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Garret Martin is the president and CEO at the Maine Center for Economic Policy.
People are struggling to get by. Their ability to afford groceries, rent, and heating oil feels tenuous.
Short-term economic data tells a confusing story. For many, wages have recently grown faster than prices. By that measure, people should be better off than they were before. That’s why some dismiss the affordability crisis as exaggerated, or even a “hoax” in President Donald Trump’s words.
On a spreadsheet, he has a point. In lived experience, he couldn’t be more wrong.
How people feel about their economic security is a powerful predictor of how they behave and vote. Nostalgia explains a little of that. My grandfather could never accept paying 75 cents for a bottle of Coke after remembering when it cost a nickel. Our memories of prices are sticky.
But nostalgia alone doesn’t explain today’s anxiety.
In the late 1970s, rising productivity stopped translating into rising wages. Since then, the economy has grown steadily, but gains have flowed overwhelmingly to CEOs and shareholders — not the people doing the work.
In 1975, CEOs made about 25 times what the typical worker earned. By 2024, that ratio exceeded 280 to one. Tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy, weakened labor protections and corporate practices that prioritized stock prices over paychecks made this possible.
The past half-century saw the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history. Meanwhile, working families were told if they just worked harder, spent less and saved more, they too could get ahead.
Women entered the workforce in record numbers. Households worked longer hours. Families stopped saving for retirement or college. Many went without health insurance or relied on cheaper, less healthy food. Homeowners borrowed against their houses. Others turned to credit cards and student loans.
Each adaptation bought more time but less security.
The 2008 recession was the breaking point for millions. Some recovered. Many did not. Those who regained their footing live closer to the edge than they ever imagined, while banks and large corporations that got bailed out are doing just fine.
Today, I know people in their fifties without health insurance for the first time in their adult lives. One accident, one illness, one broken transmission could mean financial ruin.
Whether wages beat inflation last year is beside the point. Owning a home, affording health care and paying for college have become steadily harder over decades. That did not happen by accident.
By prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations and removing protections for workers and consumers, wealth and power were concentrated at levels not seen since the Gilded Age. That concentration threatens economic security and our democracy.
People feel they played by the rules and still fell behind. They watch those at the top pull further away while they struggle to stay in place. That grievance is real, and dangerous, because it can either be directed toward rebuilding a fair economy or manipulated into anger at the wrong targets. When politicians tell working-class voters that immigrants and people of color are to blame, they’re pushing people to look sideways instead of up, a tactic deployed for generations to divide people sharing the same basic economic interests.
What people feel slipping away is not just purchasing power, but stability. Not just prices, but fairness.
To fix this, we could start by making sure wealthy people and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes and using the revenue to invest in housing, health care and child care — foundations of economic security. In Maine, a significant share of voters, including many Republicans, agree millionaires and large corporations should pay more.
This affordability crisis is not about inflation charts or quarterly wage data. It’s about a 50-year erosion of economic security and the anger and grievance it produced. Until we confront both the economic rigging and the politics of division that sustain it, no amount of good news or band-aid solutions will make people feel whole again.