WTH Has Trust in American Institutions Collapsed? Gerry Baker Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2023
⏱️ 61 minutes
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Summary
Gallup, Pew, and other reputable polling institutes have been lock-step in reporting the precipitous decline of American trust in the country’s institutions over the past few years. Every survey examining public faith in our institutions to do what is right, to provide for the common good, or to simply function at all has hit rock bottom. Surprising? Not really – these dropping percentage points coincide with upticks in intense partisanship, erosion in our political process, and culture wars. And this is not, as the media would portray it, solely an income inequality issue; social mobility and opportunity issues yes, but the biggest factor in this mistrust is the widening cultural gap between the new elites, and the rest of the US’ population. What can be done? It is imperative that students are educated in civics and history and maintain a respect for the institutions that are meant to provide for them. And most importantly, it is high time for real leaders to step up, recognize and fix these corrosive problems.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell is talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about? |
| 0:23.6 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:36.6 | And I'm Mark Tyson. |
| 0:38.6 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:43.7 | Mark, what good news do you have for us today? |
| 0:45.9 | I have no good news, Danny. |
| 0:52.1 | We are discussing the collapse of trust in our institution. |
| 0:57.3 | We are experiencing a crisis of trust. There is new polling out from Gallup, which has been tracking these numbers since the 1970s, and collapse in trust in the federal |
| 1:03.7 | government, big business, the media, education, science and medicine, technology, religious |
| 1:09.3 | institutions, law enforcement, all of these institutions, |
| 1:12.5 | you name it, is collapsing. They track, Gallup tracks 16 institutions, and over the past |
| 1:19.0 | decade, 11 of those institutions have recorded their lowest ever popular support in the last |
| 1:24.9 | couple of years. The only institutions that have held steady and |
| 1:28.4 | have enjoyed majority confidence are the military and small business. Every other institution |
| 1:33.6 | has absolutely collapsed. Jerry Baker of the Wall Street Journal has written a fantastic essay in the |
| 1:40.3 | Wall Street Journal based on his new book about this, diagnosing the problem, explaining to us why this collapse is happening, and we've got him on the pod today. |
| 1:50.1 | Exactly. So a lot of people, I think, paid attention to also the Pew poll that came out last week. |
| 1:55.6 | And I'm not going to read everybody the litany of it, but fewer than two in ten Americans say they trust the government |
| 2:02.4 | in Washington to do what is right just about always or even most of the time. Now, you know, again, |
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