It’s the economic inequality, stupid
What is the basis of a mass politics?
Say you’re the Democrats. You lost a shock election in 2016 to a walking billboard you thought the country would reject handily. His administration leaves 500,000 dead in a pandemic, and he still almost wins re-election.1 In an effort to retain his position, he personally goads on a hostile takeover of the Capitol building that results in 1,542 federal charges, 140 injured law enforcement officers, and as many as five deaths. He’s impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors, convicted of felonies, and disqualified in op-ed pages. Then he wins another reelection — and another governing trifecta. This time, he’s backed by the popular vote, with a more diverse coalition than ever.
What do you do? Apparently, if you’re Morning Joe, you blame different pockets of the electorate. But you’re a political party and your entire purpose is to win elections, so you’ve got to work with voters as they are (this is a good instance to apply the strategy/fantasy heuristic). Who are the people you might try to reach? Who might form the basis of mass politics in this moment?
I say “mass” politics for two reasons: 1) the masses are what give you the majorities, or at least the pluralities, you need to win and govern; without mobilizing the masses, you’re not a party but an interest group, and 2) the practice of “elite” politics, that is, campaigning on the money and mores of college educated white people concentrated in urban centers, has not proven all that effective in winning elections.
Who are the masses? There are umpteen ways to divide up the electorate, but if you’re looking for majorities, look at how wealth in this nation is distributed. Here’s data from the Federal Reserve dating back from 1989:
That year, the bottom 50% of Americans held 3.5% of the nation’s wealth. Decades later, longer than I have been alive, those tens of millions of Americans hold even less of the share of national wealth, at 2.5%. Is this an economy that works for most of the public?
Remember, we’re looking for the basis of mass politics. Half of the country won’t cut it. We need majorities! So let’s add the next percentile, which gets us to a full 90% of America.
In 1989, the vast majority of the public— 90% — owned less than half of the nation’s wealth. In 2024, this massive chunk of Americans (where I’m guessing you and I reside!) owns a mere third of the country’s wealth.
Remember Occupy Wall Street? The days in which economic inequality dominated the news, with headlines such as this one?
It’s worse now.2
The year that protestors started setting up tent cities in parks across the country, America’s 10 richest billionaires were worth $407.9 billion adjusted for inflation. In 2024, just the two richest men — Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — total more than that, at $441 billion. The top 10 richest people in 2024 are worth $1.548 trillion.
Just so we’re keeping score: the wealthiest Americans, literally less than a dozen people, have nearly quadrupled their wealth since the explosive protests against wealth inequality in 2011. That year, the minimum wage was $7.25 an hour. In 2024, after a giant spike in inflation, the minimum wage is….$7.25 an hour.
Economic inequality is absolute poison to democracy. It depresses trust in political institutions and fuels the rise of demagogues. Sound familiar?
But set aside the corrosive effects of this inequality on the body politic. If we just think in terms of numbers — the amount of people a party can appeal to — there are far, far more individuals in the 90% of the country who own just a fraction of the nation’s wealth than there are in the 10% who own the majority of it. From a sheer matter of survival, a party with the designs to speak for the majority needs to understand that the economy is rigged against that majority.
Economic inequality thus provides a strong basis for a mass political party. Now I want be very clear: there are black people, white people, trans people, immigrants, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Indians, Muslims, Mexicans, and a whole lot more in the 90% of America that are locked out of two-thirds of its wealth. All these groups have good reasons to fight each other. A party interested in winning majorities will give them an even better reason to fight those at the top instead.
Here’s one: the rich get richer off the backs of the poor getting poorer. But there are more us than there are of them. A lot more.
Burn After Reading
Astra Taylor in a 2023 New York Times feature explaining how social insecurity is linked to economic inequality:
Since 2020, the richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth globally — almost twice as much money as the rest of the world’s population.
A series of charts from the Urban Institute describing the state of inequality in 2024:
In 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle of the wealth distribution. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth of families in the middle.
A report from the Aspen Institute on wealth inequality from 2022:
By 2021, the top 10% of households by net worth owned 70% of the country’s wealth. Between 2007 and 2019, household wealth declined for all but the top 20%, despite a historic period of GDP growth.
A chilling CBS News headline from 2021: 2,750 people have more wealth than half the planet
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wealth held by billionaires in the U.S. increased by 70%
Gallup estimates 500k were dead of Covid as of February 2021. The total now is more than a million.
