I am an economist who has worked for 50 years in so-called developing countries around the world.  Recently I was talking to a colleague who said that on average, today, unskilled agricultural workers in African countries receive $2 – $3 a day for their work, many at the lower end.  Two dollars a day!  In today’s world!  When I first started working in these countries, these wages weren’t much different.  That is the outcome of a capitalist market system – outcomes for which no one takes responsibility – it’s just the workings of “the market.”  People work incredibly hard for this pittance, many doing back-breaking, health-destroying labor like cutting sugar cane.  Capitalism leaves billions of people at its margins, barely surviving.  How can we call a system like that efficient, let alone fair or just?   That, to me, is criminal.  Capitalism is criminal. 

To me this connects us to why many people are voting for Trump!  Capitalism is not just criminal because of poverty, because it leaves so many people living in desperate conditions, even in rich countries like the U.S.  Capitalism also keeps a little-bit-better-off underclass in very insecure and difficult circumstances.  Data on individual income is not easily calculated but reading through some of the statistics I think it likely that 40% – 50% of the U.S. population receives the equivalent of $25,000 a year or less.  This is barely survivable in our wealthy country, only at the margins and in fear of financial disaster at any moment.  People in this situation will barely improve it over their entire life.  Moreover, the equivalent of this kind of purchasing power for a huge segment of the US population has been true for my professional lifetime, the past 50 years.    Capitalism maintains this class, here (and abroad).  That is also criminal. 

Many of these people, our fellow citizens, not surprisingly, support Trump.  I have liberal friends who don’t understand how Trump can be supported by half the population.  One big reason, as has been said before – “it’s the economy, stupid.”  Financially, so many people are worse off than they were before the pandemic, when Trump was President.  Inflation has raised food and gas and housing prices, the essential things of life.  Prices were better under Trump and life today is more precarious than ever.  It is little wonder that so many people are angry and voting hoping to change things.  Never mind that inflation had nothing to do with Biden or his sensible spending bills.  Inflation was global, mostly a consequence of the pandemic and supply chain fragilities.  Never mind, that the US did better on inflation than most rich countries.

You combine being financially worse off with the fear has been stoked by Fox “News” and their ilk – especially the fear of immigrants, a changing culture, and crime — and voting for Trump does not seem crazy.  Add to that the feeling that Democrats look down on this “underclass” and this lack of respect drives even more to Trump’s corner.  Never mind that he’s a narcissistic fascist who may upend our democracy, he ‘wasn’t so bad his first term’ so many people are willing to take a chance on a second term.

This precarity is global.  Capitalism maintains an underclass around the world, not just the abject poor.  By some estimates, 50% to 80% of the people on this planet live in precarious circumstances!  Trump is far from alone in authoritarian right-wingers who are garnering a lot of support from this global underclass who live with severe financial uncertainty and struggles and whose lives are not improving no matter which party is in power.  It is no wonder that we have the right making frightening gains throughout Europe and elsewhere.

We live in a world with vast human and natural resources, yet we live in a system that does not share them fairly.  There are, of course, debates about whether there are slow improvements in poverty and social mobility but, regardless, capitalism has long maintained and continues to maintain a huge proportion of the world living in precarious conditions.  These people very reasonably are very unhappy.  But they will get no relief from any successes of the right wing.  It is the system that must change.  Capitalism is criminal.