In the US, polls show that two-thirds of people think the country is on the wrong track. Brexit, and the general rise of far-right populists in Europe, suggest that a dissatisfaction with the status quo is a transatlantic phenomenon. It’s no wonder that people around the world are reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression. [...]
The explanation that it’s all about economic hardship doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Many Trump and Brexit voters have decent earnings. Trump even won a larger share of white college graduates than his opponent. These voters yearn for change despite the fact that, in may ways, things have never been better. Across the income spectrum, we live longer lives (with opioid addicts a notable exception) and have more leisure time than before. It’s true that income growth has been stagnant for the lower and middle classes, but economists argue that it’s what those incomes buy that matters—and thanks to globalization and technological advances, our incomes buy a wider and better array of goods and services than we could have imagined 20 years ago. [...]
In some ways, people in rich countries have never known more stability. Wealthy countries offer safety nets that have some holes but do a fairly good job of protecting most people from extreme hardship. For most of human history, a bad economy was accompanied by famines or plagues. If you live in a rich country, these risks are pretty much eliminated because of the social safety net. But people still may feel acute risk if they worry about falling down a few rungs on the economic ladder. The fact that the risk of the devastating calamities common in past has subsided offers little comfort. The human brain is often less concerned with extremely bad but remote possibilities than with more probable, near-term risks.
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