US needs change, not Donald Trump

On Wednesday morning – the morning after THAT election – I woke up with a start at 5am and stared warily at my dark phone beside my bed. Was I ready for the news?

But I could never be ready, not for Donald Trump Again, for Trump Emboldened, and now with the support of over half the US voting public, as well as control of the Senate and very likely the House.

The people have spoken. He has his mandate, despite everything. Why though?

I have visited the US often, and nowhere have I heard anyone spew poison and lies like Trump.

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I must believe then this was not so much a vote for Trump, nor even a vote against Kamala Harris, but a kick to the system, a vote for radical change, because for the marginal, for those on low wages, nothing has changed in forever.

Yes, you can wheel out all the facts you like: under Joe Biden, the US has had a stronger comeback after Covid than anywhere.

The economy is strong too. Real inflation – that’s the price of eggs and milk – is down 4.6% from its pandemic peak in 2022.

Yet the quiet truth is that since the early 1970s through successive American administrations – both Democratic and Republican – wages have stagnated.

When adjusted for inflation, real term blue collar pay remains around $30 (about R530) an hour.

Meanwhile, the rich have become filthy, stinking rich.

The inequality gap is now a chasm. Trump is not the man to fix it.

After all, in 2017 he introduced sweeping tax changes that meant, for the first time in US history, the richest 400 families in the US paid less tax by percentage of income than the people who cleaned their toilets.

Yes, it was couched as trickle-down economics, and the jobs would pour in, only they didn’t.

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Of course they didn’t: “trickle-down” was the brainchild of 1980s politics, of neoliberalism, and it hasn’t worked anywhere, ever.

The 0.1% now pay an effective 23% tax, while the bottom half pay 24.2%.

Contrast this with 1960, when the very rich paid up to 56% tax, then 40% in the ’80s, and now just 23%.

Since 2017 the US billionaires – fewer than 1 000 of them, including Trump and our Elon Musk, find themselves collectively $2.2 trillion (about R38 trillion) richer.

No, Trump is not the cure, but instead a horrible symptom.