Economically, in the sense of finances, in the sense of debt, in the sense of higher taxes, in the sense of less power for their purchases with their dollars.
They need higher levels of stress and anxiety and depression. They need more blatant lies by politicians that are so obvious and deceitful that it will snap them out their passive hypnotism and force them to take action.
Americans need to be pushed to the brink.
I’d argue that it’s not the population at large, but the millionaire and billionaire class that needs to experience maximum discomfort. You might have noticed that private jets started getting turned away from busy airports just before the vote to end the shutdown happened. Making the wealthy uncomfortable does more change in the US than making life more difficult for people on the brink of poverty with no safety net.
Sickeningly, this is the way. The job market in the US is virtually non-existent, and US healthcare is largely tied to employment (and still pretty expensive). For a lot of people, weekends are for catching up on to-do items from the week, and kid’s commitments. The fact that there have been 2 “No Kings” protests that attracted some of the largest crowds in US history doesn’t get the press it deserves.
People aren’t in the streets every day because they can’t afford to be! A disturbing number of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and most of them can legally be fired without cause thanks to “right-to-work” laws. Unfortunately, the wealthy are the population most likely to have the free time and resources to actually make Congressional representatives take notice. That’s just how the US is structured.
