ohThe reasons for Donald Trump’s success will be discussed for a long time. How could a majority of Americans vote to return to the White House a man who, four years earlier, showed his total contempt for the very foundations of democracy?
“The economy is stupid!” » : the answer, repeated regularly since Bill Clinton’s victorious campaign against George HW Bush [en 1992]seems confirmed by the multitude of surveys and opinion polls published for months. We have yet to understand how rising egg prices could have pushed many Americans to elect to the presidency a man who could transform America into a true plutocracy tomorrow.
Because if you look closely, the American economy is far from bad. The generosity of the federal budget allowed activity to resume strongly after the pandemic. Inflation, which had also skyrocketed, is about to be controlled. To achieve this, the Fed did not need to cause a recession: For two years, growth has remained strong and unemployment has approached its lowest level.
Desperately low income
But the price level has not fallen, particularly for food products. The same goes for house prices, which were driven higher by low interest rates at the end of the last decade. As for rents, they have skyrocketed under the effect of changes in lifestyles related to the pandemic, the influx of immigrants and supply shortfalls. It’s clear: under President Joe Biden, daily living conditions have become harsher for many Americans.
That factories have been built in the sectors of the future at rates never seen before, that wages for the lowest-paying jobs have rarely risen so rapidly, that the black unemployment rate has never been so close to that of whites is not changes reality. : The incomes of a large portion of American households remain desperately low, while the wealth of a small minority, fueled by the continued rise in stock prices, has never been higher. After several decades of capitalism largely left to its own devices, the promised trickle is more of a drop by drop and the prosperity of the economy is increasingly less shared.
This widening of inequalities has contributed to a profound erosion of social cohesion, an erosion further aggravated by the still highly unequal quality of education and health care to which Americans have access. This quality reflects the price, also very unequal, that American democracy imposes on the lives of its citizens.
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