The decline in social mobility
Generally, people will tolerate high levels of wealth inequality if they feel that there is a reasonable degree of social mobility. However social mobility for most people does not mean becoming super rich but is a faith in the fairness of access to secure, rewarding employment[21]. People resent cheating, nepotism and unearned privilege most acutely when it discriminates against them or their children. In other words, people are not resentful of Musk or Bezos,[22] but deeply resent queue jumping and/or being excluded as it applies to them and people like them. This might explain why despite the ever-growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population, support for redistributive policies tends to be low,[23] but resentment of illegal immigration or undeserving welfare claimants is high.[24] This has always been one of the great strengths of American society, the acceptance of the huge disparities in wealth distribution as long as there was a realist possibility of enjoying some portion of it through a fair distribution of luck or hard work. These are termed ‘system-justifying beliefs’.[25] As long as each generation could say ‘I am better off than my parents’ the momentum suggested a degree of social justice which might at the very least, articulate itself across generations. For most Americans the means of expressing this belief was through hard work which should be rewarded by some measurable if incremental material progress. It is the widespread loss of confidence in work as the instrument of social mobility which is another contributing factor to the rise of Trump.
System-justifying beliefs lie at the heart of most education systems. These beliefs serve to foster social cohesion as well as to convince millions of people that the path it provides to social progression means they live in something like a meritocracy[26] or at least a society where there is a reasonable expectation that merit will be rewarded. Most education systems are at pains to assure students of the correctness of this belief which is perpetuated through the strap lines of schools the optimism of teachers and the systems of competition such as exams, tests and grades, which serve to reassure the winners of their rightful success and the losers of their deserving status. The widespread loss of faith in education as the great equaliser is another factor in the appeal of Trumpism not however because education is no longer a path to economic security but because it has become a sharply discriminating arbiter of success. Increasingly American education has become a mechanism for dividing American society rather than gluing it together. As a result, education has become a better predictor of voting intention in the USA than class, ethnicity, or religion. This is the opportunity gap and it divides Americans. It began with the fragmentation of the blue-collar working class, particularly in rural areas, in the 1970s with deindustrialisation and the progressive deskilling of the service jobs which relaced manufacturing- think what working as a shop assistant was once like and what it involved, contact with customers, sales skills, numeracy. Now the retail worker is likely to be a silent acolyte of the shelves, filling and counting or wafting items across the bar code reader without needing to greet or accept payment, the whole process a succession of bleeps. For the non-college educated, their economy is characterised by low pay, insecurity, and low skill.
The non college educated have also suffered a material decline in living standards. In October 2024 a report on growing income inequality in the US, by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that for every dollar of wealth in a household headed by a college graduate, a household headed by a high school graduate has 22 cents. This rises to 30 cents for households headed by someone with some college, but no degree. In the second quarter of 2024, households headed by a college graduate owned the disproportionately highest share of total family wealth. They owned 74.4% of total family wealth despite making up only 41% of households, an advantage of 81% greater wealth than we might expect based on their household representation.[27] In the 2024 election the ‘diploma gap’ widened, Kamala Harris fared worse than Joe Biden in 2020 among voters without college degrees. The diploma gap is largely not a gap of comprehension as is suggested and celebrated by mocking, generally youthful, Youtubers who record hapless Maga’s caught out by simple questions of general knowledge. Instead, the education gap is one of economic consequences. Not having a college degree is a huge economic disadvantage framed by a sneering discourse of personal failure, ignorance, and stupidity. As college degrees have become less exclusive they have become more essential as the rite of passage to many creative, well-paid, and secure jobs. 52% of Americans do not possess a college degree and since all education systems depend on there being winners and losers to establish the value of academic success, after all, there’s no value in a golden ticket if everyone has one, those who fail know, consciously or otherwise, that the system is rigged against them. It wasn’t so obvious in the past as well-paid alternatives to a college-based career path were once plentiful. While economists point out that the American economy continues to be one of the strongest in the world ordinary workers feel like they’re falling behind and that their children may fall even further behind.[28]
In 2000, Robert Putnam forecast that United States democracy was at risk from the twin challenges of declining civic engagement and rising interpersonal inequality[29]. Others have pointed to a hollowing out of once stable communities in middle America as the result of long-term economic and population decline. ‘Declining communities in parts of the American Rustbelt, the Great Plains, and elsewhere, reacted at the ballot box to being ignored, neglected and being left-behind’. The turn to Trumpism has been mapped on to these area as a ‘rising geography of discontent.’[30] or the ‘politics of resentment.’[31] These heartlands of Trumpism have been are ‘places that don’t matter’ and they have had enough of seeing their people leave and their jobs go and have used Trumps as a means to exact revenge on a system that has forgotten them. By contrast, the more dynamic, mainly urban, areas of the US, where society was always more unstable and where a culture of transience is more accepting of inequalities have, so far, shunned populism[32].
Social mobility and faith in the American dream have been undermined by one of the most significant changes in US society in the mid-twentieth century: property ownership. Property owning or at least secure renting was the cornerstone of the post-war liberal capitalist contract. The GI Bill made it easier for (white) GIs to own a home and contributed to the post-war economic boom. By 1955, 4.3 million home loans worth $33 billion had been granted to veterans, who were responsible for buying 20 percent of all new homes built after the war. Although the GI bill continues to assist veterans, for millions of Americans the prospect of owning a home has receded [33] and millions feel insecure in the home they live in. 13% of people in the US think it is likely they will lose their homes. Numbers are higher among renters 18% and young people 22%.[34]
“ Just 8 percent of people in Rwanda, a country with GDP per capita 100th the size of the US, feel insecure. The question we should be asking ourselves is why so many people living in advanced economies – including the US – fully expect to lose their home or land in the coming years.”
Security in one’s home is fundamental to the feeling of having stake in society. [35]That millions of American feel betrayed in this most visceral of expectations is another factor in the appeal of Trump.
However it is in the stagnation of US household incomes in this century which has most keenly undermined the American dream. This stagnation can be attributed in part to two recessions since 2000. After the first recession, which lasted from March 2001 to November 2001, it was not until 2007 that the median income was restored to about its level in 2000. But 2007 the onset of the Banking Crisis and the following recession meant that it took until 2015 for incomes to approach their pre-recession level. Indeed, the median household income in 2015 – $70,200 – was no higher than its level in 2000, marking a 15-year period of stagnation, an episode of unprecedented duration in the past five decades.[36]