(This post was also published on The Huffington Post)
Introduction / Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four
From Part II:
Prosperity was not disappearing from the American landscape, but simply shifting. In roughly the same 30-year period when growth in workers’ wages was slowing down to a crawl, individual wealth became so concentrated that the 400 richest billionaires in the United States had an accumulated wealth equal to half that of the U.S. population (150 million people).
The staggering inequities of wealth were captured in the rising ratios between CEO pay and average annual wages for nonsupervisory labor — 20:1 in the early 1970s, doubling by the end of the decade, and then continuing on a Mount Everest–like climb to 376:1 by 2000. To put this in perspective, the average CEO compensation in 2007 was $18.8 million, compared with $31,000 for the average worker with only a high school degree and $15,000 for a minimum-wage job — a ratio of 1,253:1.
If these numbers aren’t troubling enough, the great recession in 2008 appeared proof that no one, even the wealthy, was minding the store. A shift in perception was taking place in the collective from a belief that success was a function of merit and effort to a recognition that the system was rigged.
***
The tragic consequences of these historical developments are now being visited upon us in illness, suicide, racial division, and the emergence of demagogic leaders, most notably Donald Trump. In the past year, data has been unearthed that reveals just how serious and widespread the damage has been.
While trying to discover links between well-being and suicide rates, two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton and Anne Case, stumbled onto some harrowing statistics. Analyzing health and mortality data during the period of 1999 to 2014, they discovered skyrocketing levels of suicide, liver disease from alcoholism, and deaths from heroin and prescription opioids in one particular demographic group above all others: 45-to-54-year-old whites with a high school education or less.
To put this in starker terms, white Americans with a high school degree or less are now dying in epidemic proportions from what can only be described as despair. In that group of Americans, 45-to-54-year-old whites, death rates rose by 22% while falling for those with a college education. Death rates also declined for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics as well as for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups. But not for this particular group of white Americans. Dr. Deaton could think of only one parallel example: “Only HIV/AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this.”
Dr. Case also found that during the period studied, income for this demographic group fell, after adjusting for inflation, by 19%. Incidence of mental illness and difficulty socializing increased in tandem with the finding that a third of this group reported chronic pain, including join pain and sciatica, enough to make walking two blocks difficult. The least educated were most likely to report the greatest incidence of pain and the worst general health.
As for suicide, the findings are remarkably consistent with the data on overall mortality. From 1999 to 2014, a surge in rates of suicide, typically viewed as a problem for teenagers and the elderly, rose among middle-aged Americans. Suicide of middle-aged Americans is at its highest peak in 30 years, increasing for women ages 45 to 64 by 63% and for men in that age range by 43%. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2010 and 8.1 per 100,000 for women. So dramatic was this increase that the overall suicide rate rose by 24% during the study period, a sign of deep anguish among millions of Americans. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014.
Sadly, but not accidentally, the demographic group most likely to be burdened by financial distress, lack of education, ill health, chronic pain, addiction, and suicide was also the one most likely to support Donald Trump for president during the early emergence of his candidacy. During that period, August through September 2015, a Reuters poll found that 58% of voters without a high school degree supported him, as did nearly 50% of voters with only a high school degree. And they remain the base of his current support. And of course, they are almost exclusively white, anxious to find scapegoats for their distress.
What we are witnessing today is a polarization of world views. These world views are made up of specific attitudes toward issues like gun control, abortion, and climate change, but they also cut much deeper into what might be understood as a tribal identification. For many white Americans, the counterpoint to the attention given to the needs of minorities and immigrants is a growing sense of their own displacement, abandonment, and suffering. And what we know about unacknowledged feelings of loss and grief is that they can quickly turn to hostility, paranoia, and idealized memories of a romanticized past. This is the dark soil from which demagogic power arises.
Hi Alan,
Thank you for addressing the scapegoating violence and it’s rapid spread, maybe even intentionally being activated as a strategy. I personally don’t think we have time for an inner (within ourselves individually) revolution to quelle an even more violent future without an outer (economic environment) remedy. I think we need a Jubilee. a real one, explained fully to the larger community – all personal, small business, and student debt given complete forgiveness. I’m not being glib here. Our economic situation is beyond injustice, and our population is intuiting this. The social chaos we are living in is mimetic, and eventually will lead to scapegoating violence to terminate the rivalry. Do you see an opening for a solution like a Jubilee (Updated for the global village)? I truly don’t see another way out of our mess. I think the freedom of choices folks would have without the burdens of mortgages, and other debts would turn the intelligence of our population towards tasks that need to be done, rather than finding a job working for a questionable if not outright evil or toxic organization. What say you?
Hi Mike, great to hear from you. You raise essential questions and inspire me to keep writing, not so much with answers but with ways of approaching social issues that are twisted together and not easy to untie. If there is a purpose to my writing, it is that living the right questions are far more important than competing over answers. Answers arise when we have truly lived into the questions.
I always get a kick out of articles with statistics about wages. I made 32,000 a year working at a University having a Masters degree. It isn’t only the uneducated that think this system is rigged? This country is not all like the east and west coasts where most of the propaganda comes from. I think the problems run much deeper. Differences in beliefs about abortion and gun control and immigration are not only about money but about individual rights. I will never understand how someone can feel they have rights but don’t have to respect the rights of others, particularly those who can’t stand up for themselves, ie.: the unborn humans. I have had relatives raped and beat up by criminals who were not here legally, but it is considered racist to want our immigration laws enforced. I don’t think we solve our problems with racist policemen, who have to work in inner cities that have been left to rot, with a radical group like black lives matter. That just distracts from the real reasons for the shootings of black men by police officers and black men by black men for that matter, which is a far greater problem, and totally ignores the warlike environment in the inner cities due to drugs, poor schools and the biggest reason, no fathers in their homes. This total feeling of hopelessness is not something the elite and highly educated in this country understand easily. I see a real effort to keep people divided not bring them together to solve problems. Now you bring up the hidden suicide problem in middle aged men who should be at the prime of their lives. We also have the massive suicide problem with out veterans. There is so much knowledge about dealing with trauma and suicide and yet our lower income and veterans aren’t receiving these services.
I think the system is actually working very well. Just look at Washington D.C., Hollywood, the elite press, the wealthy and powerful, and Wall Street, They are happy, they are doing well, they are getting exactly what they set out for and voted for and why should anything change politically? That is why they say the problem is Donald Trump and he is the next Hitler, because they don’t want anything to change. The regular people are being criticized for wanting meaningful change and they are not considered worth listening to because it is important to control them. That is why the black communities are controlled by welfare and getting them riled up with groups like black lives matter. Then we don’t have to really help them so they can live the American dream. They can just be used as votes and everything can continue as it is. This is the apparent view, as indicated by their actions, of the educated, enlightened, so called non-racist, progressives in this country. Please tell me where I am wrong because I am so tired of the scapegoating and the total lack of looking at the deeper meaning of the problem. That is why I was so excited to read you articles that are looking at why we are experiencing this unprecedented political drama. I was so amazed to watch Donald Trump unseat an amazing group of candidates who were so well qualified on so many levels. It was like nothing I have ever seen but as I watched it unfold I could totally see why. The left wing press is what gave me so much insight. They never reported what is really happening in America on a deeper level.
We have a God fearing, liberty loving, hard working nexus of Americans who don’t hate, aren’t anti-Muslim, or anti- immigrant, or anti- black but don’t want this country to be anti-them(American). When the media criticizes Donald Trump it shows their total lack of understanding of the deeper problems in this country. I prefer to call it the Donald Trump phenomena. The Republican party needs to look at their role in all of this. Americans are tired of the extortion by both political parties and by the anti America we have become. Thank you, Alan, for discussing this topic.
Hi Jerre, I very much appreciate your thoughts and thank you for writing. You are pointing to something very important when you note that even with an advanced degree, wages can barely match expenses. We are seeing the result of a system that makes “living” too expensive. You are also pointing to how Donald Trump is becoming a phenomenon, more than a person who is capable, or not, of being the President. He may be representing a rebuke to the increasing concentrations of power and government band-aids that don’t really address the structure of community and the need to feel vital and purposeful. He believes himself the messenger, but let’s keep an open mind. There are been many powerful people in our lives who appear to promise solutions, but secretly are thinking only of themselves. Finally, I want to thank you for writing with passion about what you believe and for communicating appreciation for my attempt to bring forward taboo topics.