[CliffFletcher]

Here's a thought-provoking article written in the wake of the Brexit vote, but which is also applicable to Trump's victory, as they're both part of the same populist wave:

#Brexit, the populist surge and the crisis of complexity

...In most Western countries, globalisation has been feeding rising inequality between those two groups, and there is no evidence that it could be any other way. The populist surge that is now at play is, to a large extent, a reaction of those who have been on the losing side of this trend. They tend to be on average rather older, more rural and less educated than those who have benefited from globalisation or aspire to make their way into the service-based, globalised urban ecosystems and have reasonable prospects of succeeding. Deep down, however, the divide is much more about social class than about age or education. Our reluctance to recognise this reflects the extent to which class issues have become taboo in Western societies. We don’t like to talk about class divisions, we don’t want to see them, or we pretend they don’t exist or they are not anymore relevant, but that doesn’t make them go away.

The rise of populist movements is therefore a sign that a growing number of voters tend to perceive themselves as being on the losing side of things. Whether this perception corresponds to a statistical reality for all of them is debatable, but largely irrelevant: in politics, perception is reality. A growing sense of anxiety is spreading among those voters, as well as resentment and anger against an economic and political system that they believe is failing them. This is pushing an increasing number of them towards political movements that promise a clean break from this existing status quo or sometimes a return to a preceding state of affairs presented as more satisfactory or more reassuring. These movements’ narratives need not be coherent, credible or even sane; as long as they resonate with voters’ resentment or anger, they get increasingly popular. And most of the arguments typically used to try to lure voters away from these populist movements are ineffective or even counterproductive.

More than globalisation itself, the underlying cause of the populist surge might in fact lie in the slow disappearance of economic growth at global level, and in particular in the West. Almost a decade after the onset of the global financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2007-2008, the world economy remains weak and the hoped-for ‘recovery’ elusive. Everywhere, the economic policies conducted since then have largely failed to trigger the return to growth that was expected after the ‘Great Recession’. The unprecedented monetary stimulus unleashed by the world’s main central banks may have prevented a complete collapse of the global financial system and then kept it afloat, but it has done little to stimulate the productive economy. The only significant factor that has kept the global economy going in recent years – China’s runaway state-driven, debt-fuelled overinvestment, overcapacity build-up – is now slowing down sharply, pushing world growth further down.

This dearth of economic growth is causing significant disruption and generating major challenges in world that had previously become accustomed to rapid expansion, and where growth has come to be considered as the ‘normal’ and almost ‘natural’ state of things. In the West in particular, businesses assume that their revenues and profits should expand, consumers that their purchasing power and living standards ought to go up, governments that their tax revenues will naturally climb over time. Lenders and investors assume that borrowers will be able to repay their debts and businesses to pay dividends. All make their spending and investment decisions, as well as related long-term financial commitments, on the basis of the widely shared assumption that the economy will grow. Voters, in turn, assume that political leaders will maximise growth and use its proceeds to constantly increase societal welfare. To a certain extent, economic growth has come to form part of the Western social contract, and its absence is perceived by some as a breach by government of its tacit contractual obligations...

...The growing popular revolts against globalisation, the EU, or multiculturalism are signs that our societies are already struggling to uphold their level of complexity and are subject to strong forces that are pulling towards a break down to a lower complexity level (i.e. localised economies, national governance, homogeneous societies, etc.)...