The hottest Inequality Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top World Politics Topics

Squaring the Circular Flow

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe ā€¢ 2352 implied HN points ā€¢ 27 Feb 26
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. AI is already replacing knowledge workers at scale, and large layoffs threaten the wage-driven circular flow by removing consumers, which could lead to oversupply, deflation, and economic contraction.
  2. There are three broad responses: broadly distribute AI ownership so people earn dividends, provide a government-funded universal dole to replace wages, or pay people a "data dividend" for their human-generated contentā€”each option has big trade-offs and wealth concentration makes broad ownership unlikely.
  3. The social and political effects matter as much as the economic ones: ownership preserves dignity and political independence, while dependence on state handouts or platform extraction risks techno-feudalism and erosion of civic life.

Trapped in the hell of social comparison

Noahpinion ā€¢ 25176 implied HN points ā€¢ 16 Jan 26
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Inequality
  1. Algorithmic social media floods people with polished influencer lifestyles, causing frequent upward social comparisons that make Americans feel worse about their finances even when the economy is doing fine.
  2. Influencer wealth is often out of reach and unclear in origin, so it feels unfair and raises unrealistically high standards for what counts as financial success.
  3. There are no easy fixesā€”you can't make everyone as rich as influencersā€”so solutions focus on building shared public goods, discouraging flashy displays of wealth, and reducing time spent on comparison-heavy apps.

No, That's Not What "the Research" Says About Exam Schools

Freddie deBoer ā€¢ 3960 implied HN points ā€¢ 17 Feb 26
šŸšŒ Education Inequality
  1. Studies using cutoffs and regression-discontinuity designs show that attending selective exam schools does not meaningfully boost test scores, college enrollment, or later earnings once you account for students' pre-entry ability.
  2. The schools' strong reputations come mainly from selecting already high-ability students, so student traits and background drive outcomes more than the school itself, and claims about lasting harm to bright kids stuck in regular classes lack solid support.
  3. That null effect matters for policy: trying to scale elite-school practices often fails, widening access to those schools may not change long-term results, and standardized tests can sometimes help talented disadvantaged students stand out.

Cruising to Dubai

Bet On It ā€¢ 457 implied HN points ā€¢ 09 Mar 26
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Inequality
  1. The UAEā€™s immigration model brings in huge numbers of foreign workers, which raises nativesā€™ living standards and usually improves migrantsā€™ lives relative to home.
  2. Many Americans say theyā€™d reject a system that locks migrants out of citizenship and gives citizens big benefits, but that objection is mostly abstract.
  3. Cruise ships display even starker passenger/crew inequality and Americans enjoy it, suggesting people quickly acclimate to extreme inequality and would likely accept Emirati-style immigration in practice.

A pedagogical tax

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1328 implied HN points ā€¢ 11 Feb 26
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. A tougher Zucman-style tax on the ultra-rich would mainly serve as a moral, pedagogical signal rather than a big revenue source, showing society objects to extreme greed and vanity.
  2. Greed (pleonexia) is driven by a need for social validation, so people keep accumulating and displaying wealth with no natural limit, which makes status-driven consumption endless and socially harmful.
  3. A social-credit-style system for billionaires could tie tax rates to behavior, rewarding decent conduct and raising taxes for abusive or unethical actions to create real accountability and reduce elite impunity.
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Why We All Care About Inequality (But Are Loath to Admit It)

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1479 implied HN points ā€¢ 07 Feb 26
šŸŒ World Politics Inequality
  1. People care about inequality because other peopleā€™s incomes affect their own wellbeing through social comparison, a sense of justice, and self-worth, not just because of how much they can buy.
  2. Focusing only on poverty while ignoring inequality is inconsistent, since concern for the poorest still relies on judgments about how income is distributed and who counts as a relevant peer.
  3. Opposition to studying or criticizing inequality often protects the status quo, and peopleā€™s reactions to inequality reflect motives like fairness or disgust as well as envy.

Who will actually profit from the AI boom?

Noahpinion ā€¢ 22353 implied HN points ā€¢ 10 Aug 25
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. AI investment is growing really fast, and it's now helping the economy more than people's spending. This means businesses are spending a lot on AI.
  2. There's a big question about who will actually make money from all this AI spending. It could be the companies that create AI, the tech giants providing the resources, or even the hardware makers.
  3. Even though there's a lot of talk about rich people getting richer from AI, the markets don't seem to believe that will happen in a huge way. Competition in the AI field might keep profits from growing too much.

Should comparative economics still exist?

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1374 implied HN points ā€¢ 25 Jan 26
šŸšŒ Education Inequality
  1. Some argue economics should focus only on todayā€™s capitalism and drop comparative-system study because alternative systems no longer exist in practice.
  2. Teaching other systems like socialism reveals a very different logic of income distributionā€”politically set wages, mostly proportional taxes, transfers tied to age or family status, and little private capital incomeā€”which helps broaden how we think about inequality.
  3. Including a short unit on comparative systems costs little class time but may attract limited student interest, so teachers must decide whether to teach to meet demand or to broaden studentsā€™ horizons and create new interest.

Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy

Noahpinion ā€¢ 23882 implied HN points ā€¢ 20 Jul 25
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. Many people overreact to the potential negative impacts of AI on jobs and the economy. There's a tendency to jump to conclusions without waiting to see the real effects.
  2. Despite fears, AI hasn't yet shown a clear negative impact on the job market in the U.S., which remains strong. Past alarms about AI harming jobs have often been proven wrong.
  3. It's important to approach discussions about AI with a balanced view and avoid letting panic dictate our understanding of its effects on society and work.

AI and the Economy

In My Tribe ā€¢ 455 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Feb 26
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. A public bet claims the economy will stay basically normal through February 2029 using concrete metrics and a strict condition that no occupational category loses 50% or more of its jobs, but that hinges on how categories are defined.
  2. The writer thinks the bettor has roughly a 60% chance of winning over three years but expects AI to cause much bigger economic and labor-market changes over a 6ā€“8 year horizon.
  3. Quick uptake of new AI tools by younger workers suggests they could outcompete todayā€™s workforce, and ambiguous terms in short-term wagers make those bets risky.

Dos Capital

Don't Worry About the Vase ā€¢ 2553 implied HN points ā€¢ 05 Jan 26
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. If AI and robots fully replace human labor while capital yields rising returns and humans keep owning and controlling that capital, simple math predicts extreme, potentially unbounded wealth concentration.
  2. Those key premises are fragile and unlikely: perpetual human control, inviolable private property, AIs having no property rights, continued human survival and enforceable global taxes are all nontrivial and may break in a transformed world.
  3. Redistribution tools like inheritance or wealth taxes could in theory address extreme inequality but face political, enforcement, and economic limits; the real outcome depends on who holds power and whether democratic control endures.

Economics Links, 2/16/2026

In My Tribe ā€¢ 258 implied HN points ā€¢ 16 Feb 26
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. Over the last 40+ years laborā€™s share of income has fallen while profits and capitalā€™s share rose, and much of the stock-market boom is due to investors paying much higher valuations (P/E) rather than a big rise in earnings relative to GDP.
  2. Bitcoin trading relies heavily on highly leveraged perpetual-futures contracts that can force margin calls and cause cascading liquidations, making the market prone to sharp crashes.
  3. The income gap between the median family and the 80th percentile has widened a lot, so what counts as a ā€œmiddle-classā€ lifestyle has shifted up and leaves median earners feeling poorer by comparison.

Rethinking Immigration

Heterodox STEM ā€¢ 227 implied HN points ā€¢ 25 Feb 26
šŸŒ International Inequality
  1. Large-scale immigration has often brought economic and political benefits to host countries, but those gains depend heavily on context like cultural fit, immigrant skills, and institutional responses.
  2. Mass low-skilled immigration can increase inequality, strain public services, and reduce assimilation pressures, producing social and economic costs that differ from past historical cases.
  3. A practical policy approach is to welcome high-skilled, high-achieving immigrants while greatly restricting low-skilled immigration to protect a high-wage, innovation-focused society.

Heritability as Stalking Horse for Mutability

Freddie deBoer ā€¢ 3310 implied HN points ā€¢ 01 Dec 25
šŸšŒ Education Inequality
  1. People argue about heritability, but what most people really care about is mutability ā€” whether education and policy can change students' academic outcomes.
  2. Research shows students' relative academic positions are largely set early and remain stable despite interventions, suggesting there are consistent individual differences that schooling rarely eliminates.
  3. Non-genetic factors like prematurity, lead exposure, or brain injury can cause large, lasting academic harms, so 'environmental' does not automatically mean a problem is controllable or easily fixed.

Take the Unicorn Pill

Jeff Giesea ā€¢ 838 implied HN points ā€¢ 09 Sep 24
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. We're living in an Age of Asymmetry where a few companies and individuals hold most of the wealth and power. This creates big imbalances in society.
  2. Small, smart players can have a huge impact thanks to new technologies. Sometimes, these disruptions can lead to unexpected and significant changes.
  3. It's important to find ways to support everyone, not just the top few percent. If we ignore the growing gaps, it could lead to serious problems for our society.

Quiz: Do you favor giving some help to poor kids but even more to the rich?

Robert Reich ā€¢ 12402 implied HN points ā€¢ 01 Feb 24
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. A new tax bill aims to reduce child poverty by giving benefits to poor kids and the rich.
  2. The bill would help around 16 million children and boost the incomes of the top 1% quite a lot.
  3. While commendable for pulling children out of poverty, the bill also includes tax breaks that heavily benefit the wealthiest Americans.

It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism

Astral Codex Ten ā€¢ 23813 implied HN points ā€¢ 02 Jan 25
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. After the Singularity, wealth inequality might stay the same because AI will handle all labor. Everyone will earn similar returns on their investments, leading to a static distribution of wealth.
  2. Future wealth distribution could get more complicated with the birth of many descendants from rich individuals. This means those born into wealth might always have the advantage, creating a new kind of inequality over generations.
  3. To prevent extreme inequality, we might need government intervention or new ideas like wealth taxes to ensure that wealth is shared more fairly in a post-Singularity society.

The Stamina Gap

The Ruffian ā€¢ 768 implied HN points ā€¢ 10 Jan 26
šŸšŒ Education Inequality
  1. Deep, sustained focus ā€” cognitive endurance or mental stamina ā€” is becoming a scarce and valuable skill because modern life mostly rewards short, fast mental tasks.
  2. Less advantaged people often have lower stamina and therefore fall behind as tasks drag on, but quiet, independent practice (even via cognitive games) can build endurance and improve outcomes, and classroom norms and policies strongly affect who gets that practice.
  3. AI and other convenience tools can speed up thinking but also replace the effort that trains slow, deep thinking, so over-reliance risks eroding the very capacity needed for hard, complex work.

What If We Just Stopped?

Anima Mundi ā€¢ 391 implied HN points ā€¢ 23 Jan 26
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Inequality
  1. Modern life makes people trade their time and energy for pay that mostly goes to rent and survival, leaving little time for family, rest, or meaningful work.
  2. The system depends on individual participation, so mass withdrawalā€”through coordinated actions like mutual aid, rent boycotts, and collective careā€”can break its power.
  3. Start small by forming trusted groups (ten people) to share food, shelter, childcare, and support, and scale those networks into a new, simpler economy that gives everyone enough.

Our Healthcare System, a Reign of Terror

Freddie deBoer ā€¢ 18038 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Dec 24
šŸ„ Health Politics Inequality
  1. Many people only react strongly to certain types of suffering and fail to recognize the ongoing harm of our healthcare system. It's important to think about why we care more about some victims than others.
  2. Our healthcare system often denies essential care to those who need it, leading to tragic outcomes. The choices made by companies and policymakers directly affect people's lives and deaths.
  3. There's a disconnect in how society views death caused by healthcare versus murder. We need to acknowledge and address the systemic issues causing suffering in our healthcare system, rather than just express sympathy for individual cases.

Top Links 978 Charting Trump's tariffs. The world's wealthiest people. India building in the Himalayas & bombing Somalia.

Chartbook ā€¢ 500 implied HN points ā€¢ 10 Jan 26
šŸŒ World Politics Inequality
  1. Trumpā€™s 2025 tariffs have complex effects that canā€™t be captured by a single measure; you need a threeā€‘dimensional view to understand their full impact.
  2. Thereā€™s a feature on the worldā€™s wealthiest people, highlighting top fortunes and who holds the most wealth.
  3. India is both building in the Himalayas and carrying out bombings in Somalia, combining major construction projects with overseas military action.

Marriage Markets

David Friedmanā€™s Substack ā€¢ 224 implied HN points ā€¢ 09 Feb 26
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Inequality
  1. Marriage markets create deep inequality based on peopleā€™s desirability, especially physical attractiveness, which can matter more than money. Systems like bride-price and dowry shift money among families to compensate less desirable partners, but that redistribution may not balance and can leave some people unmarried.
  2. Matching is about fit, not just distribution: who pairs with whom depends on mutual preferences. One-sided auctions help assign partners by willingness to pay, but mutual-consent arrangements better capture both sidesā€™ tastes while still leaving unequal outcomes.
  3. Many marriage terms are hard to enforce because behaviors inside a marriage are private and unobservable. That makes divorce threats or outside payments more effective than courts at changing how the implicit contract is honored.

On Aristocracy

Castalia ā€¢ 759 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Jul 24
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Inequality
  1. Aristocracy means being part of an elite class in society, often due to having a prestigious education or social connections. It's not just about wealth but also about how you maintain your status.
  2. The new aristocracy focuses on things like high-status jobs and education rather than old wealth. Families aim to pass on their advantages through schooling instead of inheritance.
  3. This modern elite tries to seem open and merit-based, but still, the same types of people tend to succeed. It's like a game where the rules make sure they always win.

Top Links 977 Copper, copper, copper. How Americans feel about AI & dumbing down pop.

Chartbook ā€¢ 457 implied HN points ā€¢ 09 Jan 26
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. Copper is a major focus, suggesting shifts or stresses in the copper market are driving attention and debate.
  2. Public attitudes toward AI and worries about popular culture getting "dumber" are highlighted, showing cultural and technological anxieties.
  3. Income inequality is reshaping US consumption: the top 20% of households now account for about 39% of all spending and are even more concentrated in certain new categories.

Human Nature, Nick Fuentes, Education Exchange

Rob Henderson's Newsletter ā€¢ 984 implied HN points ā€¢ 11 Dec 25
šŸšŒ Education Inequality
  1. Humans are relatively monogamous compared with chimpanzees and gorillas, with an estimated monogamy rating around two-thirds.
  2. Mainstream media show ideological blindspots, so tools that compare coverage and highlight underreported stories can help readers spot bias and find missing reporting.
  3. Recent studies link social exposure, personality, and political beliefs: wealthy peopleā€™s local exposure to poor neighbors can reduce their support for redistribution, personality traits predict everyday behaviors, and sizable minorities in parts of the Republican coalition hold distorted views of the Holocaust.

Prove Me Wrong: Luck Determines Almost Everything

Singal-Minded ā€¢ 359 implied HN points ā€¢ 12 Jan 26
šŸ Travel Inequality
  1. Luck plays a huge role in who gets what in life, but people often treat it as an occasional surprise instead of the normal rule.
  2. Small, arbitrary factors like where youā€™re born can produce massive differences in wealth, opportunity, and daily living conditions.
  3. How much you believe luck matters shapes your politics: seeing luck as decisive pushes you toward changing systems to reduce unfairness, while denying it makes you more comfortable with the status quo.

Top Links 971 Tech billionaires. Big ingots. Soviet surrealism & the banger.

Chartbook ā€¢ 371 implied HN points ā€¢ 03 Jan 26
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. Tech billionaires added about half a trillion dollars to their personal wealth in 2025.
  2. The edition mixes data-heavy items with cultural pieces, including Soviet surrealism and visual art like Eugene Bermanā€™s painting.
  3. Chartbook is a curated newsletter that offers free previews alongside paid subscriber content and relies on reader support.

āš”ļøā˜ ļø The billionaire war against death

Faster, Please! ā€¢ 731 implied HN points ā€¢ 07 Dec 25
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. Rich people have always tried to cheat death, but now theyā€™re putting real money into technologies that could actually extend life.
  2. Huge private investments are funding longevity work like cellular reprogramming and ageā€‘reversal drugs, making radical life extension a plausible goal.
  3. That shift raises big social and economic questions about who gets access, how societies change if only the wealthy can postpone death, and what it means for the rest of us.

A Tax Proposal Against Progress And Democracy

QTRā€™s Fringe Finance ā€¢ 30 implied HN points ā€¢ 06 Mar 26
šŸŒ World Politics Inequality
  1. Taxing the rich and their wealth discourages saving, investment, and innovation, which lowers productivity and real wages and so harms ordinary and vulnerable workers.
  2. Large taxes on income and wealth expand state power and fuel rent-seeking, patronage, and corruption, which undermines equality before the law and weakens democracy.
  3. The proposed solution is low, simple taxes with no levies on savings or wealth, plus strong property rights, deregulation, and strict limits on public spending to protect prosperity and democratic health.

Political Psychology Links, 1/4/2026

In My Tribe ā€¢ 288 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Jan 26
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. Many young women shifted politically left after about 2010, a change linked to rising anxiety, depression, loneliness, and the breakdown of stabilizing institutions like marriage, motherhood, and religion.
  2. Oxytocinā€™s effects on social behavior are highly context-dependent: it can promote bonding and trust within a group but also increase envy, gloating, defensiveness toward outsiders, and stronger in-group conformity.
  3. Social media causes context collapse that pushes people into bland, PR-safe selves and makes sincerity risky, while rising inequality and perceived loss of status fuel resentment that simple economic redistribution may not fully solve.

New Capitalism in America

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 2400 implied HN points ā€¢ 23 Jul 25
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. The richest people today often earn their wealth from both high salaries and investments. This means some of the top workers are also among the top capitalists.
  2. There's a growing group of very wealthy individuals who consistently benefit from both labor income and capital income, which is changing the traditional class structure.
  3. This new elite class feels they deserve their high incomes because of their education and hard work, but this also creates a division between them and the rest of society.

Everything Looks Like A Nail

Where's Your Ed At ā€¢ 25075 implied HN points ā€¢ 19 Oct 23
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. Marc Andreessen wants to portray himself as a victim despite his immense success and wealth.
  2. Andreessen promotes a vision of continuous technological advancement, but his actions and investments often prioritize maintaining the status quo.
  3. Andreessen's manifesto is filled with contradictions and hypocrisy, advocating libertarian economic thinking while benefiting from government intervention.

Chartbook 394 "A City we can afford": capitalism and democracy in New York

Chartbook ā€¢ 2718 implied HN points ā€¢ 29 Jun 25
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. New York City is a very exciting and diverse place, full of contrasts between rich and poor. It has a unique mix of cultures and a reputation as a hub of innovation and debate.
  2. Socio-economic inequality is a major issue in New York, with a significant divide between high earners and those struggling to make ends meet. This gap has only gotten wider in recent years, especially after COVID.
  3. The recent political shift towards progressive leadership, like that of Zohran Mamdani, shows hope for addressing issues of affordability and inequality. However, there are strong forces that want to maintain the status quo.

Put your Kid to Work Day

New Means ā€¢ 2771 implied HN points ā€¢ 17 Jan 24
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. Child labor violations have increased by 50% in 2023, resulting in tragic accidents and deaths of young workers.
  2. Multiple state legislatures are working to weaken child labor laws, allowing kids to work longer hours in dangerous jobs.
  3. The push for child labor is tied to capitalist interests seeking to further exploit and profit off of vulnerable populations, including children.

ā€œWe Are Not as Wealthy as We Thought We Wereā€: Postscript 1

Erdmann Housing Tracker ā€¢ 273 implied HN points ā€¢ 05 Jan 26
šŸ’¼ Business Inequality
  1. Rents have risen a lot and in a regressive way, with the cheapest neighborhoods hit hardest and lowest-income renters effectively losing about 15% of their incomes to higher rentsā€”effects that common national statistics miss.
  2. The problem is a shortage and a lack of easy substitutes: constrained construction capacity and tighter mortgage access have created a paid premium for ā€œnothingā€ (scarcity tied to location), so this isnā€™t mainly about agglomeration demand.
  3. The solution is a very large increase in housing supply across many locationsā€”not just building smaller "affordable" units or blocking luxury projectsā€”so millions of homes or billions of square feet must be added to eliminate the "nothing" premium.

New capitalism III: Capital

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1691 implied HN points ā€¢ 27 Jul 25
šŸ’° Finance Inequality
  1. Capital income is different from labor income. You earn labor income by working hard, but capital income comes from simply having money to invest.
  2. Income from capital is very unequal. Most people don't receive any capital income at all, making it highly concentrated among the wealthy.
  3. A large portion of the world's population has no income from capital. Up to 85% of people may not earn anything from their investments, leading to a significant divide in wealth.

New Capitalism II: Compositional vs income inequality

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1494 implied HN points ā€¢ 26 Jul 25
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. There are different ways to measure inequality, like compositional inequality, which looks at how people earn their money from labor versus capital. This shows us that income can be unequal even if the sources of income are similar for everyone.
  2. The elite class in a capitalist society often makes money from both high wages and investment, and they strongly support capitalist ideas. This creates a different dynamic than what we see in the broader workforce.
  3. Countries with lower inequality usually have less compositional inequality too. This suggests that income distribution and the sources of that income are connected in ways we need to better understand.

A few takeaways from my friendā€™s new paper on loneliness

Sex and the State ā€¢ 35 implied HN points ā€¢ 17 Feb 26
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. Intensive parenting, later marriage, and fear of downward mobility are contributing to lower birthrates as people choose to have fewer or no children.
  2. Lonely people are more vulnerable to advertisers, cults, and political manipulation, and screens and social media worsen isolation by replacing real-life social time.
  3. Economic and social sorting ā€” wealthy people clustering in homogeneous enclaves while poorer areas lose social capital ā€” creates a vicious cycle that traps people in poverty and isolation, and it can be eased by mixed-income housing, more public social spaces, and policies that rebuild local civic life.

CROSSPOST: SAM BOWLES: The Origin & Future of Economic Inequality

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 138 implied HN points ā€¢ 16 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Inequality
  1. Enduring economic inequality isn't inevitable; it arose when certain technologies and institutionsā€”landā€‘limited production (like plows), protoā€‘states to enforce property, and slaveryā€”made material wealth heritable and defensible.
  2. For thousands of years after the Neolithic, aggressive egalitarian norms and institutions (communal storage, public eating, antiā€‘dynastic burials, even destroying productive assets) actively suppressed lasting inequality, but Bronzeā€‘Age shifts broke those norms and made inequality durable.
  3. The modern knowledge and care economy could either repeat Bronzeā€‘Age enclosure through things like intellectual property or be steered toward greater equality by democracy, unions, social insurance, and redistributive policy, because stronger intergenerational transmission of material wealth nonlinearly amplifies inequality.

How to learn about politics from two Democratic-leaning women in New York

Global Inequality and More 3.0 ā€¢ 1268 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Aug 25
šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡ø U.S. Politics Inequality
  1. People often don't see themselves as wealthy, even when they clearly are. This can lead to a disconnect between how they view their own status and reality.
  2. Business owners can struggle with changing economic conditions, like tariffs, that impact their ability to succeed. Decisions made by politicians can have a real effect on small businesses.
  3. Not everyone is satisfied with the mainstream political options. Some feel disillusioned with both major parties and are searching for better alternatives.