This much seems clear: Global elites are the new public enemy. What’s totally unclear, however, is how to fix the problems the anti-elites are rebelling against.

The proximate cause of the British vote to leave the European Union – Brexit, as everybody in the world knows by now -- was an influx of immigrants many Brits felt were overwhelming the public welfare system and diverting benefits and jobs away from natives. But the real problem is more basic: fading prosperity. Voters don’t tear up the status quo when good jobs are plentiful and life is good. This only happens when too many people fall too far behind for too long.

That is happening in much of the western world, as globalism lifts countries like China and India but punishes workers whose jobs can be done more cheaply someplace else—or by machines. The broad trends in Europe are the same as in the United States: People in technology, finance and other knowledge fields – the global elite – are doing fine. Many blue-collar workers and small-business owners dependent on their local economies are not.

Three charts illustrate the problem. First, the red and green lines below show that in the UK, household income, adjusted for inflation, has taken a bigger hit during the last eight years than at any other time in generations:

Source: U.K. Office of National Statistics

Next, here’s the income trend in the US. Incomes, represented by the red line, have recovered since the 2008 recession, but they’re still below where they were in 2000. That’s 16 years of stagnation, and counting:

Source: Sentier Research

And here's income inequality for 32 developed nations, with the US and UK among the worst:

Source: OECD

So the overall trend in both countries is depressed purchasing power for the typical family, combined with a high degree of inequality, which means the wealthy are capturing a larger share of national income. The Brexit vote, and the rise of antiestablishment presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, make perfect sense if you interpret these phenomena as manifestations of the working middle class falling behind.

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But tearing down globalization and abandoning free trade are extreme and counterproductive ways to address the problem, because they toss what’s good about globalization along with what’s bad. Protectionism and going-it-alone typically reduce growth, which means fewer jobs on the margin and higher prices for consumers. That doesn’t hurt bankers and barristers. It hurts lower-skilled employees who get laid off when companies cut costs and consumers cut back on spending.

Better to address the specific problems caused by globalization than by burning down the whole house. Here are three specific ways to do that, from an American perspective:

Do more to help globalization’s losers. Most Americans probably don’t realize there’s a federal program called Trade Adjustment Assistance that’s meant to help workers who lose their jobs to globalization. It’s been in place since the Kennedy administration and costs around $1 billion per year, or about .03% of total federal spending. Then there are traditional support programs such as unemployment insurance, often extended by Washington during recessions. Just about every such support program is a decades-old construct that can be improved, updated and expanded in some way, and promoted aggressively to make sure the people who need to know about it do.

Critics argue that TAA doesn’t work as intended and wastes taxpayer money. Fine. So devise programs that work better, deploy them broadly, measure their effectiveness and adjust when necessary. Let Americans know the government is doing something and changing tactics as necessary.

Enlist every possible idea to boost economic growth. A growing economy is like a magic elixir that makes a lot of problems simply go away, as more people benefit from expanding prosperity. Alas, the US economy is only growing at about 2% a year right now, which doesn’t benefit enough people. So it might be a good time for Democrats and Republicans to stop arguing and try an all-of-the-above approach to turbocharging the economy.

Start by reforming the tax code, which means cutting rates and reducing the loopholes that create favored classes of taxpayers. Adopt Democratic ideas, such as big new investments in infrastructure, and enlist private-sector partners to keep taxpayer costs down. Adopt Republican ideas, such as bushwhacking needless regulations and eliminating federal-state overlap. Make it easy for entrepreneurs to start businesses and the brightest minds from everywhere to come to the United States, and stay.

Make global elites part of the solution. Bankers, CEOs, media barons and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have more to lose from protectionism and global fragmentation than they do from populist calls to boost their taxes or give their employees more job security. Business lobbies such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable might want to rethink their opposition to everything that favors labor or raises their costs by $1. There are probably a lot of British companies right now that would give every worker a 25% raise if only they could turn back Brexit.

None of this is possible in today’s political climate, because compromise doesn’t happen and self-preservation is everybody’s dominant interest. Brexit, however, shows that sustaining a lousy status quo for long enough can come with rather serious costs. Maybe the global elite should start thinking about preserving the fortunes of others, for once.

Rick Newman’s latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.