Demand for hatred in an era of political divisiveness in the United States

This paper uses conceptual economics to analyze the aggregate demand for hatred nurtured by political divisiveness and conflicts in the United States. The study asserts that politicians from the Democratic and Republican Parties are the prime suppliers of hatred regardless of the legal price/penalties of hate crimes; and as such, the aggregate supply of hate (ASH) is perfectly or infinitely elastic. In the current political environment, the consensus among political pundits and legal scholars is that the President of the United States (POTUS) is the largest supplier of hate-creating stories and false narratives that many hate groups consume nationwide. The aggregate demand for hatred (ADH) by the electorate/consumers, especially the hate groups, depends on the legal price paid for hatred, their political ideologies, and the continuous hatred signals received from political leaders such as the POTUS. To comprehend this analysis, we derive the ADH curve based on the assumption that the amount of hatred consumed by the electorate/public depends on the legal penalty paid for showing overt hatred as manifested by the level of hate crimes in the United States, the degree of political divisiveness/frictions, and political leaders’ incitement of hatred. We assert that the upsurge in hate crimes nationwide in the past four years could be attributed to political leaders from both parties who continued to peddle hate-creating stories and false narratives; therefore, these leaders signal to hate groups/consumers to disregard the legal price/penalties associated with hate crimes. The implicit/tacit signal from political leaders such as the POTUS has enabled and emboldened various hate groups to target colleges and universities as recruiting grounds and their objective is to proselytize students with vile hate ideologies. Essentially, hate groups want college and university students to acquire hate as a supplement to their acquisition of human capital, and this poses a serious problem for the political economy of the United States because of the multiplier effects of hatred in the era of partisan political conflicts. Our analysis of aggregate data on hate crimes revealed that annual average hate crimes decreased under the Obama administration due to the passage of the Hate Crimes and Prevention Act (HCPA) of 2009 despite the slight increase in 2016, which one can attribute to the presidential campaign/elections. Similarly, the available data on hate crimes committed at 775 colleges and universities showed statistically significant increase in hate crimes between 2015 and 2016 as well as 2017.