SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
recession
When Will the Contented Class Revolt Against Trump?
When will these contented ones collectively start saying, “Enough is enough” and it’s time to say to Donald Trump, “You’re Fired”?
Nov 16, 2025
The reason the famous and prolific Harvard economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, is often referred to as a political economist can be seen in the continuing relevance of his book The Culture of Contentment (1992). His thesis explains in significant part why President Donald Trump’s wrecking of America has not more significantly collapsed his support, now below 39% approval.
In the US, the contented classes hail from both parties. They are not a majority of the population by any means, given that half of all Americans are “poor” or “near poor.” They are a majority of the politically and economically influential people who support policies that maintain their comfort at the expense of the necessities of the “functional underclass” left behind in poverty. The contented classes include the super rich, of course, but also the managerial, professional, and wealthier working classes. In addition, they vote at a higher percentage than the poor.
Before Trump, this contented class, which includes members of Congress, was doing well, so much so that they stood in the way of increasing the federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 per hour, or increasing Social Security benefits, frozen for over 40 years. These changes could have been paid for by hiking Social Security taxes on, you guessed it, the contented classes. Despite public opinion polls favoring expanding the social safety net, the contented class wants the status quo of no paid sick leave, no paid family or maternal leave, no subsidized childcare, and no universal paid vacations. Western European countries all have a more robust social safety net than the US.
When you crank in the damage done by Trump and his Trumpsters in Washington, DC, members of the contented classes are largely unaffected. The costs of universally damaging programs cutting preparedness for climate violence, pandemics, huge expansions in the police state against immigrants, and the military-industrial complex are not felt where the contented classes live, work, and raise their families.
Trump’s tyrannies and treacheries; his open flouting of the laws (the establishment likes such flouting to be discreet); and his revolting, foul-mouthed defamations tower over Richard Nixon’s transgressions.
We can make a list of the terrible closedowns or strip-mining of federal agencies’ law enforcement and regulatory initiatives. Very few exclusively impact the contented classes. Some may actually benefit.
Other Trump moves, many of them illegal and unauthorized by Congress, delight these people. They support lower taxes on upper-income people and businesses, large or small. The Internal Revenue Service is now going further with its unauthorized dilutions of the 15% minimum tax on corporate profits. The rising stock market adds to the complacency of the contented classes.
The most cruel and vicious actions by Trump—abolishing the US Agency for International Development, medical, water, food assistance to desperate millions abroad—cuts to Meals on Wheels, Head Start, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) impact the masses—tens of millions of them directly and daily. They do not reach the contented class members of our population.
This is not to say that millions of these contented persons do not care what is happening to their fellow citizens. But normative caring is not viscerally feeling the pain and suffering, the anxiety, dread, and fear of losing healthcare coverage; tomorrow’s meal; the brunt of chronic indebtedness; or abandoning the disabled, the sick, and the casualties of the workplace.
Galbraith wrote that living in their contented culture leads to short-term thinking, underinvestment in public goods, and ignoring the widening inequality between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Inequality also stems from making money from money—a source of wealth denied to people living paycheck to paycheck.
The capture of the Democratic Party by this complacent class has become so pronounced that the blue-collar working-class members have broken away from their unions and parents or grandparents’ devotion to the FDR-like New Deal politics and fallen prey to the rhetorical seduction of the corporatist GOP.
What could Trump do to alienate large portions of this contented class, which Galbraith argues has been the only force that can disrupt the status quo? When will these contented ones collectively start saying, “Enough is enough” and it’s time to say to Donald Trump, “You’re Fired”?
When the following come together—serious recession, serious inflation, with destabilizing (to their businesses) tariff-driven surging prices; a reckless foreign war quagmire; plunging stock markets; daily spreading chaos; and the media-exposed sickening stench of raw corruption flowing from the White House throughout the upper realms of the executive branch—the contented classes should join the resistance to the Trump madness.
Back in 1974, the Republican establishment decided it was time for Richard Nixon to go, despite his having won reelection in 49 of 50 states in 1972, with a 60% approval in the polls. He was not considered “useful” to the power brokers anymore.
Trump’s tyrannies and treacheries; his open flouting of the laws (the establishment likes such flouting to be discreet); and his revolting, foul-mouthed defamations tower over Richard Nixon’s transgressions.
History instructs that latent revulsions and fears by the power elites are often launched onto the public stage by some specific outrage, decadence, or bullying. Stay tuned. With Dictator Donald (he regularly intones, “This is only the beginning”), THE WORST IS YET TO COME.
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP Ripped for 'Holding US Economy Hostage' as Nearly Half of States Face Recession
"At a time when costs are rising and tariffs are wreaking havoc on people's pocketbooks, Republicans are doubling down on their agenda of raising healthcare costs on millions of Americans."
Oct 20, 2025
US states accounting for roughly a third of the nation's gross domestic product are currently in recession or on the verge of one as the federal government shutdown enters its fourth week, with congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump refusing to support an extension of key healthcare subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year.
A recent analysis by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi estimates that 22 states are experiencing an economic downturn or are at serious risk of recession, a nascent crisis fueled by Trump's tariffs, mass deportations, and sweeping attack on the federal workforce—an assault that has intensified since the federal government shut down at the beginning of October.
States currently in or on the brink of recession include Maine, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and Georgia. Among the states “treading water” are California and New York, according to Zandi, whose analysis was based on figures that predated the government shutdown.
Leor Tal, campaign director at the progressive advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy, said Monday in response to the analysis that "Republicans in Congress are holding the US economy hostage, and working families are paying the price."
"At a time when costs are rising and tariffs are wreaking havoc on people's pocketbooks, Republicans are doubling down on their agenda of raising healthcare costs on millions of Americans," said Tal. "It's time for congressional Republicans to reopen the government, extend the healthcare tax credits, and start lowering costs for working families."
The shutdown, which Trump has embraced and exploited to advance his far-right agenda, began at a time when the country's economy was already on uneasy footing, with food prices continuing to rise despite the president's campaign promises, GOP Medicaid cuts causing chaos across the nation, and the labor market flashing signs of distress.
With no end to the shutdown in sight, The Associated Press noted Sunday that the "the U.S. Travel Association said the travel economy is expected to lose $1 billion a week as travelers change plans to visit national parks, historic sites, and the nation's capital, where many facilities such as Smithsonian Institution museums and the National Zoo are now closed to visitors."
If the government remains shut down in November, tens of millions of Americans could see cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—which boost the economy while reducing hunger—and other aid.
Meanwhile, even as the Trump administration withholds federal labor market data amid the shutdown, economists say private and state-level figures signal escalating pain for workers that is sure to intensify the longer the closure persists.
"The fingerprints of Trump policy decisions are most clearly found in the distinct rise in federal [unemployment insurance] claims—claims filed specifically by workers laid off from federal agencies," Elise Gould and Joe Fast of the Economic Policy Institute wrote last week. "However, we are also seeing troubling trends in UI claims in regular state programs, particularly in the Washington, DC metropolitan area."
"The shutdown (and potentially the attempted politicization of key government data-collection agencies) could leave policymakers flying blind just as the economy encounters real turbulence," they cautioned.
John Diamond, director of the Center for Public Finance at Rice University's Baker Institute, warned earlier this month that the shutdown "could be a tipping point to recession."
"If it is resolved quickly, the costs will be small," Diamond argued, "but if it drags on, it could send the US economy into a tailspin."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Red Flag': Analysts Sound Major Alarms As AI Bubble Now 'Bigger' Than Subprime
"I wouldn't touch this stuff now," warned one financial analyst about the AI industry.
Oct 03, 2025
Several analysts are sounding alarms about the artificial intelligence industry being a major financial bubble that could potentially tip the global economy into a severe recession.
MarketWatch reported on Friday that the MacroStrategy Partnership, an independent research firm, has published a new note claiming that the bubble generated by AI is now 17 times larger than the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and four times bigger than the global real-estate bubble that crashed the economy in 2008.
The note was written by a team of analysts, including Julien Garran, who previously led the commodities strategy team at multinational investment bank UBS.
Garran contends that companies have vastly overhyped the capabilities of AI large language models (LLMs), and he pointed to data showing that the adoption rate of LLMs among large businesses has already started to decline. He also thinks that flagship LLM ChatGPT may have "hit a wall" with its latest release, which he said hasn't delivered noticeably better performance than previous releases, despite costing 10 times as much.
The consequences for the economy, he warns, could be dire.
"The danger is not only that this pushes us into a zone 4 deflationary bust on our investment clock, but that it also makes it hard for the Fed and the Trump administration to stimulate the economy out of it," he writes in the investment note.
Garran isn't the only analyst expressing extreme anxiety about the potential for an AI bubble to bring down the economy.
In a Friday interview with Axios, Dario Perkins, managing director of global macro at TS Lombard, said that tech companies are increasingly taking on massive debts in their race to build out AI data centers in a way that is reminiscent of the debts held by companies during the dot-com and subprime mortgage bubbles.
Perkins told Axios that he's particularly wary because the big tech companies are claiming "they don't care whether the investment has any return, because they're in a race."
"Surely that in itself is a red flag," he added.
CNBC reported on Friday that Goldman Sachs SEO David Solomon told an audience at the Italian Tech Week conference that he expected a "drawdown" in the stock market over the next year or two given that so much money has been pumped into AI ventures in such a short time.
"I think that there will be a lot of capital that’s deployed that will turn out to not deliver returns, and when that happens, people won’t feel good," he said.
Solomon wouldn't go so far as to definitively declare AI to be a bubble, but he did say some investors are "out on the risk curve because they’re excited," which is a telltale sign of a financial bubble.
According to CNBC, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was also attending Italian Tech Week, said on Friday that there was a bubble in the AI industry, although he insisted that the technology would be a major benefit for humanity.
"Investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas," Bezos said of the AI industry. "And that’s also probably happening today."
Perkins made no predictions about when the AI bubble will pop, but he argued that it's definitely much closer to the end of the cycle than the beginning.
"I wouldn't touch this stuff now," he told Axios. "We're much closer to 2000 than 1995."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular