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economic inequality
Progressives Won’t Help the Working Class by Abandoning Marginalized Groups
Leaders must reject false choices rooted in the idea that social and economic advancement is a zero-sum game or that working-class people must spar over scraps while all the spoils go to the elite few.
Feb 02, 2025
Since the election, two themes have recurred in analyses of the current political moment: Pundits are calling on progressive political leaders to abandon so-called identity politics and center working-class concerns, and others are defining this election as a potential realignment of political parties.
We and our colleagues at Dēmos are laser-focused on this drumbeat because it strikes at the core of our mission to build a just, inclusive, multi-racial democracy and economy where ordinary people hold power.
Working class is as much an identity as gender, religious affiliation, immigrant status, place, race, and ethnicity. All of us hold multiple identities. But in the political context, “identity politics” is often a dog whistle for Black and brown communities or members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Political leaders and pundits’ calls to deprioritize communities of color and marginalized groups distort the nation’s power dynamic and risk sidelining voices working to build a more equitable society. Such takes also pretend the far-right offers credible solutions to pressing economic issues while minimizing the critical role progressives play in challenging the systems that drive economic inequality. Any critique of movement or “identity politics” without a power analysis misses the forest for the trees.
Average incomes will not increase as more corporations shut down their DEI offices.
Last month, Demos released its Power Scorecard, a data-driven tool that tests our core theory: Political and economic power are inextricably linked, and one is predictive of the other. The tool ranks and measures people power in all 50 states (called a power score) by examining 30 indicators of economic well-being and 30 indicators of civic and democratic vitality. Some economic measures include the percentage of households that can cover everyday costs, avoid debt, maintain stable housing, and access affordable childcare. Measures of civic vitality include voter turnout, percentage of unopposed elections, ease of voting, and descriptive representation in government.
Our findings shed light on how conditions in each state influence the agency and control ordinary people exert in our democracy and economy. Common threads among the highest-ranked states include lower rates of child poverty and incarceration, less concentrated poverty, a greater percentage of workers represented by unions, higher voter turnout rates, and more state checks on corporate contributions to political candidates.
We could not disaggregate data by race for all indicators, but a limited analysis reveals “identity groups” are most disempowered in all states. This is not surprising, and it’s precisely why progressive activists advocate for bold, structural changes such as living wages, access to healthcare as a human right, expanded labor rights and protections, and policies to curb corporate power. And yes, they also call for political leaders to address racial and gender inequalities. Movement activism is rooted in the understanding that economic disparity, systemic racism, and gender inequality are interconnected problems requiring interconnected solutions.
We are aware that opinion polling over the last couple of years continuously revealed voters’ worries about their ability to make ends meet and financially get ahead. Policymakers on all sides of the political spectrum should heed these concerns. But as political leaders assess their messaging failures and policy disconnects, they must avoid the convenience of tunnel vision or public discourse that falsely suggest “identity groups” wield undue or disproportionate influence. Working-class people of all races are constrained by a system in which economic and political power are concentrated in the hands of an elite few.
As much as progressives are agitating to dismantle economic and racial disparities, a well-funded opposition is invested in maintaining a power structure that bends to the will of the wealthy and powerful. The far-right may have successfully tapped into some voters’ frustrations, but their policy proposals will exacerbate economic polarization and diminish ordinary people’s political power. Their standard bearers continue to favor tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, weakening unions, and restricting access to the ballot. If progressive political leaders acquiesce to calls to sideline “identity groups,” they will alienate the very movement voices working to address root causes of economic insecurity. Culture wars are a divisive political tactic, not an economic policy solution.
To put a finer point on it, average incomes will not increase as more corporations shut down their DEI offices. Housing will not be more affordable due to mass deportation. Grocery prices will not decline due to state legislation banning transgender people from public bathrooms. And tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will not and have never trickled down to ordinary people.
Black and brown communities bear a disproportionate share of economic hardship, from unaffordable housing and inflationary pressure on consumer goods to exploitative labor practices. There are historical and ongoing systemic reasons for this disparity—a historical record that the far-right is actively trying to erase with book bans and factually diluted K-12 curriculums. Ignoring these complicated truths in the name of appealing to an idealized working-class voter devoid of any identity is a failing strategy—and the people who will suffer most are working-class voters of all races and identities.
Progressive leaders must reject false choices rooted in the idea that social and economic advancement is a zero-sum game or that working-class people must spar over scraps while all the spoils go to the elite few. Instead, they should amplify the voices of those actively challenging systems that sustain social injustice and vast economic inequality.
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To Save Democracy From Trump, Mobilize Popular Rage Against the Wealthy
Anger over a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich will make it more likely that any future lies about a “strong leader” and a “stolen election” will fall on deaf ears.
Jan 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump cares little about democracy, except in the most utilitarian sense. For Trump, democracy is a ladder that he can use to ascend to power. He is not interested in promoting democracy abroad or strengthening democracy at home. He cares only about power: corporate, presidential, national.
Before Trump, presidents frequently promoted U.S. democracy overseas, despite its obvious design flaws: elections won by candidates who lost the popular vote, wealthy people buying seats in Congress, redistricting to favor a particular party, a system dominated by two parties.
There won’t be any democracy promotion under Donald Trump. In his second inaugural, Trump promised to promote American power, not American principles. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” he trumpeted. He promised to push American cars and promote the U.S. military, not least of which to retake the Panama Canal.
U.S. democracy has long been deformed by the influence of the wealthy. But now the playing field, under Trump, will tilt so dramatically that all but the richest will simply tumble off the edge.
It’s no great loss perhaps that the United States will be suspending its official democracy promotion. Other countries are better positioned to that kind of work. The South Korean people, for instance, impeached their leader Yoon Suk Yeol when he declared martial law, something the U.S. Congress failed to do twice with Donald Trump when he overstepped the law. A number of European countries have achieved a much higher level of civic participation and a lower amount of economic inequality than you’ll find in the United States.
The problem for the foreseeable future lies not with the exported version of U.S. democracy. It’s what Trump will do to American democracy at home.
Trump is a convicted felon who attempted to remain in power even after he lost the 2020 election. The case against him for breaking the law to stay in the White House was likely strong enough to result in a conviction. Avoiding prison was perhaps the chief motivation for Trump to win the 2024 elections. His victory led to the dismissal of the case.
To avoid a prison sentence, Trump resorted to lies, distortions, and threats to win the 2024 election. He also relied on the deep pockets of billionaire Elon Musk to sponsor deceptive ads and buy votes in swing states.
If he had lost the 2024 election, Trump was fully prepared to tear the country apart in an effort to prove that the election had been “stolen.” He did win, of course, though with only 49.9% of the vote, the smallest margin of victory in nearly 60 years.
Day One Dictator
Trump promised to be a dictator for his first day in office. It’s no surprise, then, that he issued the most executive orders of any president on inauguration day. Executive action is nothing new. Both Democrats and Republicans have collaborated in expanding the powers of the presidency. But Trump has gone beyond what other presidents have done, or instance to challenge the U.S. Constitution itself by declaring an end to birthright citizenship. He also pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists, which sends a disturbing message to the citizenry about the lack of consequences for those who attack the federal government.
Trump will also take a chainsaw to government—cutting the regulatory agencies that implement policy and keep Americans safe. Democracy, in the modern world, requires state power. By cutting back on federal authority, Trump will empower instead conservative states, corporations, and religious institutions.
The MAGA revolution is all about destroying public institutions, like government-mandated health insurance. Eliminating the Department of Education will only further undermine what religious institutions and hardline conservatives have been pushing for years: the expansion of private schools at the expense of public education.
Although Trump pitched himself as the hero of the “working man,” he has on the contrary created a Kremlin-like oligarchy around himself. Elon Musk is only the richest and most prominent of the dozen billionaires that Trump has selected for his cabinet. Other oligarchs, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, have scrambled to curry favor with the returning president, turning such sycophancy into an astute investment decision.
America’s richest people expect to grow their wealth exponentially under Trump. After all, Musk himself made $170 billion just since Election Day, a few short months ago.
U.S. democracy has long been deformed by the influence of the wealthy. But now the playing field, under Trump, will tilt so dramatically that all but the richest will simply tumble off the edge.
Democracy in America has been around for over 200 years. Surely one man, no matter how many super-wealthy people he gathers in his circle, cannot unravel such an august institution. Democracy survived Trump’s first term. Surely, it will survive the abuses of his second.
Or will it?
Coup vs Civil War
The challenge that Trump poses lies not just in the policies he promotes, the public institutions he defunds and delegitimizes, or the wealth he redistributes upward. The new president threatens the very fabric of the country.
The handover of power went smoothly after the last election because the losing party respects the rule of law.
But the erosion of democratic norms under Trump suggests that the next presidential election in 2028 will not go as smoothly. An even more elderly Trump might defy the U.S. Constitution—and its two-term limit for presidents—and stay in office under some contrived state of emergency. Or he might usher his hand-picked successor into the White House in a similarly autocratic fashion.
Paradoxically, it’s the presence of a dozen billionaires in Trump’s inner circle that may save democracy—by fueling the wrath of the disenfranchised and prompting them to support an alternative to MAGA.
The best-case scenario, of course, would be a democratic election in 2028. But let’s say Trump’s successor loses. Trump has effectively said that any election that doesn’t go his way is illegitimate. Should a Trump-inspired uprising take place in 2028 to challenge a “stolen election,” it will be much better planned and executed than the one on January 6, 2021, just as Trump’s second term is much more organized than the first. Such a nation-wide insurrection following any disputed election outcome could unravel an already divided United States.
So, the worst-case scenario for the United States is a coup and the best-case scenario is a civil war? That does not bode well for American democracy.
What to Do?
The only way to avoid these scenarios of coup or civil war is to strengthen democratic institutions even as Trump tries to destroy them. This is no easy feat.
The obvious strategy is to bolster democracy at a state or local level, particularly in areas that did not vote for Trump. This makes a lot of sense, but it will, inevitably, deepen the divide between red and blue states and encourage the very civil-war dynamic it’s urgent to forestall.
Building up the capacity of California or Chicago to fend off authoritarian power grabs from a federal bureaucracy commandeered by Trump will necessarily absorb a lot of the time and energy of the mainstream resistance. It will also put anti-MAGA forces on the defensive as they scramble to file lawsuits to stop Trump’s actions.
But the only sustainable way to strengthen U.S. democracy is to build a movement that includes a lot of the voters who supported Trump. They voted for the current president because they wanted change. They didn’t vote for rule by the rich.
It’s often said that American democracy is being undermined by the wealthy and their capacity to buy elections. Now, paradoxically, it’s the presence of a dozen billionaires in Trump’s inner circle that may save democracy—by fueling the wrath of the disenfranchised and prompting them to support an alternative to MAGA.
Anger over a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich will make it more likely that any future lies about a “strong leader” and a “stolen election” will fall on deaf ears. It’s just a question of what political entity will mobilize that anger and turn it into an electoral force.
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For Democrats, Opportunities Abound
The path will soon be open for Democrats to end the climate emergency and restore a bountiful economy.
Jan 21, 2025
Has the American public taken a hard right turn? Does the election of U.S. President Donald Trump mean most Americans now oppose abortion rights, want their neighbors deported, and think climate change is a hoax? The answers are no, no, no, and no.
Yes, in 2024 Trump squeaked into the presidency by 1.5% of those who voted but he’s no more popular now than he was in 2020, when he lost to Joe Biden. Trump only won this time because 19 million Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t vote in 2024.
As Michael Podhorzer explained recently in his Weekend Reading Substack, the 2024 election was not a strong endorsement of Trump or MAGA; instead, it was a vote of no confidence in Democrats. Podhorzer is a well-known American political-data analyst and former political director of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor coalition in the U.S.
It seems obvious that, if Democrats actually improve the lives and livelihoods of the people who do all the work, they can once again become the majority party for decades into the future.
“The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA,” Podhorzer writes.
He continues, “A collapse in support for Democrats does not mean that most Americans, especially those in Blue America, are suddenly eager to live in an illiberal theocracy.” It’s that “Americans are fed up. This election wasn’t just a vote of no confidence in Democrats; it was yet another vote of no confidence in our entire political system,” Podhorzer writes.
Why Are Americans Fed up With Their Political System?
The political system is not delivering what Americans want most, which is economic stability: being able to afford a home, groceries, gas, car payments, healthcare, give the kids a decent start (daycare, education), save something for a rainy day, and maybe even take a short vacation every year or so. Instead, what they’re getting is mediocre wages and sky-high prices. Nearly three-quarters of workers feel their paycheck is too small for the quality or amount of work they do.
Measured against wages paid in past decades, today’s paychecks are pitifully small. During the three decades after World War II (1945-1975), as national wealth-per-person increased each year (measured as gross domestic product, or GDP, divided by total population), wages rose in lockstep. However, after 1978, wages grew more slowly than national wealth-per-person because big corporations and super-wealthy individuals started keeping a bigger share of the nation’s wealth for themselves, stiffing their workers. Economic inequality began to rise.
In 2020, a study by the Rand Corporation calculated all this in detail. In their study, Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards showed that, during the last 40 years (1978 to 2018), if workers’ wages had risen in lockstep with wealth-per-person (as they did during 1945-1975), each worker in the bottom 90% of wages would have earned an extra $1,144 per month, month after month, year after year, for a total of $13,728 additional wages each year for 40 years, or $549,120 total additional wages for each worker over the 40 years. For each worker. In all, over the past 40 years, the richest 1% of Americans have stolen $50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90%.
On top of that, for decades Democrats have championed education and job skills as their main solution for economic inequality instead of labor rights, union strength, minimum-wage laws, affordable housing, universal healthcare, taxing the super-rich, and, when all else fails, price controls.
Now half of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 37% say they can’t pay their bills, which means they’re relying on credit, or they’re skipping meals, or they’re homeless. Meanwhile the people who dominate the Democratic Party—affluent, well-educated professionals and their wealthy backers—insist that the economy is doing great. They boast about job creation without mentioning the quality of the jobs. Republicans, on the other hand, say the economy is a disaster, which resonates with millions of people because prices are sky high and so are interest rates on credit cards, home loans, and car loans.
Rising prices hit low-income people hardest. Renters struggle with rising rents and scarce housing while many homeowners continue to enjoy a low interest rate that they locked in years ago. If you own a house and inflation drives up the price of houses, your net worth increases. In short, inflation worsens existing inequalities because those with the fewest resources get hit hardest.
If you usually buy artisan bread, you can downgrade to supermarket bread. But if you’re already buying supermarket bread, you have no choice but to pay more. Then, as more people buy the cheaper brands, those prices tend to rise.
If you’re in the professional class and you’re saving 15 or 20% of your income, you have a big hedge against inflation—a high-yield savings account or perhaps shares of an index fund that grows in lockstep with a basket of high-yield stocks. But if you’re a worker whose paycheck doesn’t keep pace with inflation, you’re probably going into debt to stay afloat.
Americans have a mountain of credit card debt—$1.2 trillion—and that total debt has risen 51% during the Biden presidency. The U.S. Supreme Court effectively deregulated credit cards in 1978, and interest rates have surged upward since then. The average annual interest rate on credit cards today is 21.5%. For new credit card offers, the average is 24.3%, which is what many young people are facing.
In sum, people with moderate or low incomes—especially young people—who rely on credit card debt are paying 20 to 25% more to meet basic needs, compared to wealthier people.
Republicans Benefit From Economic Stagnation and Decline
As New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall recently observed, “Electorally speaking,… Republicans profit from economic stagnation and decline.” Therefore, in a perverse way, it makes sense for Donald Trump and his billionaire supporters to oppose everything that actually improves people’s lives: collective bargaining rights; union strength; unemployment insurance; Social Security; Medicare; Medicaid; the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”); food stamps; cost-free public education (pre-k through trade school and college); access to broadband internet; decent, safe affordable housing; reproductive rights; anti-discrimination laws; limits on interest-rates for debt; affirmative action for the disadvantaged; environmental initiatives to restore the climate and protect the natural world; community policing and a fair justice system; strong civil rights protections; affordable medicines; anti-price-gouging laws; rent controls; a rock-solid right to vote; and more.
It seems obvious that, if Democrats actually improve the lives and livelihoods of the people who do all the work, they can once again become the majority party for decades into the future.
If history is any guide, by 2026 the public will become disillusioned with the MAGA billionaires and their followers, handing Democrats a huge opportunity.
For Democrats to win again, a good place to start might be an economic bill of rights—a modern version of President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 proposal: Everyone has a right to a job; an income adequate for food, shelter, and recreation; freedom from unfair competition and monopolies; decent housing; adequate medical care; social security; and education.
Solid Democrat control in Washington in 2028 could set the stage for expanding the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster in the Senate, eliminating the Electoral College, and getting “dark money” out of elections, to establish permanent majority rule for law and policy. This, then, could set the stage for the Mission for America, a massively ambitious program to end the climate emergency and, at the same time, create huge new wealth for the general public.
Because we face two major crises (the climate emergency and an economy that has failed so many people, which is empowering authoritarians) and because Republicans generally rely on economic decline to win elections, the path is open for Democrats to stand up for real economic reforms and win big in 2026 and 2028, and then to mold a decent future for the U.S. and the world. Of course, it will require new, young leaders to make it happen—and they are getting ready now.
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