We are living in a worldwide crisis of gloom. That, anyway, is what I took from a new international poll of 20,000 people across western democracies and Japan. The giant study – which was reported by Axios, the digital news site – concluded that we are in the midst of the fastest and broadest reordering of politics and business and society in our lifetimes. And it isn’t going well. Every one of us affected by this great unsettling, and how we respond will determine the future of civilization. No pressure there, right?
Even without these poll results, we can see it all around us. Almost everybody is worried about the cost of living and healthcare. There’s widespread pessimism about government and the media – and all major institutions, in fact: education, business, the medical establishment, the law. People are fearful about the rise of artificial intelligence, but there’s not a lot of agreement on what to do about it.
For me, after decades as a journalist, one great concern is the loss of a common reality. That is, people don’t agree upon basic facts, and they don’t trust genuine experts or anyone with power and legacy. Here’s a distressing fact: 61 percent of the people in this international sample said that mainstream news can’t be trusted.
Mind you, skepticism is a useful attribute. But if the only source of information you trust is someone you come across on social media who reinforces a bias you already have, you need to find a broader source of information. (Like, for example, a good public radio station, or a reputable general news source.)
And here’s a key finding of this big poll: Across all the nations surveyed, huge majorities think that things are getting harder and are rigged for the rich. That’s unsurprising, considering how the middle class has eroded during my seven decades on the planet: The richest one percent of Americans now possess about two-thirds of the nation’s wealth – which is more than the entire middle class. The bottom half of the country holds less than 3 percent of the wealth. How is that fair?
No wonder people are pessimistic. You know, optimism is a traditional American value – people in this country have often believed that they can rise up out of their circumstances and succeed. A key to that, we have long agreed, is education. People with college degrees on average earn 84 percent more in their lifetimes than people with just high school diplomas.
But governments have been disinvesting in education for generations now, so that public colleges and universities – which used to be inexpensive for students – now draw - on average - only about one-third of their revenue from tax dollars. And the current regime in Washington is attacking higher education, trying to convince people that college is mainly a left-wing brainwashing machine.
That’s an advantageous notion for a right-wing administration that draws its support disproportionately from the less educated segment of the electorate, and people who don’t pay attention to valid news sources. But it’s not true. Here’s what is true: People desperately need clear and honest information, and leadership that will give everybody a fair shake; they need good education and healthcare, and an economy that offers upward mobility for all.
So, to begin to disrupt our corner of the global gloom glut, I suggest three key steps.
First, we need to do our part to encourage and financially support independent news organizations whose reporting can be trusted. People need to get out of their information bubbles, and that requires accessible, honest journalism.
Second, we must support educational institutions, both public and private, which build the stairway to success for all. The federal attack on higher education, coming on the heels of decades of state disinvestment, is intolerable.
Third, because we need an economy that lifts all boats, not only the yachts of the rich, we must support honest leaders who will push a tax policy that more fairly distributes society’s wealth, rather than just siphoning it upward.
Those three steps won’t fix everything. But pessimism is contagious. We can’t let it be a permanent condition. To make everybody feel better, we need to each do our part to make circumstances better. Those three steps – helping to underwrite honest information brokers, demanding support for education and backing public servants who will use their power to make our economy more equitable – can help brighten the gloom that is clouding our world.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
