans struggle to pay their bills. Nearly half don't have $500 saved for a rainy day, and 40 percent are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck.
PFI helped elect Trump.
A YouGov poll conducted a week before the 2024 election found that 38 percent of Trump supporters rated their personal financial situation as “poor,” compared with 15 percent of Harris supporters. PFI affects every socioeconomic group, not just the poor.
“It’s not a matter of how much income or debt one has, but rather that an imbalance between income and outlay causes one relentless stress and leads to a downward spiral,” writes J. Galen Buckwalter, a research psychologist at Payoff.com, in Worth Magazine. "The resulting avoidance and denial, along with nightmares, sleep disturbances, hypervigilance and relational difficulties, follow for more than 20% of American adults. For many, hopelessness and suicidal ideation start to take hold.”
Another sign of growing class consciousness is the vote results for young Black men. A third of them cast their ballot for Trump in 2024, despite his constant disparaging remarks about them and other minorities.
“Black voters support for Donald Trump can be interpreted as an anti-establishment vote,” write professors Alessio Rebechi and Nicholas Rohde at Griffith University in Australia, who analyzed data from a national survey of American voters after the 2016 election. “The inability of the Democratic Party to address economic issues and racial disparities may have further contributed to a sense of disillusionment and resentment among Black voters. The significant reduction in Black support ... proved to be key to Donald Trump’s [2016] victory.”
Marx predicted that economic inequality would increase over time, as the wealthy hoard capital to feed their greed. Empirical evidence supports the inequality aspect of this proposition.
Over the past four decades, the working and middle classes (the bottom 90th percentile of taxpayers) have seen their inflation-adjusted income only grow about 1 percent a year, compared with about 5 percent for the top 10th percentile and 8 percent for the top 1 percentile, according to data I analyzed at RealTimeInequality.org.
Because of these trends, bottom half of all Americans in terms of wealth only has an average of $13,374 in assets, which includes home equity, savings, and retirement funds. The next 50th-to-90th percentile has only about $140,355. In contrast, the top 1 percentile has an average of $17.6 million in wealth; the top 10th percentile, $3.6 million.
These growing income and wealth gaps stem in large part from massive tax cuts that have favored the wealthy over the past four decades. Their federal tax rates on earned income, capital gains, and estate taxes have been cut about 50 percent under three Republican administrations (Ronald Reagan, George Bush 2.0, and Trump 1.0).
Americans are well aware of growing income and wealth gaps.
A recent national poll by Navigator found that “four in five Americans support raising taxes on the rich (79 percent), including 94 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents, and 63 percent of Republicans. Nearly two in three Americans who say they voted for Donald Trump in 2020 support raising taxes on the wealthy (63 percent).”
The working and middle classes voted for Trump because mainstream politicians have done little to address their financial concerns over the past four decades. This includes the fact that, in New York City, one of eight school children are homeless, according to the non-profit New York’s Advocates for Children.
The wealthy, in contrast, voted for Trump because they want more tax cuts like his 2017 tax bill, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Many corporations used this money to buy back stock, which boosted the investment portfolios of the wealthy.
Trump 2.0 likely will give them another corporate tax cut (reportedly from 21 percent to 15 percent). This cut — with or without Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods — is sure to drive up inflation and interest rates again, as they did after his 2017 cuts. This means more pain for the working and middle classes.
Although Trump is trying to find money to extend beyond 2025 his 2017 tax cuts, which included doubling the standard deduction for all taxpayers, this extension will not improve the financial condition of Trump’s non-wealthy supporters. It will just maintain the status quo. (Trump is looking at cuts to Medicaid and food stamps to pay for the tax extensions, but this will adversely affect many of his supporters who rely on these programs.)
The bottom line is that the interests of the wealthy and the proletariat will soon collide in America, and both sides cannot be placated without serious economic and political repercussions for the entire nation. The best and honorable solution is to raise taxes on the wealthy to recapture some of the wealth they have extracted over the past four decades and distribute it to the bottom 90th percentile. (The top 10 percent can afford it, as they own two-thirds of the nation’s wealth.)
But Trump will never do this.
He identifies with the wealthy, not the less fortunate.
As such, I predict that sales of pitchforks will soar over the next four years.
Unproofed drafts of selected chapters of Falling Behind are available online at www.DrDavidDemers.com
Falling Behind will be published in 2025. Demers is author of two dozen books, including The Ivory Tower of Babel: Why the Social Sciences Are Failing to Live Up to Their Promises, and worked as a tenured professor of communication and media sociology at Washington State University before retiring to spend more time writing books. He lives in Phoenix, where he teaches an introductory college-level sociology course to high school students. He can be reached at [email protected]