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Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan rings hollow to many on the left. “When were we great exactly?” they ask. “During Jim Crow? When women couldn’t get a checking account? When homosexuals couldn’t be public about their sexuality?” We’ve made fantastic progress in protecting the rights of minorities in the last 70 years, but as we’ve made progress in many directions, we have regressed in one particular facet: affordability.
As with anything at scale, attempting to rigorously define the feeling of unaffordability as it affects individuals throughout society is a difficult task. My metric of choice is the percentage of after-tax income that remains after essentials, including housing, food, medical care, childcare, and transportation. Through this lens, we can explain why people are feeling left behind. It is this value left after the bills that people feel as their discretionary funds. It is this amount that a decrease creates the sense of struggling.
The biggest expense by far is housing. Housing cost as a proportion of income has almost doubled since 1970. While in 1970, the average home cost about 3.9 times the median household income, today it is 7.13 times more expensive. Food prices have, surprisingly, decreased on average, but primarily due to the increase in availability of low-quality foods that are detrimental to health. Women becoming empowered to have careers and an independent source of income is fantastic, but without a parent staying at home, it has introduced childcare costs that make it unaffordable to have children for many couples. Compared to 1900, our built environment has changed, and we have transitioned from living in cities and small towns to living in sprawling suburban developments. As a result, we are functionally required to own cars, as for most, virtually all aspects of community are only available by driving. The cost to own and operate a car is, on average, about $1000 a month.
This is the feeling Trump spoke to. It is real, and to ignore it is to hand a tool of political power acquisition to our opponents. While Trump tapped into a real feeling, he has always lied about the causes. He has insinuated it is the fault of immigrants, of foreign trade, of liberal acceptance of minority groups, of everyone that isn’t a “Real American”. And this is how fascism begins. It is not rooted in hatred but rather uses hatred to give its supporters an enemy to struggle against. I’d like to share a quote from FDR, who said during one of his infamous fireside chats:
Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations--not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership in government. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. We in America know that our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need to act together, to meet the problems of the Nation boldly, and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people.
The German public during the Nazi regime was not some inherently inhuman evil race that was born with a hatred for Jews. They were a profoundly suffering people, brutalized economically in the wake of a World War. They found their struggles enunciated and sympathized with by a charismatic, strongman demagogue. Trump isn’t Hitler; he’s not that popular, and he’s not that good of an orator, but the next demagogue might be.
The task of protecting our society and our democracy is equal to protecting the economic dignity of our laboring class. It is not optional. This is the primary responsibility of democratic government, and we must use the levers of democracy while we still can.