Angry Americans: How the 2008 Crash Fueled a Political Rebellion

[Purveyor]

The one story about the U.S. economy that has virtually no traction among American voters right now is that it’s doing OK.

Anyone inclined to tell that story, as President Barack Obama did in his final State of the Union address in January, can find headline data to back it up. But primary-season revolts -- the Donald Trump mutiny against the Republican establishment, and the fiercer-than-expected challenge from Bernie Sanders against a Democratic frontrunner with all the advantages -- are driven by fed-up Americans saying it isn’t so. And looking behind the headlines, the numbers might be on their side.

Unemployment at an eight-year low? Yes, but by most measures of the labor force, participation is down. More than six years of almost uninterrupted growth? Better than much of the industrialized world, for sure, but at a pace that won’t see the economy closing its output gap until 2026 at the earliest. Wage growth finally edging higher? Maybe so, in the aggregate, but not by much -- and anyway, whose wages?



Glass-half-empty statistics like these explain why the recession that ended in 2009 still towers over the electoral landscape. The Sanders critique of skewed wealth distribution, or the Trump diatribe against the job-draining impact of trade, are arguments that have been heard before in American politics. Now, after the worst slump and feeblest recovery in generations, millions seem eager to listen.

“For families who are hearing everyone say, ‘The recession is over, we’ve recovered, it’s all good,’ they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I haven’t recovered at all -- in fact it’s gotten worse’,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “That’s a big inconsistency between what they’re seeing in their day-to-day lives and what they’re hearing. That’s the kind of thing that makes people angry.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-01/the-angry-americans-trump-sanders-and-the-aftershocks-of-2008

[TDale313]

1. Many, maybe most, Americans are not doing ok in this economy.

It's better than 2008 for sure- but after 30+ years of Reagenomics people are suffering and they have not been made whole after the Great Recession. Wall Street has.

There is serious frustration and anger out there across the spectrum and I don't think the establishment in either party quite has a handle on that fact.

[Nay]

2. Alnd even those who were (and are) doing OK at the moment know that things

can go to hell overnight, dragging them into hell fast.

[GeoWilliam750]

3. The richest 1,000 families in the US are certainly doing well

Thus, according to the MSM, we really need to protect the interests of these job creators.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of real taxation in the US, with the calculation of how much money we pay to the big vested interests calculated as the taxes they are.