Around the World, People are Losing Trust in The System

 

The latest Edelman Trust Report finds that people are losing trust in both society's institutions and capitalism itself.  The culprit? Intractable inequality.


Despite strong economic performance, a majority of respondents in every developed market do not believe they will be better off in five years' time.

This means that economic growth no longer appears to drive trust, at least in developed markets - upending the conventional wisdom.

"We are living in a trust paradox," said Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman.

"Since we began measuring trust 20 years ago, economic growth has fostered rising trust. This continues in Asia and the Middle East but not in developed markets, where national income inequality is now the more important factor.

The survey was conducted in 28 markets and involved more than 34,000 respondents.

Fifty-six per cent of the surveyed global population said capitalism in its current form does more harm than good in the world.

Most employees (83 percent) globally are worried about job loss due to automation, a looming recession, lack of training, cheaper foreign competition, immigration and the gig economy.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents worry about losing the respect and dignity they once enjoyed in their country.

Nearly two in three feel the pace of technological change is too fast. Australia recorded one of the largest declines of trust in technology.

Inequality, automation and Darwinian markets can have a powerfully corrosive effect on faith in governments and economic institutions. These core factors are also cited as contributing to a broad decline in support for democracy itself.  Identifying the problems is the easy part. Summoning up the vision, courage and will to implement solutions is a Herculean challenge.

This year's Edelman Trust report finds a serious decline in confidence in government, corporate and media leadership.

A majority of respondents believe that government leaders (57 percent), business leaders (56 percent), and journalists (59 percent) are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false. The global infodemic has driven trust in all news sources to record lows with social media (35 percent) and owned media (41 percent) the least trusted; traditional media (53 percent) saw the largest drop in trust at eight points. A December Edelman Trust Barometer Post-U.S. Election Flash Poll found a stunning 39-point gap in trust in media between Biden voters (57 percent) and Trump voters (18 percent); a 15-point drop among Trump supporters since November.

“This is the era of information bankruptcy,” said Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman. “We’ve been lied to by those in charge, and media sources are seen as politicized and bias. The result is a lack of quality information and increased divisiveness. Fifty-seven percent of Americans find the political and ideological polarization so extreme that they believe the U.S. is in the midst of a cold civil war. The violent storming of the U.S. Capitol last week and the fact that only one-third of people are willing to get a Covid vaccine as soon as possible crystalize the dangers of misinformation.”

...The stark, but radically different realities of escalating stock prices and Great Recession-like unemployment levels have helped trigger a record trust gap of 16 points (informed public at 68 percent, mass population at 52 percent). There are double-digit trust gaps in 25 of 28 markets, versus seven in 21 markets just a decade ago.

Comments

  1. Caillo Lisa June 26, 2021 at 8:43 AM

    This is another testimony on how Chief Dr Lucky cured my HIV disease. Do you need a cure for your HIV disease? Do you want to be cured from your cancer disease? Or you want to be free from any type of disease. Kindly visit his website https://chiefdrluckyherbaltherapy.wordpress.com/ . He just cured my HIV disease and I’m very grateful to him, he is the only herbalist that can cure you.
    WhatsApp number : +2348132777335
    Via Email : chiefdrlucky@gmail.com
    Thank you all for reading,
    God bless"

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Navigating the Minefield of Short-Termism

Image
Its disappearance went largely unnoticed. There was no post mortem, no eulogy, no deep sighs for what had been lost. Posterity slipped from our consciousness as we ushered in the neoliberal era 40 years ago. Populations would now be administered, not led. Grand vision was a quaint artifact of generations past. Besides, the invisible hand of the marketplace would see to all our needs today, tomorrow, forever. Politicians grew smaller and smaller until they shrunk to fit the mold of technocracy.  Like sheep being dipped we were plunged into a world of supply-side economics in which lower taxation and deregulation would deliver manna from heaven. We focused on skinning the economy, and society, right to the bone. Everything would be maximized, nothing would be wasted, not even the offal.  We were surrendered to a world of short-termism. We elected governments of technocrats - grey suits stuffed with wet cardboard - whose horizons were measured in electoral cycles. They would do what they
Read more

The Gun We Point at Our Own Heads

Image
  If you're sitting at a table and there's a loaded pistol in front of you, do you pick it up and point it at your own head?  Probably not, unless something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. How would you feel if someone else was holding that pistol to your head? But there is a pistol pointed at our heads and, unless we do something about it, we're goners. It's not a Glock. It's fossil fuels and the industry is slowly squeezing the trigger. Proven fossil fuel reserves are sufficient to generate 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas emissions .  Russia and the United States each have massive reserves of fossil energy sufficient to push humanity through the 1.5C heating limit, sometimes called the "carbon budget."  I have it on reliable authority that Washington and the Kremlin aren't getting along very well these days. After all, if you won't hold the line on nuclear proliferation, you might not be inclined to voluntarily give up a major source of na
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr
Read more