The American Empire Strikes Back Against Civil Unrest

​Civil unrest spawned by a range of grievance politics combined with static income growth rates resulted in a revolution; it is unclear the American Empire’s counterrevolutionary responses will be robust enough to mitigate the problems.  Wealth redistribution strategies in the 1930s and 1960s tamped down violent movements by initiating social programs and democratic structural change.  The lesson learned from the tepid response to the Great Recession of 2008 was those stimulus bills were too small, informing the Biden Administration’s resolve about the proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal, but much more will be required to return to social stability.

Proud Boys in Portland

The Biden Administration has less than two years to jam through programs necessary to raise wealth among lower-class elements before mid-term elections and probable loss of one or two houses of Congress, which would stop progressive legislation and ensure economic trends that caused this unrest get worse.

​In 2019, 290,720 ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals with a minimum of $30 million in wealth owned $35.4 trillion, an increase of 9.7% percent between 2018 and 2019.  To place that number of 290,000 in perspective it is about the population of Fort Wayne, Indiana.  The strongest regional returns were recorded in North America where the number of UHNW individuals increased by 14.5% to 105,080, about 36% of the global UHNW class.  There was an almost identical rise in collective net worth, up 14.4% to $12.4 trillion.

Income disparity continues to increase while wage growth for people who earn their living remains stagnant.  The upward mobility promise of the American Dream has vanished:

• The median hourly wage is $19.33 per hour.  For a full-time, full-year worker, this would be about $40,000 per year.
• Consistent positive wage growth has occurred in only 10 of the last 40 years.
• The highest earners (95th percentile) continue to pull away from middle- and low-wage workers.
• Wage growth at the bottom was strongest in states with minimum wage increases in 2019.
• In 2019, African-American wages exceeded their 2000 and 2007 levels across the wage distribution for the first time in this recovery.   Even so, African-American - European-American wage gaps are significantly wider now than in 2000.
• Women with an postgraduate degree are paid, on average, less than men with a undergraduate degree.
• Wages for the bottom 50% of college graduates are lower today than they were in 2000.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of goods produced and services provided in a country during one year, dropped 4.3% in the United States during the 2020 pandemic year.  Interesting observations:

• The United States GDP growth averaged 0.8% annually over the Trump Administration years and only 2.5% annually from 2017 through 2019.  Despite the Trump Administration’s ambitions to move the GDP rate upward towards its hyperbolic promise of 5% annually, its efforts failed.
• From 2010 to 2020 the average United States GDP growth rate was 1.7%, and from 1980 to 2020 it was 2.5%. 

​Authoritative demographic information on grievance protest groups is unavailable and so any discussion of the composition of these revolutionary groups is conjecture.  Grievance politics is where one party blames the other for their privations and is ignited by partisan media reinforcing their consumers in echo chambers.  The logical extensions of this were evident during a tumultuous 2020 presidential campaign where a disenfranchised radical group of loosely aligned political groups stormed the capital attempting to overturn the results of the election.
When people are divorced from investment in society, they have little to lose and this becomes the seedbed for radicalization resulting in civil unrest.  We are in a Revolution, discussed in an earlier investigation, and whether that revolution is successful in overturning democratic governance in the United States is a function of increasing the relative wealth of lower-class Americans.

Designated QAnon Punching Bag Marjorie Taylor Greene

​The United States government and large corporations have responded to the ransacking of the capital on January 6, 2021, with a variety of measures:

• Identifying and arresting known actors at the event.
• Initiating an impeachment and trial of former President Donald Trump.
• Removing former President Donald Trump’s megaphone by silencing him on Twitter.
• Elevating QAnon punching bag Marjorie Taylor Greene for media vilification and scorn.
• Eliminating right-wing Twitter alternatives such as Parler.
• Confirming an African-American, Lloyd Austin, as Secretary of Defense, and initiating an internal review of extremism in the United States military.
• Suing media outlets for disinformation will lighten partisan media fanning flames of discontent.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections for United States GDP growth rates from 2021 to 2024 average about 2.6% annually, which, if true, would not move the needle in raising incomes of lower-class Americans without some innovative federal government intervention.
Interesting proposals that have been discussed:

• Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
• A huge infrastructure spending package providing stimulus for professional design and management personnel as well as prevailing wage rate construction jobs.
• Federally subsidized ‘green’ energy projects similarly requiring prevailing wage construction labor.
• Partial subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance coverage would raise personal income immediately.
• Student loan forgiveness would provide immediate spendable income plus mitigate cycles of indebtedness.
• Providing stimulus checks and $3,000 per child checks probably to be based on income.
• A billionaire wealth tax to fund social programs and economic development.

T​he Biden Administration has a short period to get something going.  Traditionally mid-term elections revert to the opposition party and the Democrats have slim majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.  It is likely one or both will revert to Republican control resulting in legislative gridlock.  

​Information on UHNW was obtained at https://www.wealthx.com/report/covid-19-wealth-impact-the-world-ultra-wealth-report-2020/.  United States government economic statistics were discovered at https://www.bea.gov/.  Unemployment data were provided by https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.  Information about QAnon demographics were provided by https://civiqs.com/results/qanon_support?annotations=true&uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true.