Why some voters embrace Hanson and Trump

Our ethnic mix has changed, and is a hi-viz target for scapegoating loss of advantage or missing opportunity.

With rich and poor both richer but the First World manufacturing-dependent middle getting relatively less prosperous, both exclusive and mass market products boom in Western countries, while mid-market products collapse.

There are waiting lists for $20,000 Hermes handbags, and $3 Primark bags sell out in huge volumes while mid-range bags remain glued to store shelves. Prada and it's obverse, Zara, continue to grow, while department stores shrink. Porsche has just trebled profits in Australia, Hyundai booms but Holden and Ford are closing.

It's the evaporation of average.

As hope for this abandoned sector diminishes, within it lawlessness and drug abuse increases. Gang-related violence within disaffected groups is at record highs, as is use of ice and other cheap, powerful mechanisms to escape from impossible expectations.

Poor income partners poor diet and poor health. Body shapes are changing and rather than the old cliche of "fat and rich", corpulence is now linked to the underprivileged. Cheap and convenient fast foods and the sugar additives in bad diets have made obesity three times more prevalent than it was just a few decades ago, and it is a precursor to diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and more.

There may well be a correlation with poor education outcomes too, thus a handbrake on opportunity for the children of society's losers.

Political parties around the world have failed to keep pace with this changing society.

Free trade agreements are misunderstood and quite sensibly resented by losers in the scheme. Grand gestural decisions on issues like refugee policy are made that have no practical consequence for those in the First Class seats, while some in economy feel them in tangible ways.

When Angela Merkel let in a million refugees into Germany recently it showed global compassion and perhaps some symbolic atonement for atrocities three quarters of a century ago.

But Merkel isn't the woman worried about the gang next door; she's not scared of having her shop robbed at knife point, being sexually assaulted, or getting her car stolen by culturally misaligned kids now liberated and naturally opportunistic within Western ideology; that's happening sporadically back in the shabby bit of the economy cabin, but being greatly amplified by a sensation-hungry media.

Beyond this, many more traditional voters feel governments have lost control of expenditure. They believe that you should only spend what you have, so the $100 million per day incremental debt minimum that both major parties have been running up for years here in Australia seems grossly irresponsible, and the "debt is OK" or "our debt is small relative to other Western nations" arguments trotted out by commentators don't wash.