STRATEGIC

From Triumph to Stalemate: The Loss of American Consensus 29
food insecurity increased around the world. And as a financial crisis
that began on Wall Street hurt the livelihoods of lower-income people
around the world, income inequality became an increasingly salient
political issue in the United States and many other countries. 25
The theme that prosperous American elites were out of touch with
the hardships faced by those left behind by globalization came to dominate
the narrative of the 2016 presidential election, culminating in the
election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States.
While the election results were a surprise to many, data documenting the
gap between the two Americas had been accumulating for some time.
In 2012, for example, Charles Murray laid out the vast and growing
economic and cultural divide between educated whites living in affluent
communities and their working-class counterparts living in moredistressed
neighborhoods that are increasingly segregated by social
class. 26 Four years later, an analysis of distressed and affluent zip codes by
the Economic Innovation Group showed that despite the nominal recovery
from the Great Recession, rich and poor communities had pulled
even further apart, with 50.4 million Americans living in communities
plagued by poverty, lack of education, and joblessness. 27 The wealthiest,
most-educated segments of American society recovered and even
prospered after the Great Recession, while the least-advantaged parts of
American society continued to lose ground, caught in an almost decadelong
stall with few or no prospects for progress in sight.
25 In October 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) began a major project to study increasing inequality and possible solutions. See
OECD, “Income Inequality and Poverty,” web page, undated-b.
26 Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010, New York: Crown
Forum, 2012.
27 In the one-fifth of distressed zip codes, 23 percent of adults have no high school degree,
the poverty rate is 27 percent, 55 percent of adults are not working, and income is 69 percent
of the national median. In the top quintile of zip codes, by contrast, only 6 percent lacked
a high school degree, the poverty rate was 6 percent, 35 percent of adults were not working,
and the median income was 146 percent of the national sum. Economic Innovation Group,
“The 2016 Distressed Communities Index: An Analysis of Community Well-Being Across
the United States,” February 25, 2016.