Why is half the country devoted to the cranky Donald Trump while the other half adores the chipper Kamala Harris? America’s fundamental division isn’t Republican vs. Democrat nor conservative (the dozen of us remaining) vs. “progressive” (scare quotes intentional).
It’s between lower-status prejudiced outsiders (MAGA) and higher-status privileged insiders (the Progs). Most of the well-fed mass media, mostly privileged, are baffled.
Let’s explain it to them.
As David Axelrod said to CNN’s Jake Tapper,
“…you know this, I’m a son of a Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe. And I so love this democracy. And I think this is a central concern. But I’ve also said, if you are talking about democracy over the dinner table, it’s probably because you don’t have to worry about the cost of the food on your dinner table.”
Bingo!
Abraham Maslow, a founder of humanistic psychology, posited a “hierarchy of needs.” Therein, per Wichita State University:
“From the bottom up, the needs Maslow advances in this theory are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.”
Trump mainly speaks to struggling working class folks, addressing our need for affordable sustenance — groceries, rent, gas. And he hears our yearning for safety — presented as a (counterfactual) claim that crime is rising and that the illegal alien migrants are disproportionately violent criminals. (Untrue.)
Around half of Americans live in fear for our survival, a fear rooted in the scarily high cost of living for which wages have not kept pace. Many also fear a spurious problem, violent crime, which has been falling dramatically since 1991, the year when Sen. Joe Biden co-sponsored the Biden-Thurmond Violent Crime Control Act of 1991.
For which the far left has never fully forgiven him.
Kamala Harris, speaking to those who have achieved financial security, offers “love and belonging” and “esteem.”
Getting back to “the economy, stupid,” Kamala Harris recently proposed (then backpedaled from) the economically inane but perhaps politically astute proposal to attack price-gouging corporations. Honest center-leftists have criticized this silly proposal.
Donald Trump’s proposed “solution” to the high cost of living? Even worse!
Trump promises: “Prices will come down,’ Trump told voters during a speech last week laying out his vision for a return to the White House. ‘You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything.”
CNN dryly observes: “… broad-based price declines are not only improbable, they would bring about a doom loop difficult to escape from.”
Improbable but … one readily imagines a Trumpian epiphany, claiming credit for fomenting The! Greatest! Depression! Ever!
What’s the reality?
In his first term, Trump beat up Fed chair Jay Powell until he sank the dollar. Right on schedule, 18 months later (caused by Trump, manifesting under Biden), inflation approached double digits.
Credit where due: Biden’s Fed brought inflation way down.
Trump now promises to sink the dollar again.
D’oh!
We are being presented with two phony solutions to high prices: Trump’s phantasmagorical deflation and Harris's anti-price gouging. What to do?
As Milton Friedman trenchantly observed, inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” That lesson has been lost on our politicians, who reverted to pandering to their base's narratives.
Hey! “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
Republicans blame inflation on runaway government spending (in which they are complicit). Now, excessive government spending is bad … but has little to do with the high cost of living.
Democrats blame inflation on greedy corporations. Even Adam Smith, patron saint of capitalism, complained of the endemic greed of merchants.
That said, the only force capable of constraining corporate greed is other corporations’ greed: competition.
Not Big Government, which habitually colludes with Big Business.
Both Harris and Trump are pandering to their bases’ narratives. Neither “solution” would resolve the very real high-cost-of-living problem.
There is only one solution: policies fostering general prosperity à la Reagan and Clinton.
Now, two presidential aspirants prescribe two utterly inane policies. What to do?
Keynes, anticipating Friedman, wrote:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. …
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
And here we are.
Kamala Harris thrills the upper crust with vacuous promises of love, belonging and esteem.
Donald Trump inspires struggling workers with inane promises to lower prices.
Understand the love of Trump (and that of Harris). The privileged embrace Harris.
The prejudiced exalt Trump.
D’oh!
The only real solution?
A dollar as good as gold.
Leading to equitable prosperity.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of the 200,000+ follower "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $104T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.