MATT WELCH: Americans don’t trust their government, its institutions, or each other. This is not a good place to be.

We are careening dangerously from a high-trust to a low-trust society. We trust one another less, we trust government and other mediating institutions less. This trend, which like many of our pathologies predates and arguably helped give rise to the Trump presidency, has ominous consequences.

High-trust societies have lower transaction costs, lower crime rates and less corruption. People are nicer and better behaved when they’re reasonably confident that the local grocer won’t steal their credit card information and the IRS won’t audit them based on their politics.

To maintain a high-trust society requires a measure of self-discipline, and even self-sacrifice regarding short-term gains, on the part of its political class. Our political class is no longer capable of those, it seems. The costs of abandoning that are high, but since the political class mostly won’t bear them, it doesn’t care. And never will, unless it is made to.