--- title: How Insecurity Became the New Inequality description: 'The ground beneath our feet is perpetually shifting. And it’s hard to keep our balance,' writes Alissa Quart. canonical: https://time.com/7210680/insecurity-is-the-new-inequality-essay/ author: Alissa Quart article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-01-30T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-26T19:14:58.255Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How Insecurity Became the New Inequality og:description: "The ground beneath our feet is perpetually shifting. And it’s hard to keep our balance," writes Alissa Quart. og:url: https://time.com/7210680/insecurity-is-the-new-inequality-essay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53f17b987a99e405/6998b2cfd32e93b0efcd4c39/Incertainty-Inequality.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: Incertainty-Inequality og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Insecurity Became the New Inequality twitter:description: "The ground beneath our feet is perpetually shifting. And it’s hard to keep our balance," writes Alissa Quart. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53f17b987a99e405/6998b2cfd32e93b0efcd4c39/Incertainty-Inequality.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # How Insecurity Became the New Inequality > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Jan 30, 2025 12:00 PM UTC  Illustration of woman falling from the sky, surreal abstract concept Illustration of woman falling from the sky, surreal abstract concept Getty Images by [Alissa Quart](https://time.com/author/alissa-quart-2/) ## Alissa Quart Quart is the author of "Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream" Jan 30, 2025 12:00 PM UTC In a mere week, Trump’s second presidential term has already been accompanied by a cascade of startling and unnerving political and natural events: from the U.S. leaving the [World Health Organization](https://time.com/7208937/us-world-health-organization-trump-withdrawal/) and the [Paris Climate Accords](https://time.com/7208955/trump-paris-climate-agreement-withdraw-impact/), to the nighttime [firings of inspectors general](https://time.com/7210016/trump-mass-firing-removes-independent-inspectors-general/) to the [pardons](https://time.com/7209510/presidential-pardons-mercy-bad-name/) of the Jan. 6 rioters; from the nightclubs and home raids of [immigrants](https://time.com/7177304/trump-mass-deportation-raids/) in a number of cities to the [wildfires](https://time.com/7207607/los-angeles-rebuilding-wildfires/) roaring through swathes of Los Angeles. Each new occurrence, in turn, fills many with a greater and greater sense of insecurity. This is our new normal—uncertainty all the time, at every moment, in all places. I call it “terra infirma,” an inversion of “terra firma,” or solid ground. The ground beneath our feet is perpetually shifting. And it’s hard to keep our balance. As the director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, this constant uncertainty has an effect on how I think about my work, as well. I’ve started to consider [insecurity](https://watson.brown.edu/stoneinequality/2021/who-gets-what-new-politics-insecurity) as the new inequality. The problem isn't just the massive gap between “haves” and “have-nots,” though that does keep widening. For those who lack the resources to absorb each new blow, the constant instability hits hardest of all—but in truth, this insecurity affects almost everyone except the wealthiest. Author and activist Astra Taylor's book _Age of Insecurity_ has shaped and inspired my understanding of how "insecurity" manifests in the economy and society right now. Taylor argues that a wide variety of crises, from rising inequality to eroding mental health, have insecurity at their root. In the last decade or so, social researchers have identified proliferating categories of uncertainty. These include not only the political insecurity we are experiencing right now but also more bespoke varieties, like “[transportation insecurity](https://web.archive.org/web/20250121005640/https:/www.transportation.gov/priorities/equity/justice40/transportation-insecurity)" (the difficulty of reaching destinations because of damaged buses and trains), and “[informational insecurity](https://www.connections.clio-online.net/event/id/event-89127)" (due to content that has been muddled and sullied by deepfakes, disinformation, and paranoia). There are also the politicians who obsess over “illegal immigrants” supposedly taking jobs or tariffs, ensuring voters feel a certain degree of insecurity. These politicians then offer _themselves_ up as the voice of common sense, the irony being, of course, that their falsely secure rhetoric just augments our perception of chaos. Insecurity, in fact, has become an indicator by which a number of scholars now assess societal well-being. Groups like the [National True Cost of Living Coalition](https://www.nationaltruecostofliving.org/) are calling for a new measurement of Americans’ financial well-being. Instead of viewing these people through the scrim of poverty, the Coalition instead considers their “economic security,” they explain, “by looking beyond the most basic of needs to understand what it truly costs to live.” There’s also the [Economic Policy Uncertainty Index](https://www.policyuncertainty.com/). One of its creators, economist Nicholas Bloom, has referred to key political events as “uncertainty shocks” that create economic disorder, including Brexit in 2016 and the first Trump presidential election. “Insecurity” is not just the societal diagnosis of liberals and progressives. [GOP](https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-gops-new-rising-electorate-party-needs-to-find-a-way-to-keep-trump-working-class-support-9d84746a) pollster Patrick Ruffini has argued that a [“security gap”](https://x.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1856315105589293101) explains the 2024 election results, where the least secure groups “swung right…” For too long, stability has been framed as a psychological characteristic, a mental steadiness cultivated from within. By the same token, instability has been viewed as a psychological failing that comes from low self-esteem, a history of abuse, or a failure to “work on oneself.” But in the time of terra infirma, a certain degree of anxiety about insecurity is not a moral failing—it’s an honest and insightful reaction to what’s happening around us. What we think of as psychological insecurity—or being a “classic neurotic”—is a state of mind that reflects actual conditions. Insecurity is the key lens through which Terry Friedline, scholar and the author of [_Banking on a Revolution_](https://www.amazon.com/Banking-Revolution-Financial-Technology-Broken/dp/0190944137), looks when she studies the financial struggles of people on the economic edge. To me, it explains why Trump was elected by people who were not at the bottom of the economy but felt like they were just holding on to social solidity by their fingernails, much like those described in author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich’s [_Fear of Falling_](https://bookshop.org/p/books/fear-of-falling-the-inner-life-of-the-middle-class-barbara-ehrenreich/8312192?ean=9781455543755&next=t&next=t)_._ (I wrote the introduction for the new edition.) Their feelings of insecurity grew more acute in the late stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when the government withdrew some crucial support it had put in place. For instance, the 2021 American Rescue Plan's expanded child tax credit reduced child poverty tremendously. It ended, however, in 2022\. More broadly, [Build Back Better](https://ballotpedia.org/Build%5FBack%5FBetter%5FAct) forwarded a range of social welfare provisions that were intended as permanent: This more perpetual and humane social welfare policy vanished in the mist. **Read More:** [_Bootstrapping Has Always Been A Myth. The New American Dream Proves It_](https://time.com/6261476/bootstrapping-myth-new-american-dream/) As a result, insecurity was suddenly normalized. When people emerged from the pandemic fog, they found that paying bills on credit and not having enough to eat had become an everyday experience. The abrupt precarity was felt hardest by the poorest Americans, but they were not alone. “Insecurity is felt pretty far up the income ladder,” says Friedline, referring to a growing class of people whom I have called the [Middle Precariat](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/20/alissa-quart-squeezed-interview-struggling-middle-class), like those with advanced degrees who teach college students as adjuncts and still subsist close to the poverty line, or high school teachers who can’t pay their rent on their salaries and have to drive rideshares on the side to make ends meet. Those making $35,000 a year in San Francisco, for instance, can’t meet their basic survival needs, but in the same area, even a family living on [$200,000](https://www.ktvu.com/news/households-making-over-200k-are-middle-class-in-some-bay-area-cities-study-says) may also find itself precarious, pouring resources into health insurance or scrambling to afford tuition. Part of what has caused economic insecurity is that we’ve come to rely more on credit and debt in the last few decades, a phenomenon taking place at all income levels except for the super-rich. In Friedline’s view—and my own—this particular flavor of economic insecurity has caused some voter alienation from traditional politics. If you are weighed down by your bad credit score—with the [generalized credit score](https://www.cnbc.com/select/when-did-credit-scores-start/), as Friedline points out, being a relatively new measurement—how can you focus on marching, or organizing, or even voting? In a world of terra infirma, the shakiest ground of all may be our broken and rigged healthcare system. The U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare per capita as other countries, and Americans still constantly worry [about affording treatment](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2020/new-survey-finds-americans-suffering-health-coverage-insecurity-job-losses), accessing doctors in a timely fashion, or being able to get a clear diagnosis. As [Kate Nicholson](https://katemnicholson.com/gallery/), the Executive Director and Founder of the National Pain Advocacy Center, told me, many of the people she works with are fed up with medical insecurity, stemming, say, from procedures routinely denied by insurance companies at the 11th hour, even after the doctors and nurses have scrubbed and are ready to operate. It was something I experienced myself when I was diagnosed with Long COVID last year. Even with health insurance, I had to wait months to see doctors who might have the expertise to figure out what was happening. It took five months to get even a quasi-accurate diagnosis. In that time, I paid out of pocket for complex tests not covered by insurance. **Read More:** [_The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases_](https://time.com/6963920/chronic-disease-cost-stigma-alissa-quart/) Medical insecurity often has truly terrible outcomes. Nicholson mentioned one of her colleagues, [Tinu Abayomi-Paul](https://callingupjustice.com/honoring-the-life-and-legacy-of-tinu-abayomi-paul/), whose insurance stopped paying for her [chemotherapy](https://www.patreon.com/posts/sad-news-10-2-24-113253380), and who had recently died. “Medical insecurity is not just something that causes anxiety—it can result in death,” says Nicholson. So, what can we do? To combat this shaky malaise, we first have to break out of our neurotic isolation. We must seek the glimmer of the Soviet era’s [“kitchen table”](https://economichardship.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5a5bdc69d9a1ff4b83062ea0c&id=2a8d1cc2eb&e=7bdf149ad1) culture, what the anthropologist Victor Turner called “communitas.” In this moment of rupture and uncertainty, this sort of [solidarity](https://economichardship.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5a5bdc69d9a1ff4b83062ea0c&id=88ceb4bc73&e=7bdf149ad1) can be an unexpected salve. Once we realize our predicament is not our fault, we must organize to change the systems that make us insecure. One solution is alternative institutions in finance, including [public banking](https://www.demos.org/research/banking-public-good-public-bank-nyc). But we also need better regulation of the draconian health insurance plans that create medical insecurity and the mainstream banking system, so that both may behave in more moral ways. (All this regulation of course rests on us electing better and more effective politicians who recognize how many of us suffer from insecurity.) We also need to look down and recognize that we’re _all_ standing on terra infirma. (Anyone without the means to build a bunker to wait out the inevitable shocks, that is.) With that recognition, we must each develop a clearer understanding of how those in power deliberately exploit our individual and societal uncertainty—and what we can do about it. _This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the_ [_Economic Hardship Reporting Project_](http://www.economichardship.org/)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7210680/insecurity-is-the-new-inequality-essay/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7210680/insecurity-is-the-new-inequality-essay/"},"headline":"How Insecurity Became the New Inequality","datePublished":"2025-01-30T12:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-26T19:14:58.255Z","description":"\"The ground beneath our feet is perpetually shifting. 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