Why economic inequality is the biggest threat to democracy | Sally Kohn

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Writer and communication strategist Sally Kohn went looking for an answer to a question that's been keeping a lot of people up at night. Why is authoritarianism on the rise around the world? She expected to learn what the strongmen, so to speak, might be getting right. Instead, nearly everyone she interviewed told her she was asking the wrong question entirely. Authoritarianism wasn't surging because of anything it was doing right, but because of what democracy was getting wrong.

0:41In this talk, Sally makes the case that we've long treated democracy and economic opportunity as two separate things, and that this is exactly the mistake we can't afford to make anymore. What weakens democracy, she says, is the failure to understand and deliver results for people's actual lives, right down to their wallets. If democracy doesn't deliver meaningful economic opportunity, democracy starts to feel meaningless. And that makes authoritarianism and other forms of government more attractive, not in and of themselves, but by default. In the end, Sally answers another important question.

1:21What and who is democracy really for? That is coming up right after a short break.

1:54Sally Kohn: banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

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3:45And now, our TED Talk of the day. 250 years ago, just under a mile from here, Thomas Jefferson wrote one of the most consequential documents in American history. Now, the Declaration of Independence wasn't perfect, just like the guy who wrote it and the country it created weren't perfect either. But it set us on this path, right? This beautiful, audacious, complicated path that's still evolving. And the Declaration of Independence still gives me chills. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all are created equal. That they are endowed with certain unalienable rights. and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

4:47It's good, right? Did you get chills? I mean, yeah, I changed it a little, okay, from all men are created equal to all are created equal, because it makes it better, right? Thank you. and that's the point I want to talk with you about today that to live up to its promise we have evolved democracy in the past and it needs to evolve again not only so that we can feel our votes count but so we can count democracy's real benefits in our lives including in our wallets. So a couple of years ago a philanthropic foundation in the United States asked me to do some research to find out why authoritarianism was gaining ground around the globe.

5:49So I interviewed civic leaders in West Africa and scholars in Eastern Europe and democracy leaders in Latin America and I asked them, what's authoritarianism getting so right? These leaders that are pushing people and places away from democracy, what are these authoritarians doing that's so effective? Pretty much everyone I talked to said I was asking the wrong question. That authoritarianism wasn't surging because of anything it was doing right, but because of what democracy was getting wrong. That stopped me in my tracks. The way they put it, authoritarianism was like an opportunistic disease that could only take root when democracy was weak.

6:38And in case you haven't been paying attention, democracy is kind of on life support. So according to Freedom House, only about 20 % of the world's population lives in a country currently that can be considered free. and dissatisfaction with democracy is rising worldwide. In the U.S., for instance, about three out of five Americans say they are currently dissatisfied with how democracy is working. Why? The answer came from a conversation I had with Kwasi Prempe. So Kwasi runs the Ghana Center for Democratic Development. Now, Ghana only won independence from colonial rule in 1957. So not that long ago, but long enough that most people in Ghana today don't remember a time before democracy.

7:38But what they do know is that they're struggling economically right now under democracy. And so as Quasi put it, they very understandably ask, what has democracy done for me lately? His point is that democracies that do not deliver broad-based opportunity are vulnerable to autocratic capture. And research backs this up. So Susan Stokes is a political science professor at the University of Chicago. She has looked at variables for why democracy erodes in some countries but not others. Income inequality is the overwhelming variable in democratic backsliding, so much so that Stokes said short of unplugging their computers, they couldn't make it go away.

8:41Now, I want to be really clear about something. In the richest country in the world, a country that boasts about being a land of opportunity for all, ensuring meaningful economic opportunity for all is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do. And that is enough of a reason to do it. And it's practical. economic justice is how we save democracy

9:24so I'm feeling like this might be as much of a revelation to you as it was to me or at least it was maybe more of a revelation to me than it was to you because we were used to we have for our 250 years thought of democracy and economic opportunity as distinct and separate. I mean, obviously interrelated and for many of us equally important, but separate. They're not. They're two sides of the same coin. Because if democracy doesn't deliver meaningful economic opportunity, democracy starts to feel meaningless. And that makes authoritarianism and other forms of government more attractive, not in and of themselves, but by default, because democracy is defaulting on its promise.

10:21So I said before that we've evolved democracy in the past and it needs to evolve again. I want us to think about democracy in phases. Democracy 1.0. is that initial idea that the people should have the power in a political system. Not kings, not empires, not corporations. The people. It was a radical idea for its time. Honestly, it's still really radical. But as we know, that was just the beginning. democracy 2.0 is the phase where we expand who is included in democracy, who gets to participate, who counts as the people. In the United States, that process has been long. It has taken generations of struggle, abolition, suffrage, civil rights, to make democracy more inclusive, to say that everyone gets an equal vote because everyone matters equally.

11:34The brilliant scholar Isabel Wilkerson argues that, in fact, the U.S. wasn't even really a democracy until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act became law. And ever since then, there has been an aggressive movement to roll back that progress. while we should be making more progress on Democracy 2.0, far-right extremists aided and abetted by the Supreme Court have dismantled the Voting Rights Act and are trying to take us backwards.

12:11So, realistically, while it makes sense to question whether we even have a democracy right now in the United States, Either way, we still tend to focus more on democracy as a process, and not enough on what democracy produces on democratic outcomes. We think and argue and talk a lot about who gets to be included in democracy, but not enough about why. Why do we have a democracy in the first place? Answering that question, defining the goal of democracy, that's democracy 3.0. Democracy 3.0 says that if all of us were truly created equal, And if all of us truly get to participate equally, then the outcomes of our democracy should be more equitable too, right?

13:32More widely shared and benefiting everyone.

13:46But, did you hear it coming? Because there's a but. In the U.S. today, your zip code predicts your life expectancy, your race predicts your wealth, and your parents' income predicts your future. That ain't democratic. And it's getting worse. the top 1 % of Americans control as much wealth as the entire bottom 90 % of the country combined. And according to one source, CEOs now make 281 times more than average workers.

14:32281 times more? What the hell is wrong with us? Are CEOs 281 times more talented? Are they 281 times more deserving? Are they 281 times harder working than the rest of us? Look, we can use the word democracy all we like, but let's be clear, we've really got more of an oligarchy or a kleptocracy. Or maybe a monarchy where the kings are billionaires and reality TV stars or sometimes both.

15:17Democracy means that the kids of house cleaners and mechanics have the same opportunities in life as the kids of lawyers and tech execs. Democracy means that if you work hard, you can feed your family and afford a place to live. Democracy means that power and profit are distributed democratically. That is Democracy 3.0.

15:55So, for those who maybe didn't clap,

16:03This may be the part in the talk where some of y 'all are getting a little bit nervous. You hear economic democracy, and you think it means enforced sameness. It does not. Democracy 3.0 doesn't mean everybody gets an equal house and an equal income and equal outcomes. democracy 3.0 simply means that everyone gets an equal chance at the American dream. Are you with me?

16:41Okay, so how do we actually get to democracy 3.0? Well, the first thing is a shift in mindset to start seeing political democracy and economic democracy as mutually intertwined, which means we need to advance economic justice not only for basic fairness, right? But because that's the way we strengthen democracy. And on a practical level, it means that, yeah, to strengthen democracy, we need to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, but also we need to raise wages, and we need to get money out of politics, and we need to tax wealth more fairly.

17:33And democracy 3.0 means that just like voters should have equal voice and power, workers should have equal voice and power, and democracy at work means unions.

17:51In fact, the first wisp of Democracy 3.0 was at the last turn of the century, the last time our country got fed up with extreme wealth and extreme poverty. That's why we created unions, which helped create the middle class. And then we created a social safety net, Things like Social Security and eventually Medicare. Taxing wealth to pay for programs that would prevent extreme poverty and suffering. We just need to do it again, plus do more. Things like universal health care for all. And more democratic ways of owning businesses like employee ownership. And we need to make sure that new technologies actually improve our lives instead of undermining them.

18:55Look, the threat to end our democracy also contains within it an invitation to make it better. But our vision cannot be just to go back to the way things were a few elections ago. We have a moral and practical imperative to future-proof democracy by helping each other. by delivering real political voice and real economic power to we, the people, all of us. Because if we don't, if democracy doesn't deliver broad-based opportunity, people will eventually trade it for something they think will. And history shows us what happens next. It's not good for any of us. Democracy contains within it the tools for its own demise, but also its renewal.

20:06But if we want a better country, a fairer country, we're going to have to fight for it. We, the people, demand that our politics and our economy work way better for us and everyone around us. Because democracy can be more than something we do every couple of years in a voting booth. But something we can eat. And something we can live in. And something we can put in our pockets. every single day. That is the only way we are going to save ourselves, our country, and the ideals we hold so dear. Democracy 1.0 gives life to a radical idea. Democracy 2.0 expands liberty to more and more of us. Democracy 3.0 can make the pursuit of happiness possible for all.

21:25Thank you.

21:33That was Sally Cohn speaking at TED Democracy in Philadelphia in 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

22:15Thanks for listening.

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24:26it.

24:27Sally Kohn: Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.