Fueling Outsiders

The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost shares some profound thoughts on what is fueling the infatuation with outsiders in both parties:

Our political-economic consensus is under sustained pressure from multiple angles for good reason: It is falling far short of just about everybody’s expectations. At its core, the postwar settlement has been premised on the ability of the government to grow the economy responsibly and fairly. That is not happening anymore. From 1948 through 2000, the average annual growth in real gross domestic product was a robust 3.6 percent. From 2001 through 2014, the growth rate in GDP has been more than halved, to 1.7 percent. This amounts to trillions of dollars in expected wealth that never materialized over the last decade and a half.

Moreover, the distribution of economic benefits has shifted in the last decade. Measured as shares of the national income, private sector wages and corporate profits were more or less stable until the recession of 2001. Since then, however, wages have decreased as a share of the national income, while corporate profits have risen. The shift is not enormous, but considering the size of the national income, it still amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. And the trend shows no signs of reversing. The Census Bureau just reported that median incomes for female workers have been flat for 15 years and for male workers have been flat for an astonishing 40 years.

Is it any wonder, then, that we are seeing the rise of such sharp dissent? If the status quo is not working anymore, it is only sensible for voters to cast about for a change. Maybe Beltway types who are inclined to hold their noses as a Tea Partier walks past, or scoff at how out-of-touch Sanders seems, should recognize that the audiences for such contrarians were not so large a generation ago. They have grown only because people have lost faith in the established approach to politics and economics.

The Beltway insiders have over-promised or under-performed, possibly both.