14
the United States averaged $402.53 USD billion from 1950 until 2016, reaching an all-time high of $1642.70 USD billion in the third quarter of 2014 and a record low of $14.40 USD billion in the first quarter of 1951.15
Decline of Real Wages
Comparing 2014 with 2007 (the last period of reasonable labor market wealth before the Great Recession), hourly wages for the vast majority of American workers had been flat or falling. And ever since 1979, the vast majority of American workers had seen their hourly wages stagnate or decline. This is despite real GDP growth of 149 percent and net productivity
growth of 64 percent over this period.16
The Disappearing Middle Class
Nationally, the proportion of middle-class adults shrank to 51 percent in 2014 from 55 percent in 2000. Upper-income adults constituted 20 percent of the population, up from 17 percent. The lower-income share had risen to 29 percent from 28 percent. Yet the changes had been more dramatic at the local level. There were 79 metro areas in which the proportion of adults in upper-income households equals or exceeded the national average of 20 percent. That more than double the 37 cities in which that was true in 2000.17
Pensions
40 million working-age households–45 percent of the total–had no retirement savings in 2013. The percent of a typical household’s pre-retirement income account by Social Security was 35%. The median income of households with a retirement account was $86,235. Those without one had a median family income of $35,509. The amount of unfunded liabilities of the Social Security system was $10 trillion.18
Homelessness
In January 2015, 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States. Of that number, 206,286 were people in families, and 358,422 were individuals. About 15 percent of the homeless population–83,170–were considered “chronically homeless” individuals. About 2 percent– 13,105–were considered “chronically homeless” people in families. About 8 percent of homeless people–47,725–were veterans.19
The Safety Net
The U.S safety net provided about half of the income support needed to increase all incomes to the level needed to meet basic needs (measured here as 150% of the official poverty line). Levels of poverty relief were typically higher–and sometimes much higher–in other post-industrial countries.20
The country was not in good shape. Hence, the reason for despair:
Despair
There was a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013. If the white mortality rate for ages 45-54 had held at their 1989 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999-2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone.
If it had continued to decline at its previous (1979-1988) rate, half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999-2013, comparable to lives lost in the US AIDs epidemic through mid-2015. Concurrent declines in self-reported health, mental health, and ability to work, increased reports of pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all pointed to increasing midlife crises.21
For those reasons, the anger was–at that time–understandable:
A recent Esquire/NBC News poll [found] 49 percent of Americans [saying] they have gotten angrier about current events and the news over the past year. Among them, 54 percent are white. Republicans are angrier than Democrats, 61 to 42 percent, the survey found.22
This followed upon a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in September 2016 that found “a plurality of the respondents–44 percent–were angry at the political system they [felt worked] only for the wealthy and powerful insiders,