His assessment is bleak but strangely comforting. But if economic woes and elite failure are the problem, why did the trouble not develop sooner?
have risen dramatically in many countries; in America, for instance, the share of pre-tax income earned by the top 1% has nearly doubled by some counts, from about 10% to 19%. In rich economies growth in productivity and in the inflation-adjusted incomes of the typical household has been disappointing. Deindustrialisation has left many working-class cities permanently depressed.
But desirable as comfort may be—and, for that matter, competent technocracy—it is hard to shake the feeling that something more profound has happened to the world’s great democracies. If economic woes and elite failure are the problem, why did the trouble not develop sooner? The 1970s were a time of galloping inflation, deep recessions, soaring crime and other social ills, terminating in the punishing, industry-gutting downturns of the early 1980s. Yet democracy seemed secure.
Yes, the 21st century has been troubled and governments have erred. For all that, when Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, America’s unemployment rate was just 4.7%. If such venerable democracies are at risk, other corrosive forces must surely have conspired with the economic trends to make them so.
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