Around the globe, people have lost faith in their economies as a vehicle of prosperity and see them more and more as battlegrounds between their interests and those of the rich and powerful. And it is not a fight they think they are winning.
This is the landing point in the surge in inequality that Thomas Piketty charts in his global academic hit Capitalism in the 21st Century, a work that crunches data over the past 100 years to build a profile of inequality built on fact, not ideology.
Piketty's theory is that inequality can be calculated by looking at the balance of capital and wages in the economy.
His data shows that while capital reigned supreme in the early years of the 20th century, it waned through the Depression and world wars with rising levels of equality through to the 1970s at which point the inequality curve began rising again.
The free market economic agenda, selling off assets and the creation of new financial markets saw capital's share of growth increase, a surge that has continued apace into the 21st century.
In the context of Piketty's data, voters' anxiety about declining fairness and equality in recent decades appears to be based not just in nostalgia for a rose-coloured past, but in a very real economic trajectory.
This week's polling suggests voters don't think the market economy is delivering the kind of society they want and explains why arguments from Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey that the best thing they can do for the economy is generate growth by making life easier for business are falling flat.
It's clear the budget has struck a nerve in the electorate - but perhaps what voters are really rejecting is not just a series of policy measures, but its potential to accelerate the unravelling of the kind of Australia they want to live in.
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