Populism does tend to be: The middle against the top and the bottom

Student debt alleviation applies to the top 25%. Medicaid single-payer health insurance coverage applies to the bottom 25%.

Rich people fund candidates who legislate tax loopholes for them. Poor people don’t own property and fall below the threshold for paying income taxes.

So the middle class feels as if they are saddled with a disproportionately high amount of income and property taxation while qualifying for a disproportionately low share of the benefits. There may, in fact, be no truth to that, but that’s how they often tend to feel.

And it’s a source of conservative, resentful populism.

Life in the United States is hyper-individualistic, competitive, and atomized. In countries that have more of a communitarian culture (like in Scandinavia) there tends to be less resentment of “each other” and therefore less in the way of conservative, resentful populism.