Why?
Wealth inequity and other economic injustices are the product of deliberate policy choices -- in taxation, Social Security, health care, financial regulation, education, and a number of other policy areas. So why aren't Americans taking action?
The "change" theories Krugman mentioned don't tell the whole story. For one thing, it's not true that the lives of the majority are frozen in an ugly stasis. Conditions continue to become objectively worse for the great majority of Americans. But these ongoing changes -- in actual wages, in employment, in social mobility and wealth equity -- have received very little media attention or meaningful political debate.
It's not that things aren't changing. It's that people don't know they're changing. And without that knowledge the public becomes a canary in a coalmine, only aware of its declining oxygen supply when it keels over and dies.
It's an almost classic state of alienation, in which people may be acutely aware of their own increasing difficulties (although sometimes they can be numb to that as well) but experience them in a state of isolation. That turns the anger inward, leading to crippling reactions like guilt and despair. And repeated individual failures -- failures made increasingly likely in a skewed system -- lead to a sense of learned helplessness.
The Radical Rich
Interestingly, the "change = political pressure" theory helps explain the rage of the "radical rich" who -- despite their almost unprecedented lives of wealth and privilege -- are articulating an anger which seems at first to be inexplicable. But they, unlike the vast majority, are experiencing perceptible (if minor) changes.
No current policy proposals would substantially affect their historic levels of wealth and privilege. But some Democratic policies would slightly discommode the ultra-wealthy, and conservative forces have been shrewd enough to trumpet that fact far and wide in a tone of barely suppressed hysteria.
The wealthy have already seen a cultural change, as the Occupy movement led to previously-unheard public criticisms of their riches and political influence. That helps explain today's seemingly paradoxical political situation, in which the beleaguered majority accepts the injustices heaped upon them while coddled and ultra-wealthy Americans erupt in fury.
The Alienators
The media has failed to tell the story of our broken economy. The two-party system is failing, too, as corporate forces complete their corruption of the GOP and seize an ever-increasing chunk of the Democratic Party.
That's one of the reasons why voter turnout may not be the best indicator of political awareness. Even pronounced financial hardship won't result in increased turnout or participation in electoral politics if neither party is clearly articulating the majority's needs or actively fighting for its interests.
Many politicians and pundits have also embraced the "structural unemployment" argument which says people have the wrong skills for the economy of today and tomorrow. But they told us the same thing in the 1960s, the 1970s "
In fact, they've said it for the last 50 years.
And yet technology jobs were down in last week's jobs report. "Structural unemployment" is another way of telling you it's your fault if you don't have a job. It's a lie.
The Exploiters Within
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