You’re old, straight, white and rich, motherfucker – YOU’RE going to be “ok.” Everyone else is fucked.
It’s not really about that short of a timeframe. Here’s another example:
https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
Compare 1963 to 2022:
We’re living in a new Gilded Age, people know they’re getting fucked, and saying “Oh, but look at this number going up” doesn’t work anymore.
I think there are two separate but related metrics at play here. Addressing income inequality would certainly go a long way towards improving quality of life for the working class, but Americans don’t care about someone having too much money as much as they care about having too little themselves.
Despite large movements like Occupy Wall Street bringing the topic of income inequality to the forefront of news for a while, the fact that it petered out and has ceased to be an issue means that enough members of the working class were still contented enough by their bread and circuses, so nothing came of it.
These voters don’t care if their CEO gets a $10 million bonus at the end of the year as long as they can still afford groceries and housing, but they do start to care a lot when they don’t. Only, blame is being directed at the government (inflated cost of living) rather than their rich bosses (wage stagnation).
It didn’t peter out, it got co-opted and suppressed until Trump capitalized on it. This is that exact same sentiment. People can’t afford groceries and housing, that was a huge issue during the election, so yeah we’ve finally reached a breaking point where people are pissed off about inequality and showed it. Anybody still pushing neolib shit is either braindead or benefits from neofeudalism.
If people were pissed about income inequality, they’d vote for the “tax the rich” candidates. Donald Trump’s agenda is the exact opposite about that.
