Inequality

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    Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report

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    The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap.Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the median household during that time span and 987 times the wealth of a household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. This translated to a gain of $8.35m per household for the top 1% of households, compared with $83,000 for the average household during that 33-year period.Meanwhile, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.“Inequality is a policy choice,” said Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America. “These comparisons show us that we can make very different choices when it comes to poverty and inequality in our society.”The report outlines the way that systems in the US, including the tax code, social safety nets, and worker’s rights and protections, have been slowly dismantled, allowing concentrated wealth to turn into concentrated power.Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”, passed by Congress in May, has been one of the “single largest transfers of wealth upwards in decades”, according to the report, by cutting tax for the wealthy and corporations.But over the last few decades, Republicans have not acted alone.“Policymakers have been choosing inequality, and those choices have had bipartisan support,” Riddell said. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from cuts to taxes and the social safety net, to labor issues and beyond, really had the backing of both parties.”Policy recommendations outlined in the report fall into four categories: rebalancing power through campaign finance reform and antitrust policy; using the tax system to reduce inequality through taxes on the wealthy and corporations; strengthening the social safety net; and protecting unions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese solutions can be tricky to carry out politically because of long-term stigmatization, particularly of social safety nets and taxation. The report refers to the concept of the “welfare queen” popularized during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, while taxation has always been seen as repressive for all rather than as a tool for addressing inequality.“What’s really needed is a different kind of politics,” Riddell said. “One that’s focused on delivering for ordinary people by really rapidly reducing inequality. There are sensible, proven reforms that could go a long way to reversing the really troubling trends we see.”The report features interviews with community leaders who are actively working to reduce inequality, even as progress has seemingly stalled on the national stage. In one interview in the report, union representatives for United Workers Maryland said the current moment seems ripe with opportunity because many Americans are starting to see how the current set-up isn’t working for them, but only for the people at the very top.“I think it’s brilliant that they see this as an opportunity,” Riddell said. “I love thinking about this moment as an opportunity to look around us and realize our broader power.” More

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      Democrats must not cave in to Trump | Bernie Sanders

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      Democrats in the US Senate must stand with the working families of our country and in opposition to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. They must not cave in to the president’s attacks on the working class during this ongoing government shutdown. If they do, the consequences will be catastrophic for our country.This may be the most consequential moment in American history since the civil war. We have a megalomaniacal president who, consumed by his quest for more and more power, is undermining our constitution and the rule of law. Further, we have an administration that is waging war against the working class of our country and our most vulnerable people.While Trump’s billionaire buddies become much, much richer, he is prepared to throw 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have – which could result in 50,000 unnecessary deaths each year. At a time when healthcare is already outrageously expensive, he is prepared to double premiums for more than 20 million people who rely on the Affordable Care Act. At a time when the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, Trump is prepared, illegally, to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, despite a $5bn emergency fund established by Congress. That decision would threaten to push 42 million people – including 16 million children – into hunger.And all of this is being done to provide $1tn in tax breaks to the 1%.Let’s be clear: this government shutdown did not happen by accident. In the Senate, 60 votes are required to fund the federal government. Today, the Republicans have 53 members while the Democratic caucus has 47. In other words, in order to fund the government the Republican majority must negotiate with Democrats to move the budget forward. This is what has always happened – until now. Republicans, for the first time, are simply refusing to come to the table and negotiate. They are demanding that it is their way or the highway.To make matters worse, the Republican contempt for negotiations is such that the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given his chamber a six-week paid vacation. Unbelievably, during a government shutdown – with federal employees not getting paid, millions facing outrageous premium increases and nutrition assistance set to expire for millions more – Republicans in the House of Representatives are not in Washington DC.Trump is a schoolyard bully. Anyone who thinks surrendering to him now will lead to better outcomes and cooperation in the future does not understand how a power-hungry demagogue operates. This is a man who threatens to arrest and jail his political opponents, deploys the US military into Democratic cities and allows masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pick people up off the streets and throw them into vans without due process. He has sued virtually every major media outlet because he does not tolerate criticism, has extorted funds from law firms and is withholding federal funding from states that voted against him.Day after day he shows his contempt for the constitutional role of Congress and the courts.Given that reality, does anyone truly believe that caving in to Trump now will stop his unprecedented attacks on our democracy and working people?Poll after poll shows that the Americans understand the need for strong opposition to Trump’s unprecedented and dangerous agenda. They understand that the Republican party is responsible for this shutdown. And, despite the Democratic party’s all-time low approval rating, independents and even a number of Republicans are now standing with the Democrats in their fight to protect the healthcare needs of the working families of our country.What will it mean if the Democrats cave? Trump, who already holds Democrats in contempt and views them as weak and ineffectual, will utilize his victory to accelerate his movement toward authoritarianism. At a time when he already has no regard for our democratic system of checks and balances, he will be emboldened to continue decimating programs that protect elderly people, children, the sick and the poor while giving more tax breaks and other benefits to his fellow oligarchs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the Democrats cave now it would be a betrayal of the millions of Americans who have fought and died for democracy and our constitution. It would be a sellout of a working class that is struggling to survive in very difficult economic times. Democrats in Congress are the last remaining opposition to Trump’s quest for absolute power. To surrender now would be an historic tragedy for our country, something that history will not look kindly upon.I understand what people across this country are going through. My Democratic colleagues and I are getting calls every day from federal employees who are angry about working without pay and Americans who are frantic about feeding their families and making ends meet. But my Democratic colleagues must also understand this: Republicans are hearing from their constituents as well. There is a reason why 15 Republican Senators are finally standing up to Trump and, along with every member of the Democratic caucus, support funding Snap benefits.There is a reason why 14 Republican members of the House are on record calling for the extension of tax credits for the Affordable Care Act. Understandably, Republicans do not want to go home and explain to their constituents why they voted to double or, in some cases, triple healthcare premiums. They do not want to go home and explain why they are throwing large numbers of their constituents off healthcare. They do not want to go home and explain why they are taking food off the tables of hungry families.We are living in the most dangerous and pivotal moment in modern American history. Our children and future generations will not forget what we do now. Democrats must not turn their backs on the needs of working people and allow our already broken healthcare system to collapse even further. Democrats must not allow an authoritarian president to continue undermining our constitution and the rule of law. The choice is clear. If the Democrats stand with the American people, the American people will stand with them. If they surrender, the American people will hold them accountable. More

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      A new generation of populists is showing Democrats how to defeat Trump | Jared Abbott and Bhaskar Sunkara

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      As Democrats continue to sift through the wreckage of the 2024 election, one truth should be impossible to ignore: they are bleeding support among working-class voters and Donald Trump’s stumbles alone will not save them. From Black and Latino men to young and low-income voters, Trump’s re-election made it clear that working Americans increasingly feel alienated from the Democratic party.Democrats today might not be as sanguine about sidelining the working class as Chuck Schumer was before the 2016 election, when he claimed that for every blue-collar voter Democrats lost, they could pick up two college-educated Republicans. But it’s clear that many Democrats still don’t see winning back working-class voters as essential – either to defeat Maga or to build durable, majoritarian progressive coalitions for the future.A new report from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) and Jacobin magazine, based on an analysis of hundreds of public opinion questions spanning six decades, suggests that blue-collar voters are not out of reach – if Democrats are willing to lead with economic populism. The report shows that American workers have long supported – and still overwhelmingly favor – a bold progressive economic agenda. If Democrats placed these policies consistently at the heart of their platform, they could not only improve conditions in working-class communities but also begin to rebuild trust with the very voters they need most.Progressive economic reforms – from raising the federal minimum wage and implementing a federal jobs guarantee to expanding social security, taxing the rich, and investing in public goods such as education and infrastructure – are supported not only by Democratic-leaning voters but also by substantial segments of Donald Trump’s base.And while national Democrats remain unsure how to reconnect with these voters, a new generation of economic populists across the country is already showing the way. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary campaigning to tax the rich, fund public goods and confront corporate landlords. In Nebraska, independent union leader Dan Osborn – a mechanic and labor activist – ran on a tight platform of workers’ rights and corporate accountability and over-performed Kamala Harris by 14 points in a deep-red state.In difficult House swing districts, Democrats are leaning into economic populism with promising results. In Pennsylvania’s 17th district, Chris Deluzio, a representative and navy veteran, champions “economic patriotism”, calling out economic elites and damaging trade agreements while pushing to rebuild domestic industry and strengthen labor rights. In New Mexico’s second district, Gabe Vasquez has built his platform around a sharp critique of corporate greed – condemning CEOs and wealthy investors for inflating profits while shortchanging workers – and has pushed for a $15 minimum wage and cutting taxes for working families.Meanwhile, in Wisconsin’s third district, Democrat Rebecca Cooke – a waitress and small business owner who grew up on a dairy farm – is mounting a 2026 comeback bid after over-performing other Democrats and losing by less than three points in 2024, running on a platform that targets corporate price gouging, expands affordable rural housing and defends family farms.These candidates come from different regions and backgrounds, and hold diverse ideological positions, but nonetheless share a core political strategy: they are highly disciplined economic populists who speak to working-class voters in language that’s grounded, direct and relatable.And, contrary to many centrist pundits, while they do need to avoid fringe rhetoric, Democrats don’t have to embrace social conservatism to do it. The CWCP study shows that while working-class voters are generally to the right of middle-class voters on cultural issues, most hold moderate, and in some cases even progressive, views on issues such as immigration, abortion and civil rights. These voters do not want Democrats to mimic Republicans on controversial wedge issues, but they do want a commonsense message focused on the economic realities of working Americans.Yet working-class voters don’t just embrace politicians who support the right policies. Our previous research shows that they want leaders who understand people like them, share a similar class background and speak plainly about what they’ll do and why it matters. The path to winning back working-class voters runs through authenticity, clarity and a credible commitment to improving people’s lives.Unfortunately, the national party has been slow to adapt. Harris’s 2024 campaign offered ambitious economic proposals that could have benefited millions of working Americans. But as the race wore on, she grew increasingly reluctant to lead with economic populism, instead doubling down on a strategy rooted in fear of Trump. That may have comforted donors and consultants, but it left many working-class voters cold – and opened the door for Republicans to posture as the party of the people.This vacuum has given Republicans room to pose as economic populists, despite an agenda that overwhelmingly serves corporations and the wealthy. Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill Act delivered massive tax cuts for the rich while masquerading as a working-class boon. House Republicans have attacked union protections and slashed social welfare programs – moves wildly out of step with working-class preferences. But without a compelling Democratic alternative, the right’s billionaire populism can take hold. If Democrats want to rebuild a durable majority, they need candidates who stay focused on populist economics and steer clear of the culture wars.Reversing the Democratic party’s working-class decline will not be solved by platitudes or photo ops with hard hats. It demands a real shift in priorities. It means crafting campaigns that focus relentlessly on tangible economic outcomes and elevating candidates who reflect the experience of the working class. And it demands a clear, consistent message that puts class and dignity back at the center of Democratic politics.

      Jared Abbott is the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation magazine and the founding editor of Jacobin More

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      ‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed

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      ‘I think what Trumpism is about, is an understanding that the system in America is not working for working-class people,” says Bernie Sanders, sitting in the Guardian’s offices in London. “In a phoney, hypocritical way, Trump has tapped into that. His quote-unquote ‘solutions’ will only make a bad situation worse.”View image in fullscreenIn person, Sanders’ 83 years read differently than in photograph, perhaps because of how conversational he is. His voice is magnetic – a Brooklyn accent that feels both warm and tough. “But what I have been aware of, and I’ve talked about it for years, is that in America, the very richest people are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.”Later, he will say the same thing to an audience in London – only with more emphasis and passion. “Sixty per cent. Six-zero. Do you know what paycheck to paycheck means?” It’s exhilarating to hear Sanders speak to a crowd: his zeal is reflected back in their faces, his moral clarity is such a relief, set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party’s opposition to Trump and his administration. Class war is as old as time, but it’s a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it. “I do,” he tells me. “There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war.”It’s a look at what could have been. Sanders ran, of course, to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, and again in 2020. The first time, there was a real sense, in the US and abroad, that something incredible might happen: that someone with “almost no name recognition,” he says, a senator from the small state of Vermont, might successfully challenge Hillary Clinton, whom the party had already anointed. We all know how that worked out. Was it the greatest disappointment of his political life? “Well, you’re too busy to feel things,” he says. “You’re just working very hard.”What is absolutely unequivocal is his criticism of the Democrats. The party, he thinks, lacks any real progressive promise. “What they say is, ‘The status quo is working pretty good, and we will tinker around the edges’, and that is not a message that resonates with working people”. He refuses to indulge in any personal ill-will towards Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. The most he’ll voice is a weary resignation about 2020, when his campaign “won the first three states, primary states, in terms of popular votes. Then the Democratic establishment made sure the other candidates dropped out, and they rallied around Joe Biden. You know, that’s the world that we live in. We are taking on not just the Republican leadership, we are taking on a Democratic establishment which is tied to elements of corporate America.”During the 2024 election, he “worked very hard to see that Kamala Harris was elected. I was all over the country and was one of her major surrogates. We begged our campaign to start talking about the needs of working people. But their consultants and the money people behind them thought of another strategy, showing that she was more conservative, that she worked with people like Liz Cheney, worked with Republicans, had billionaires going out and saying that she’s wonderful. They thought that was the right approach. I did not think that was the approach, and I was public about that.” He pauses, and not for effect: it’s hard to relive November 2024. “But my voice did not carry,” he says.Sanders started his political life in 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. His brother, Larry, is 90 and lives in Oxfordshire. He stood as a Green candidate in David Cameron’s old parliamentary seat in 2016. In a speech that year, supporting Sanders as the Democratic nominee, Larry gave a brief portrait of their parents. “Eli Sanders and Dorothy Wexford Sanders. They did not have easy lives, and they died young,” he said. Dorothy was born in New York, to Jewish immigrant parents fleeing Russian pogroms. Eli arrived in the US in 1921, most of his family remaining in what is now Poland and what was then Austrian Galicia, to be “wiped out by Hitler,” Sanders has said in the past. Eli worried constantly about providing for his family and both he and Dorothy were political, Larry said in the speech: “They loved the New Deal of Franklin D Roosevelt, and would be especially proud that Bernard is renewing that vision.”View image in fullscreenSanders’ charge to the Democrats now is twofold. “Their weakness is, I think, that their credibility is now quite low. And they don’t have much of a message for working people, other than to say Trump is dangerous. I think that’s just not enough.” He point blank refuses to get into Trump’s administration – its excesses, surprises, non-surprises, without first walking through everything that was already wrong with the US. “What the Democrats have to absolutely make clear is this: we’re going to take on the billionaire class. They’re going to start paying their fair share of taxes. We’re going to have healthcare for all people as a human right. We’re going to have a strong childcare system that every American can afford. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to create millions of jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. We’re going to build housing – boy, housing is like it is here, just a huge crisis. We’re going to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. Do Democrats say that? No.”That Sanders will not be drawn on every new Trump calumny, instead focusing on an economic reality that’s been worsening for decades, does help him keep on course. And it definitely doesn’t stop him giving Trump both barrels. “We don’t usually have presidents suing the media, threatening the media if they write bad stories about them. We don’t usually have presidents threatening to impeach judges. We don’t have presidents suing law firms. You add all that together, it is a movement for authoritarianism.” Is it worse than he predicted? I was thinking specifically about the extrajudicial detentions and deportations, students dragged off campus and held for weeks, perfectly legal migrants sent to El Salvador, when they weren’t even from there. “First time around, Trump was not as well organised. They’ve had four years to get their act together, so to speak. And that’s what this Project 2025 document was about.”Project 2025 was a document published by rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation in 2024, offering a terrifying vision for a second Trump term. An outright proposal to dismantle the US government, it was a roadmap to crackdown on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights – as well as being against action on the climate crisis and against vaccines. If it looked like a blueprint for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road combined, none of the alarm last year could ever have encompassed the reality that would come. Among many other things, the Trump administration would go on to deport people without due process, and then ignore a supreme court ruling that an 18th-century wartime declaration about “alien enemies” was not a proper legal instrument.I ask a question about who funds the Heritage Foundation – as it keeps all donations secret, which raises questions about whose interests Project 2025 is really serving. His reply is impatient: “It doesn’t matter who it is they have. There’s no lack of well-paid, right-wing consultants and intellectuals who can move this country to an oligarchic authoritarian society.” His tone is clear – stop getting lost in detail, stop looking for hidden connections, stop messing around and start fighting.“One of the frightening aspects of what’s going on is the degree to which the establishment-type folks have caved in, and so quickly,” he says. “That was much less the case, during Trump’s first term.” He mentions Jeff Bezos, “who one had assumed was kind of a moderate Democrat”, losing his editorial board because they were going to endorse Kamala Harris. “Same thing in the Los Angeles Times. When you have ABC agreeing to a settlement with Trump; the bogus lawsuit against CBS that Paramount are negotiating right now. When you have major, billion-dollar law firms saying, ‘OK, we plead guilty to having clients who went to court against you and your friends, that was a terrible crime, we’re going to give you millions of dollars.’ Harvard has buckled up a little bit and appears not to be caving in, but a lot of universities have. None of this was the case eight years ago. They are creating the overall mentality that it will be dangerous to be strongly critical of Donald Trump.”View image in fullscreenIn other areas, money is talking so loudly in politics that it’s all you can hear. Sanders has used Gaza as an example when he says that politicians are afraid to speak out on Israel’s actions in case Super Pacs – which can put forward unlimited amounts of money for a candidate – will penalise them at the next election. Today, he says it’s not just Gaza, but a host of other issues. “If you say, ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea to cut Medicaid and give tax breaks to billionaires? Do you really think that climate change is a hoax?” there will be a number, not a majority, but a number of Republicans who would say: ‘No. But if I stand up and vote ‘no’, the next day, Elon Musk would say, “All right, you are going to be primaried [a candidate will be fielded against you], and Trump will support your opponent. I will put unlimited sums of money to elect your opponent.”’ Good luck to you.’”While that pattern is undoubtedly visible across many issues, the example of Gaza is particularly stark – with groups such as Aipac, funded by pro-Israel billionaires, putting tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, mainly Democrats, that it did not deem to be sufficiently supportive of Israel in the run-up to 2024. As the atrocities in Gaza leave many in civil society dumbfounded, what is the long game here, I ask. “That’s a difficult question, and I don’t know the answer. I will tell you that the United States has had a long-term relationship with Israel, and there are many people who have intellectually chosen not to understand that Netanyahu does not represent the Israel of 20 years ago. The moderate democratic society is now controlled by right-wing racist extremists who have done, and are doing today, absolutely horrific things to the Palestinian people in violation of American law and international law. They refuse to recognise that.” In Dublin, he was heckled for not using the word genocide, and some US progressives were dismayed, two years ago, when he didn’t call for an immediate ceasefire. He speaks out now, choosing his words carefully; he’s not on the fence.Since the end of March, Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (he always calls her that, never AOC), have been holding campaign rallies all over the US from Arizona to Utah. They are deliberately not skipping the diehard Democratic states – but have been more surprised by the numbers they’ve been getting in red states. “This is not a campaign. This is a political rally, and I think the numbers are almost unprecedented. Large numbers of people, including in conservative areas, do not want to see oligarchy in America, do not want to see authoritarianism, do not want to see massive tax breaks for the rich and cuts to the programmes that working-class people desperately need.” Sure, he and AOC sometimes disagree, “my wife and I disagree on issues! But Alexandria, I think, comes pretty much from where I come from.”View image in fullscreenHe has hope for the future, too. There are a couple of dozen people in the house Progressive Caucus – a 98-strong group of the more left-wing members of the Democratic party in Congress – that are “strong progressives”, he says. “Alexandria is maybe one of the most articulate and charismatic, but there are others there as well.” Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib to name a few.Sanders is clear that he and Ocasio-Cortez are not trying to start a third political party. Instead, they’re “trying to build a grassroots movement of working-class people and young people … If you’re seeing candidates now arising who are progressive, that’s down to a lot of the work that we are doing for the 2026 midterms.”Sanders in person is very much as he is in his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, in which he lays out some principles, among them, “wars and excessive military budgets are not good”; “carbon emissions are not good”; “racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not good”; “exploiting workers is not good”. It’s really the sight of him igniting a crowd that’s so hopeful, which holds for him, too – he keeps his optimism because he has the “fortune of being able to go around the country and speak to large numbers of wonderful people”. The message doesn’t change, though – it doesn’t have to be new: it just has to be true.As he leaves to make his way upstairs to the photography studio, he strides on ahead, his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, an activist herself, making small talk with me in his wake. It’s not that he’s performing vigour in an era where politicians’ ages are relentlessly analysed. It’s just his manner – all this urgent change should have happened yesterday. More

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      Democrats still misunderstand working-class voters – to their peril | Dustin Guastella

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      Progressives have plenty of bad ideas that should be axed, but populism without an economic promise is a bloodless bleat.It wasn’t long ago that Democratic party moderates expressed ambivalence toward the working class. In 2016, Chuck Schumer summed up the party’s attitude by predicting that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia”.What a difference a decade makes. In a recent report titled Renewing the Democratic Party the thinktank Third Way warns: “For the first time since the mid-20th century, the central fault line of American politics is neither race and ethnicity nor gender but rather class.” The policy shop even organized a meeting of heavy-weight Democratic party leaders to develop a new strategy for how they might win back the working class.Can moderate Democrats, plotting their path back to power in Loudoun county, Virginia (the richest county in the US), convincingly make a populist pivot?While Third Way’s advice, collected in a widely circulated memo, has some useful insights, more than anything it demonstrates establishment Democrats’ failure to understand the nature of working-class woes. In fact, the revival of populism, left and right, can be understood as a revolt against the world Third Way helped midwife. After all, they embraced an economic model – defined by free trade, deindustrialization, mass global migration and stagnant wages – that was responsible for the left’s breakup with the working class in the first place.Working-class culture clashThird Way’s first takeaway from the election is that Democrats are culturally disconnected from the working class. And they’re right. They advocate moving away from identity politics, insist that candidates use “plain language”, “avoid jargon”, reject “fringe positions” and eschew “overly moralistic or condescending messaging”. This makes sense. Yet newfound fears of identity politics, or the excessive influence of the foundation-funded non-profit left, reflect a certain amnesia. Moreover, turning the ship around is easier said than done.It’s no secret that sanctimonious political correctness, and preachy “social-justice” rhetoric have served as a major means to sideline progressive critics of the prevailing economic order. In fact, long before Hillary Clinton infamously wondered whether breaking up the big banks would “end racism”, her husband’s campaign architects – paradigmatic Third Way Democrats – pursued the same line of attack against critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Those who didn’t want jobs shipped to the lowest-wage corners of the globe were labeled “racists”. It’s not a coincidence, then, that the rise of identity politics, and even “wokeness”, happened in tandem with the ascent of globalization as championed by Third Way adherents.As factories closed and millions of jobs were drained out of the US, the economic and social power of the working class fell into a steep decline. By the mid-1990s non-profits and thinktanks replaced labor unions as the major source of political influence on the left. With unions taking a backseat, politicking within the Democratic party took on a more elite character. Fights over slices of the economic pie shifted from the vertical axis – between labor and big business, between the rich and the poor – to the horizontal, between cross-class “groups”, unfailingly represented by well-staffed professional advocacy organizations.This all had the convenient effect of rendering blue-collar concerns practically invisible to elite Democrats. While trade, immigration and dissension over cultural issues have long appeared at the top of lists of concerns for non-college educated workers, Democrats wouldn’t listen. Instead they embraced liberal professionals as the vanguard of the New Democrat movement. Welcoming the influence of the Brahmin caste. Meanwhile, liberal cultural institutions (the media, the academy, the arts) increasingly applied downward pressure on blue-collar workers to embrace new values. That is, the values of the elite.Consider that, for the first half of this decade, there were wall-to-wall injunctions from the largest corporations in retail, tech and even finance – not to mention virtually all major media conglomerates – to embrace liberal identity politics, “diversity, equity and inclusion”, and cosmopolitan sexual ethics. Looked at in this light, today’s culture war can best be understood as a working-class revolt against the values of “knowledge economy” elites. It won’t be easy to make peace with the same elite still in charge.Resentment is richNor is it a coincidence why educational cleavages, in particular, play such a major role in cultural and political conflict today. While they were busy fashioning the “New Economy”, Third Way elites insisted that non-college educated workers refashion themselves to suit it. They implored everyone to go to college and learn to code to compete in the emerging high-tech hyper-global world. They were confident that the short-term pain of job losses would be rewarded with future gains. It hasn’t panned out. In terms of income, wealth and even life expectancy, blue-collar workers have found themselves lagging further and further behind their educated white-collar counterparts. Since 2000 wages for non-college educated workers have remained flat or actually fallen. For those with a college degree they have modestly increased. The earnings gap has grown wide.Meanwhile, none have benefitted from the contemporary economic and political arrangement as much as the wealthy. In inverse proportions have the rich profited alongside working-class decline. In 1990 – before Clinton signed Nafta, before Democrats presided over further deregulation of the financial sector, and before the dot-com boom – there were 66 billionaires in the United States. Just 10 years later – after gobs of factory jobs were off-shored – there were 298. A 350% increase. Today, there are more than 748.As a result, even Larry Summers (once a pre-eminent Third Way economist) has identified an “investment dearth” combined with a “savings glut” that has led to economic “secular stagnation”. In layman’s terms: the rich have all the money and they refuse to share. The billionaire hoarding of wealth means investment in the real economy is anemic. They sit like elephants on top of global growth rates. And because workers can’t spend wages they don’t have, effective demand stays flat.The Third Way left promised that the fire sale of public assets, the unshackling of big banks and the introduction of unfettered free trade would unleash unprecedented growth and a rising standard of living for American workers. It didn’t. Instead, it drove down wages and helped them transform their own party into a haven of the affluent and the educated.The paradoxes of pragmatic populismConfronting all this, Third Way now advocates that Democrats embrace a brand of pragmatic populism. They recognize the need to critique “corporate excess and corruption”, they counsel Democrats to avoid “dismissing economic anxieties” and instead acknowledge “real struggles like high prices and stagnant wages”. They even suggest that Democrats fight “for systemic reforms rather than just defending the status quo”.At the same time, they stress that Democrats are hurt by “reflexively attacking wealthy business leaders”. They warn against “vilifying the rich” and “demonizing” corporations. And insist that Democrats be pragmatic “pro-capitalist” reformers.They argue that candidates ought to own “the failures of Democratic governance” they don’t count among these, the broad failure of liberal economic policy to improve the lives of most voters. And while the authors of the memo are right to notice that “Democrats lack a cohesive, inspiring economic agenda”, they don’t offer any ideas for economic renewal. There is nothing about trade, manufacturing, the crisis of mass layoffs or the crumbling of American infrastructure. There is no discussion of jobs programs, labor market policies, overtime pay, or cost-of-living raises. The only mention of wages is to suggest that they ought to be “better”. Worse, Third Way’s insistence that candidates avoid blaming the corporations and the rich – the very group responsible for the broad economic and political crisis – presents a conundrum for would-be Democratic populists: how are they meant to make “the economy” a central talking point, if they don’t have anything to talk about?Blue-collar preferences do seem politically heterodox – progressive on wages and jobs, protectionist on trade, restrictive on immigration, moderate on culture and conservative on the deficit – and it can seem difficult to build a program to suit what seem like conflicting demands. But looked at another way these views add up to a fundamental break with the prevailing economic order. A call to shift society in favor of workers.Yet Third Way’s economic proposals – summed up by the demand for “middle-class tax cuts”– are a last gasp effort at preserving that order. Until, and unless, progressives can campaign in ways that address the root causes of workers’ cultural, social and economic concerns – that is, until the left can provide a compelling case for how to exit the global race to the bottom – the result will be a string of narrow majorities and narrow defeats.Each party taking their turn in office, neither providing a permanent home for the working class.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623. More

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      What is ‘abundance’ liberalism, and why are people arguing about it?

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      Is progressive public policy in America broken? Do many left-leaning laws actually make life more expensive for struggling people? Is regulatory red tape hindering growth and innovation? Have Democratic-run cities, such as New York and San Francisco, become giant billboards against liberal governance?These arguments wouldn’t sound out of place in a policy paper from a conservative thinktank. Yet their newest champions are two of America’s best-known left-leaning journalists, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson – and they believe the left is overdue for a reckoning of sorts.Klein and Thompson make their case in a new book simply called, with no subtitle, Abundance. The authors put forward a positive pitch for “abundance liberalism”: a vision of the US where policymakers spend less time fighting over how to apportion scarce resources and more time making sure there’s no scarcity to start with.View image in fullscreenAbundance has received a mostly positive reception so far, but also sparked debate, with critics arguing that the book ignores the effect of corporate power, downplays Republicans’ role in the crises that the US faces or overstates the effectiveness of its policy prescriptions. A writer in the left-leaning magazine American Prospect accused the “abundance agenda” of being “neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world”.The book opens with a striking image of a US, in the year 2050, that is close to utopia. Americans’ electrical needs are powered by sustainable energy “so clean it barely leaves a carbon trace and so cheap you can scarcely find it on your monthly bill”. AI breakthroughs, labor rights and economic reforms mean that most people can do their jobs in a shorter workweek. Vertical farms provide cheap and fresh vegetables, desalinated water from the ocean is used as drinking water, and lab-grown meat has replaced animal slaughter.This near-future America – less the gritty neon smog of Blade Runner than a hi-tech Copenhagen – is entirely achievable, the authors argue. It just requires political vision and a willingness to reconsider certain assumptions.Despite being the richest country in the world, the US has a problem of scarcity, particularly in Democratic-run metropolitan areas, where the costs of housing and other basic needs have spiraled out of control. This is exacerbated by the traditional progressive solution of giving people money or vouchers to help them pay for finite resources such as housing, healthcare and food, the book argues, which increases demand and merely makes those things even more expensive.“The problem is that if you subsidize the cost of something that there isn’t enough of, you’ll raise prices or force rationing,” Klein has said. He and Thompson have described themselves as “supply-side” progressives, borrowing a term usually associated with conservative economic theories.What the US badly needs to do is build, they argue – build more houses, public transportation, power plants and other infrastructure – but that isn’t happening.One obstacle is nimbyism, the tendency of people to support public works and development in the abstract but fight them when they affect their own neighborhoods. Another is “everything bagel” logrolling that complicates what should be narrowly focused legislation by layering it with other social and political objectives, such as diverse hiring requirements or climate crisis goals, in order to appease interest groups or political constituencies.In an example Thompson recently discussed on a podcast, then president Joe Biden signed legislation in 2021 providing $42bn of funding to expand access to broadband internet in rural America. As of this December, according to Politico, the program had “yet to connect a single household”. Critics told Politico that this was partly because of a “suite of federal conditions” that required states “accepting the money to make sure providers plan for climate change, reach out to unionized workforces and hire locally”, as well as guarantee affordable broadband plans for people with low incomes.“I don’t want the state of Virginia taking, say, federal money to build broadband internet and then charging poor rural folks, like, $200 a month to go online,” Thompson said. “But by holding those values so closely … we accidentally built just about nothing.” A “confusion of process versus outcomes” meant that “very little was actually done on behalf of the Americans for whom we wanted to raise their living standards”.Another example is California, which in 1982 began studying the idea of implementing a high-speed rail system across the state. The idea was, and is, extremely popular with voters, and billions of dollars were budgeted for the project. Four decades later, almost none of it has been built. A “vetocracy” of regulatory, legal, environmental and political considerations have caused endless delays and continually narrowed the project’s ambition.“In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” Thompson and Klein write, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail.”The solution to these problems, Abundance argues, is a combination of techno-optimism, ambitious and clearly defined policy goals, and political leadership that is willing at times to say no to progressive pressure groups.Klein and Thompson favorably cite what happened when a bridge collapsed in Pennsylvania in 2023, crippling an essential highway. To fix it would typically take months of planning, consultation and reviews; Governor Josh Shapiro instead declared a state of emergency that allowed the reconstruction of the bridge with union labor but free from many normal processes. The highway reopened in 12 days, instead of the 12 to 24 months that it might have taken.Abundance makes clear that it is a book written for the left, and isn’t really interested in elaborating the ways that Republicans and conservatives have contributed to these problems, though Klein and Thompson acknowledge that they have. Yet within the left the book has proved controversial.“[I]t would be a huge mistake,” Matt Bruenig, a policy analyst, wrote in Jacobin, “to sideline whatever focus there is on welfare state expansion and economic egalitarianism in favor of a focus on administrative burdens in construction.”He continued: “Indeed, we have now seen what it looks like when the government supports and subsidizes technological innovation and implementation without concerning itself with the inegalitarianism of the system. His name is Elon Musk. In its desire to promote electrical vehicles and rocketry innovations, the US government made him the richest man in the world and then he used his riches to take over a major political communications platform and then the government.”While agreeing with some of Abundance’s aims, the journalists Paul Glastris and Nate Weisberg, writing in the Washington Monthly, argued that the book’s prescriptions wouldn’t necessarily bring the kind of sweeping changes that Klein and Thompson believe. For example, according to examples they cite, areas of the US that have reformed zoning laws to make it easier to build apartment buildings and multifamily homes have seen only modest reductions in the cost of housing.Thompson and Klein have argued that the abundance agenda is bigger than any individual policy proposal, and more about the Democratic party and other left-leaning institutions rethinking their own ambitions and how they conceive of success and failure.“Liberals should be able to say: Vote for us, and we will govern the country the way we govern California!” they write. “Instead, conservatives are able to say: Vote for them, and they will govern the country the way they govern California! … What has gone wrong?” More

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      Do Trump and co want a world reclaimed by straight white men? It’s not certain they’ll get it | Andy Beckett

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      For people who believe that the world should be run by straight white men, these are heady times. Probably the most powerful social conservative on the planet occupies the White House again, and seems determined to drive “immoral” and “discriminatory” diversity policies out of American life.Two years ago, the US supreme court banned the use of affirmative action in university admissions. A growing list of American and British companies, from Ford to BT to Goldman Sachs, appear to be reducing their commitment to the once fashionable corporate principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Meanwhile, Reform UK promises to “scrap DEI rules that have lowered standards and reduced economic productivity”. In politics, commerce and education, a huge, potentially lasting counterrevolution seems to be under way.“The death of DEI is finally here,” wrote the columnist Michael Deacon in the Telegraph last year, “and it’s a joy to behold … A radical progressive ideology that, in recent years, has held countless western institutions in its miserable grip … is finally loosening.”For many companies, promoting diversity has only been a priority for a few years, since the surge of anti-racist activism set off around the world by Black Lives Matter in 2020. And in some ways the inclusive values of DEI and the winner-takes-all ethos of capitalism have always been an awkward fit. For all but the most ethical businesses, hiring and employing people in a more egalitarian way is less fundamental than maximising profits.In many supposedly diverse companies, progress towards a truly representative workforce, especially in senior positions, has been slow and far from complete. From rightwing and leftwing perspectives, it can be argued that diversity policies have just been a cynical experiment: yet another attempt to polish corporate capitalism’s increasingly tarnished public image. Now that the political climate has changed, the experiment is being unceremoniously abandoned.But is the situation really that clearcut? One of the key features of current rightwing populism is a desire to escape complicated social realities, and so it is with the revolt against diversity. Thanks to globalisation, immigration and trends in birthrates, Britain and the US, like most other rich countries, are much more multicultural than they were in the 1980s – the last time there was a big conservative pushback against diversity policies. Between 1980 and 2019, the minority ethnic proportion of the US population doubled to 40%. In England and Wales, the proportion of people who didn’t describe themselves as white British doubled between 2001 and 2021 alone: from one in eight to one in four. During these decades of flux, there were also profound shifts in how millions of Britons and Americans thought about feminism, gender, sexuality and disability.None of these socially embedded trends is likely to be completely reversed, however much rightwing populists rail against them. In a speech last week, Kemi Badenoch described diversity policies as “poison”, but the Conservatives have their own equal opportunities policy, with her face on the document’s first page. It commits the party to being “a supportive and inclusive environment where … the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances will be positively valued … [and] where the party will also continue to work towards its dedicated goal of encouraging and promoting equality and diversity”. It’s easy to see these commitments as insincere or hypocritical, but they are also a sign of how far DEI ideas have spread.Back in the 1980s, the last transatlantic campaign against diversity policies was led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Her government caricatured Labour councils that helped minorities as “loony left”, and then took many of their powers away. Meanwhile, in the US, Ronald Reagan aimed to abolish the federal government’s affirmative action programme, which he saw as “bureaucratic” social engineering. He also reduced funding for the agency that enforced equal opportunities employment law, drastically reducing the number of cases it brought against companies.But his counterrevolution got no further. Strong opposition – hard to imagine now – came from relatively liberal senior figures in the Republican party. More relevant to today, further support for diversity policies came from big business. “When Reagan sought to tear down affirmative action,” wrote the American sociologist Frank Dobbin in his 2009 book, Inventing Equal Opportunity, “corporate America stood together to oppose the [president’s] idea.”Businesses argued that diverse workforces made the best use of the country’s range of talent and were more creative and productive, and more able to understand a broad spectrum of customers at home and abroad. Shrewdly, businesses also rebranded affirmative action in more neutral, less political language, as “human resources management”. Reagan’s attempt to abolish affirmative action was quietly abandoned.Might today’s war on diversity fail in a similar way? The forces of white male supremacy have a more relentless rightwing media on their side than in Reagan and Thatcher’s day. Donald Trump and other reactionary populists also seem less likely to compromise in culture wars than their more pragmatic conservative predecessors.Yet with multiculturalism now deeply entrenched, rooting out diversity policies will be harder than Trump’s confident executive orders suggest. Legal opposition is building, and there are already signs that business is hiding its diversity programmes behind euphemisms again. On Tuesday, Apple shareholders voted against ending the company’s diversity programme. “DEI is being rebranded – not disbanded,” complained the rightwing New York Post recently. It pointed out that some companies widely thought to have dropped DEI continued to promote it on their websites in slightly modified language. If diversity policies increase profits – and according to the president of the British Chambers of Commerce, Martha Lane Fox, “Businesses that embed diversity have 25% higher financial results” – then even the most determined anti-DEI campaign is unlikely to totally prevail.Moreover, what the reactionaries want is less clear and coherent than it first seems. Do they want to restore a society utterly dominated by straight white men, which is almost certainly impossible? Or do they accept the existence of a diverse society, as long as it isn’t actually shaped by diversity policies? On these questions, conservatives are divided.Even Trump sometimes acknowledges American diversity’s permanence and importance. In his inauguration speech, he boasted of his “increases in support from … young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans …” Social conservatives around the world may be feeling triumphant now, but their revolt against diversity has probably come too late.

      Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted

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      The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law, but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain. The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising US politics.In the UK in recent years the phrase has been repurposed in the wildest ways – to mean an excess of people at university creates unwanted activism (my précis); or, in the Economist (paraphrasing again), landslides create too many mediocre backbench MPs, who can’t hope for preferment so make trouble instead. And while the second proposition might be true, the first is basic anti-intellectualism. Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs; he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary and throwing it back at everyone.But put a pin in that for a second, because elite overproduction in its true sense is hitting global politics square in the jaw. Elon Musk has inserted himself into the US election by means long term and short, above board and below it. His impact on X (formerly Twitter) since he bought it was mired for a while in comical cackhandedness, but over the past few months the real purpose has crystallised. Paid-for verification removed any faith in trusted sources that couldn’t be bought; Republican accounts flourish, Democratic ones languish. Musk himself has amplified lies and conspiracy theories. He has directly given $75m to his America PAC (political action committee), which has an X account and a yellow tick (whatever the hell that means) – it peddles xenophobic bilge. Musk opened a $1m Philadelphia voter giveaway that may be illegal earlier in the month.Musk also spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, but left the “ironic” fash posting (derogatory language about places and races) to others. He made one promise: “We’re going to get the government off your back.” He fleshed out what small government meant, in a telephone town hall (like a radio phone in, except the radio phones you, the constituents) over the weekend: ordinary Americans would face “temporary hardship” as welfare programmes are slashed in order to restructure the economy, but they should embrace the pain, as “it will ensure long-term prosperity”.It’s not the worst thing to come out of Trump’s camp in these last, nail-biting few days, and it’s by no means the worst thing Musk has said, but it is the cleanest image yet of what elite overproduction looks like: Elon Musk could never have got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018, and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017 administration.Inconveniently, more billionaires (21) have donated to Kamala Harris’s campaign than to Trump’s (14); this is a problem for mature democracies everywhere. All political parties court high net worth individuals. It creates an atmosphere of equivalence – if a rich man buys your clothes, how is that different to his buying you a social media platform, except that you’re a cheaper date? If a rich man quashes an endorsement of your rival, but doesn’t endorse you, does that pass the sniff test? If a rich man creates a thinktank, which devises an ideological scheme that people are medium-sure that you, in government, will adopt wholesale, whose proposals are recruiting ideologically loyal civil servants, collecting data on abortions and limiting the use of abortion pills, is that any different to a money-bags with a pet peeve buying a tennis match with a political leader at a charity auction?And what about the billionaires who keep a finger on both scales, donate to both candidates because why not, it suits them to stay friends and it’s chicken feed to them anyway? Is all this just the same game?Qualitatively, yes: all billionaires are bad news in politics; all bought influence is undemocratic. But as billionaires line up behind a neofascist, you can see that this is a new phase in which they’re looking for more bang for their buck. They’re not trying to protect their commercial interests; they don’t need more money. They don’t even seek to shore up their own political influence – rather, to neuter any influence that may countervail it. Delinquent elites are in an open crusade against democracy, which, yes, does appear to be pretty destabilising.

      Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      America’s problem is massive inequality – not ‘woke’ educated elites | Robert Reich

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      More than a third of Harvard’s graduating seniors are heading into finance or management consulting – two professions notable for how quickly their practitioners “make a bag”, or make money, reports the New York Times.Similar percentages show up in other prestigious universities.Frankly, if anything, I’m surprised that only a third of graduating seniors at Harvard and similar places are heading into finance and consulting.In this era of raging income inequality and billionaire robber barons, the bags are gigantic. At Goldman Sachs they start at $105,000 to $164,000. At McKinsey, $100,000 to $140,000.And that’s just the first year.Think of it: make a bag and then do whatever you really want to do without ever again worrying about money. Make a bag and support whatever good causes you believe in without having to work at social change. Make a bag and you’ll never have to grovel to those with wealth and power.When I graduated Dartmouth College in 1968, almost no one I knew went into finance or consulting. In those days, inequalities were minuscule compared with now. The bags at that time could have fit into a glove compartment.One of the least-discussed but most profound consequences of America’s surging inequality is the number of talented young people now devoting themselves to making bags.Remarkably, though, most talented young people are not yet in the bag.For most of the last 43 years I’ve taught at several of America’s most prestigious universities. The biggest change I’ve seen over the years isn’t how starry-eyed students have become about finance and consulting.It’s how passionate they’ve become about making the world better.Sure, I’ve noticed the mini-stampede into finance and consulting. But graduates out to make a bag are still the minority.Most graduates are joining non-profits, entering politics or becoming community organizers, public defenders, teachers, healthcare workers, diplomats, staffers on congressional committees, union organizers and environmental activists.The conservative columnist David Brooks bemoans this trend. In a recent column he laments that at elite universities “the share of progressive students and professors has steadily risen, and the share of conservatives has approached zero”.He cites a May 2023 survey of Harvard’s graduating class showing 65% identifying as progressive or very progressive.Why is this happening? Brooks thinks the gen Z cohort at prestigious universities is so tormented by the cognitive dissonance between their positions of privilege and their commitments to social justice that they must “prove to themselves and others” that they’re “on the side of the oppressed”.It doesn’t seem to have dawned on Brooks that, at least since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2017, the meaning of “progressive” has shifted from someone who wants a more just society to someone who simply wants to preserve democracy.To be a “progressive” at a prestigious university these days – indeed, to be a progressive anywhere in America – is no longer to be on the political left as the left used to be defined. It’s to be on the side of the constitution, the rule of law, and a modicum of decency.This is why so many more undergraduates and professors now deem themselves progressive.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI agree with Brooks that elite universities should dismantle arrangements that let the privileged members of society pass down their educational privileges to their children, while locking out most everyone else – for example, by ending affirmative action for legacies and calling on the private sector to remove college prerequisites for decent-paying jobs.But Brooks and other conservatives are dead wrong about which elite is holding back the rest of America. It’s not the educated class. It’s the moneyed class.America’s corporate and financial elites have flooded American politics with money in order to receive government subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks – all of which ratchet up their wealth, entrench their power and make it harder for average working people to advance.Trump and much of his Republican party are deploying criticisms of the educated class to pose as populists on the side of the people.Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of ’06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents. Or Senator Josh Hawley, Stanford class of ’02 and Yale Law ’06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of “moral rot”.It’s all a thinly veiled cover for their efforts to help the wealthy make even bigger bags while keeping everyone else – especially average workers – down.At this moment, Republicans are promising the moneyed class that in return for financial backing in the upcoming election, they’ll get an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts – which disproportionately boosted the wealth of big corporations and the rich – plus additional tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.This could expand the national debt by roughly $1tn over the next decade, rendering it impossible for the government to invest in things average Americans desperately need – such as childcare, eldercare, affordable housing, and, yes, affordable higher education.Brooks thinks that if present trends continue, there will be a populist uprising – “a multiracial, multiprong, right/left alliance against the educated class”.For Brooks, the lesson is that the educated class must “seriously reform the system or be prepared to be run over”.He’s wrong. The real lesson is we must reform the system created by the moneyed class – or be prepared to run the moneyed class over.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More