7 Out of 10 Americans Agree That Economy is Rigged Against Them

A new Marketplace-Edison Research poll published Tuesday found that a full 71 percent of respondents agree that the economy is rigged, affirming the popular rhetoric of the current presidential campaign season.

The majority opinion held firm across ethnicity, class, age, and gender differences. A whopping 83 percent of African Americans polled agreed that the economy is rigged, and 80 percent of people ages 18-24 also held that opinion.

The poll, tracking rising economic anxiety, discovered that most Americans agree that the economy was better for their parent's generation and believe it will be worse for the next generation.

Perhaps the perception of a rigged economy is because people work harder for increasingly less financial security.

The poll found that nearly one-quarter of respondents had not taken a single vacation in over five years, and almost 50 percent also confirmed that they feared they might lose their jobs within the next 12 months.

Moreover, 71 percent said they were afraid of an unexpected medical bill, 53 percent feared being unable to make a mortgage payment, and 60 percent of renters feared being unable to pay rent.

Nearly one-third told the pollsters that they are losing sleep over their financial situation.

Meanwhile, the poll found that Wall Street and banks are unfavorable: nearly 60 percent agreed that Wall Street does more to hurt than help most Americans, and 56 percent agreed that the U.S. government should break up banks deemed "too big to fail."

A majority of 54 percent also felt that the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs resulted from so-called "free trade" deals rather than "natural changes in the economy," as the poll put it.

The poll's questions were familiar to many of those following this year's presidential election, as presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders made the phrase "rigged economy" and his critique of trade deals into touchstones of his campaign:

Following the shocking success of Sanders' outsider campaign, current front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have co-opted Sanders' language to woo his supporters.

"It's not just the political system that's rigged; it's the whole economy," Trump said during a speech last week, while Clinton on Monday told a crowd, "To build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, we have got to go big, and we have got to go bold," as Common Dreams reported.

Yet their efforts may fail: The Marketplace-Edison Research poll found that many respondents are also "not satisfied at all" with the two top presidential contenders.

Pundits have connected "a deep frustration on the part of working-class voters with economic globalization schemes," as John Nichols put it, to the recent Brexit vote. This has prompted some to wonder if a similar shock may eventually strike the U.S. establishment if today's economic woes go unheeded.