The average American's view of government

[Yavin4]

5. I'll try to explain.

Since the 80s, the federal government's spending on public investments on core programs like education, healthcare, housing, and transportation has been restrained due to tax cuts and annual deficits. Meanwhile the costs of these items has risen faster than inflation and much faster than wages putting a squeeze on the average American. The American standard of living for an independent adult is unobtainable esp. for most young people. So most Americans are under constant economic anxiety. One bad break and they're broke and in debt.

While this has been happening, our news media has become captive to a few billionaires. Instead of talking about policies around public investments, our media focuses on cultural and racial conflicts because those topics get ratings. Trump seeing this turned the volume up to 11. His entire campaign has been about stoking racial and xenophobic anxiety using immigrants as the cause for the economic anxiety as described above.

Moreover, the same corporate media tells them over and over again that any massive public investments by the government will go to non-White people and not them. This is why so many of them believe that Obamacare was for Black people only. So, reflexively, the American people vote for politicians who slash public investments in order to give tax cuts to the rich.