In the end, perhaps the world should not have been surprised by the victory of Donald Trump. A week before the US elections, in a discussion with several business friends, I had pointed out that while Kamala Harris (at that time) seemed like she was going to win by a slight minority as a liberal reformer, she was in fact going against a growing geopolitical trend.
The world has been electing governments that are rightists and stopping the trend of liberal reformist governments that were winning since the late 20th century.
The world has seen the rise of populism, which means authoritarian-oriented movements that claim to champion the masses or common persons against the elite or the establishment of a country. Frequently, this means opposing liberal or democratic socialist parties.
This rise in populism has largely been brought about by the increased gap between the rich and the poor, resulting in extreme income inequality. I have written so many columns on income inequality that friends and readers have warned me that I have been writing about this topic too often. However, the reason I have kept writing about this is to hopefully warn people that unless this trend towards populism and the rise of populist leaders who are believers in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments is reversed, then we will continue to see it increase.
In Europe, Putin of Russia is the prime example of a populist leader who has established authoritarianism. However, other European governments have elected populist, rightist leaders through democratic means. This includes Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. In France, the extreme rightist Marine Le Pen seems on the way to succeeding Emmanuel Macron in the next French presidential election. In Germany, the ruling three-party coalition has just collapsed and the signal most prominent party now is an extreme rightist party. In Israel, Netanyahu, who wants to wage an all-out war against the Palestinians and rejects a two-state solution, will now be strengthened by the global move towards the Right.
Even here in Southeast Asia, a quarter century after Suharto fell from power and democracy returned to Indonesia, Prabowo Subiano Djojohadikusumo recently won a landslide victory. He is said to be a would-be strongman whose rhetoric has been described as authoritarianism.
A week before the US elections, the highly respected weekly magazine The Economist wrote an article that the US economy was the strongest in the world. This led many to conclude that a debate on the economy would lead to an electoral victory for Kamala Harris. However, the primary measure for economic growth by the economists was Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which I have pointed out does not indicate an economy where there is a fair and equitable distribution of wealth.
We have to go back again to my constant refrain that unless income inequality is addressed, the world will continue to see the rise of populism. Global society cannot in good conscience accept a global economy where less than 70 persons own as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. This means that less than 70 persons have as much wealth as nearly four billion people in the world.
No country in the world seems exempted from this populist phenomenon. Even in China, with its tremendous infrastructure which is the envy of the world, unemployment especially among young people is on the rise. Admirers of the Chinese economy point to the increasing GDP growth of China and point to the possibility that it may overtake the United States in the next decade. However, this Chinese “economic miracle” is also witness to a society where there is an increase in Chinese illegal immigration to the United States. It is also clearly a contradiction to its supposedly economic growth and yet, we find thousands of Chinese illegally migrating to even poor countries like the Philippines to work in illegal offshore gaming operations.
The old solution to income distribution in a liberal and capitalist society has been through a “trickle down” economy. This term was used to explain the old belief that as the rich get richer, some of their wealth will “trickle down” to the lower classes. This economic phenomenon has not worked and has been condemned even by Pope Francis.
Ideally, as the rich get richer, increased taxation on the very rich and increased wages should be utilized to result in lessening income inequality. Instead, the very rich continue to advocate for lower taxation and oppose the concept of a living wage as the basis for the minimum wage.
The “surplus wealth” of the extremely rich has not been allowed to trickle down to the lower classes but instead have gone to the purchase of luxury items like yachts, luxury multi-residences and other luxury items.
At the cost of repeating myself and being criticized, I must again repeat my old economic refrain. We must stop measuring economic progress in terms of GDP and make the reduction of income inequality as the basic economic target for all economies. The alternative is the continuous growth of rightist populist government who will continue to pit economic classes against each other.