“Inequality”: The Missing Word in the 2024 Election
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
In 2022, the Council on Foreign Relations warned, “Income and wealth inequality in the United States is substantially higher than in almost any other developed nation, and it is on the rise, sparking an intensifying national debate.”
The economy was a major issue in the election. A month before the election, a Gallup survey found:
“The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters.”
Sadly, there was little discussion – let alone debate – about inequality in the 2024 presidential contest. While it was made a key issue in the 2016 election by Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination, it disappeared in subsequent presidential campaigns.
While Vice Pres. Harris promoted the “opportunity economy,” she never directly addressed the issue of inequality on her campaign website, nor in her “Policy Book.”
For former ex- and now re-elected Pres. Trump, inequality doesn’t exit; during the campaign he only endlessly extolled his planned next round of tax cuts. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” Republican presidential transition plan says nothing about inequality.
Yet, deepening income and wealth inequality is a significant social issue. The St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity found that through the second quarter of 2024:
+ The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.9 million on average. As a group, they held 67% of total household wealth.
+ The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $51,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.5% of total household wealth.
This situation gets even more troubling when non-white Americas are considered:
+ Black families owned about 23 cents for every $1 of white family wealth, on average.
+ Hispanic families owned about 19 cents for every $1 of white family wealth, on average.
In a 2020 report, “A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) points out that “beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened.” It also notes that “wealth — the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income.” More revealing, it adds, “the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from 30 percent in 1989 to 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.”
Pew Research clarifies the CBPP analysis, noting, “Most of the increase in household income was achieved in the period from 1970 to 2000.” Adding, “In these three decades, the median income increased by 41%, to $70,800, at an annual average rate of 1.2%. From 2000 to 2018, the growth in household income slowed to an annual average rate of only 0.3%.”
As of 2023, the top 1 percent of American households owned 30.0 percent of the nation’s net worth – this is estimated at $43.0 trillion.
The U.S. is facing a crisis exemplified by the outcome of the 2024 election. Deepening inequality and the political drift to the right are being compounded by the shift in the global economy, from the long standing “unipolar” world order with the U.S. at its center. As John Mearsheimer argued, the “change in the balance of power has created a situation where we’re moving away from unipolarity and toward multipolarity.”
These and other factors are fostering rising insecurity among many Americans, fueling increasing political polarization and ever-deeper resentment. Sadly, in all likelihood these conditions will only worsen under a new Trump administration.
This is fostering what is being identified as the “Great Replacement.” This is the notion that white Christian men are being “replaced” by women, African Americans, Jews and the growing number – and diversity – of immigrates who’ve settled in the U.S. over the last quarter century. It infuses what is known as the “politics of resentment.”
The “politics of resentment” has been much studied as a contributing factor in the rise of violent, fascistic regimes during the 20th century. In his 1933 study, The Mass Psychology of Fascism,Wilhelm Reich identified resentment as an emotion felt by disempowered workers. Two decades later, Hannah Arendt noted, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), “The social resentment of the lower middle classes against the Jews turned into a highly explosive political element, because these bitterly hated Jews were thought to be well on their way to political power.”
A half-century later, Katharine Markel reflected, “Nationalism, in the form of national resentment, was potent. Italians and Germans believed that their national pride had been humiliated.” She clarified, adding:
“Italians felt this way because they believed their country had not been awarded the amount of territory it should have been awarded after World War One ended. Germans felt this way because their government had accepted the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty required Germany to accept the blame for starting World War One and imposed harsh reparations, as well as substantial territorial concessions, on Germany.”
Today, the politics of resentment fuels the Trump MAGA movement and the rightwing. UC Berkeley’s Edward Lempinen warns, “The fierceness of the new identity movement is more about status lost than property lost. It is a loss so profoundly felt that it has generated a fierceness powerful enough to transform U.S. politics — and much of world politics — into a new era.”
Lawrence Rosenthal, of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, author of Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism, warns: “In the USA, resentment of political correctness stands on two pillars: loathing for multiculturalism and for feminism.” And he argues: “Resentment is anger directed at those perceived as above oneself or one’s class. The inverse of resentment is contempt. Contempt is anger directed at those people or classes seen as below one’s class.”
Today, inequality is a form of theft and resentment fuels rightwing rage. In all likelihood, inequality and resentment will only deepen over the next four years.
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