Next month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.
Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.
Trump can be expected to ignore calls for policies to reduce poverty and to dismiss the annual awareness campaign, leaving him unencumbered by any guilt that past presidents might have felt looking in the mirror and seeing Louis XIV starring back at them.
US poverty levels matter in the UK and across continental Europe because the rising level of poverty in the States – a trend that dates back to the turn of the century – is the direct result of a particular form of capitalism that increasingly popular rightwing parties say should be adopted.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives laud the US, but seem to care little about how it promotes a style of capitalism that leaves millions of people on the side of the road, injured in one way or another, allowing the rest to work, spend and save without a thought for the less fortunate.
You couldn’t have an opioid crisis in Europe in the way that has happened in the US. You couldn’t have the scale of mental health crisis, or high levels of obesity or poverty. Even after years of austerity across Europe, the level of government intervention in the US remains so much lower.
And more cinematically, the US also exports its financial crashes around the world, knowing that the cost to itself is a fraction of the repair job faced by countries that care about their people.
If you feel any responsibility to the environment or to those who have fallen by the wayside, there is an easy path to lower taxes and low levels of regulation.
It’s worth remembering this when you next read about how Europe’s economy only inches ahead each year, with the UK not far in front.
A kinder nation, one that takes ordinary people’s views into account, is going to grow at a more measured pace, by definition. Regulation that prevents financial crashes might slow the adoption of whizzy new financial products, but pays dividends should the worst be prevented or the effect minimised. Again, it should be remembered that since 1929, it is reckless US governments that have exported financial chaos, not the more careful custodians of UK or European financial centres.
For those who think there must still be a way to grow at a faster pace, there are countless reports about how UK and European governments could do a better job.
Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and ex-head of the European Central Bank, provided a comprehensive critique of Europe’s lack of growth and provided remedies, most of them involving further integration.
Draghi is no socialist, but his effort was socialistic. Taken in the round, his reforms were designed to pay for a large and munificent state.
Farage and Badenoch are unsurprisingly resistant to the ideas that underpin Draghi’s report and the lesson from the US is that European markets are not integrated enough.
They prefer to take other lessons from the US. That financial markets should be set free, that monopolies are fine if it drives investment. And the poor and unhealthy should understand that it is most likely to be their own fault and for that reason can only expect the most rudimentary support from the state.
It seems from studies of the modern electorate that older people are the most susceptible to the Farage/Badenoch argument. The only aspect of the state that is sacred is the health service – for obvious reasons.
Everything else can be sacrificed to prevent the state from demanding more in tax from its citizens. The AfD in Germany, the National Rally in France and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party all subscribe to the same philosophy.
In the UK, there is a clear correlation between those over 60 and those voting with frustration and anger to destroy the society created by older voters.
Without acknowledging the link to far-right parties on the continent and Trump’s White House, it is baby boomers who are coming out in favour of low regulation, a finance industry free to do its worst and leaving charity to look after the least well-off.
Those with more progressive views are in a minority in this age group.
The government should make the case for gradualism and how it protects most people. It guards against disaster and, when disaster strikes, has the capacity to offer support where it is needed. It builds resilience.
The US casts its least fortunate aside in the most callous way. It’s true that it always has. But these days, its colossal wealth and income make that unnecessary.
