Recent poll finds 71 percent of
Americans believe U.S. economy is rigged
A new Marketplace-Edison Research poll published
Tuesday found that a full 71 percent of respondents agree that the economy is
rigged, affirming the popular rhetoric of the current presidential campaign
season.
The majority opinion held firm
across ethnicity, class, age, and gender differences. A whopping 83 percent of
African Americans polled agreed that the economy is rigged, and 80 percent of
people ages 18-24 also held that opinion.
The poll, which has been
tracking rising economic anxiety, discovered that most Americans
agree that the economy was better for their parents' generation, and believe
that the economy will be worse for the next generation.
Perhaps the perception of a rigged
economy is because people are working harder for increasingly
less financial security.
The poll found that nearly
one-quarter of respondents hadn't taken a single vacation for over five years,
while nearly 50 percent also confirmed fearing that they might lose their job
within the next 12 months.
Moreover, 71 percent said they were
afraid of an unexpected medical bill and 53 percent feared being unable to make
a mortgage payment. Of renters, 60 percent fear being unable to pay rent.
Meanwhile, the poll fond that Wall
Street and banks are viewed in an unfavorable light: nearly 60 percent agreed
that Wall Street does more to hurt than help the majority of Americans, and 56
percent agreed that the U.S. government should break up banks deemed "too
big to fail."
A majority of 54 percent also felt
that the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs was a result of so-called
"free trade" deals, rather than "natural changes in the
economy," as the poll put it.
"It's not just the political
system that's rigged, it's the whole economy," Trump said during
a speech last week, while Clinton on Monday told a crowd, "To build an
economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, we have got to go
big and we have got to go bold," as Common
Dreams reported.
Yet their efforts may be falling
flat: the Marketplace-Edison Research poll found a plurality of the respondents
are also "not satisfied at all" with the two top presidential
contenders.
Pundits have drawn connections
between "a deep frustration on the part of working-class voters with
economic globalization schemes," as John Nichols put it, and
the recent Brexit
vote—provoking some to wonder if a similar shock may
eventually strike the U.S. establishment, if today's economic woes go unheeded.