The late Walter Williams, who taught economics at George Mason University for 40 years while also writing a syndicated newspaper column, liked to remind his students and readers that political leaders often exploit economic illiteracy to win votes. “I think it’s important for people to understand the ideas of scarcity and decision-making in everyday life so that they won’t be ripped off by politicians,” he once told me.
This year’s presidential race provides ample evidence of those concerns. Donald Trump is offering tax breaks to select voters like you would Halloween candy—a Kit Kat for people who receive overtime pay, a Snickers for people who earn tips—with no regard for how these exemptions would distort labor markets and affect a federal Treasury that is already running a $1.8 trillion deficit. Mr. Trump is also promising more tariffs if re-elected, even though the tariffs imposed in his first term led to higher prices for consumers, just as economists predicted.
“The Trump administration imposed nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products valued at approximately $380 billion in 2018 and 2019, amounting to one of the largest tax increases in decades,” according to the Tax Foundation. Moreover, the former president insisted that slapping tariffs on goods from China and other countries would reduce the trade deficit. Instead, countries retaliated with tariffs of their own, the export competitiveness of U.S. firms suffered, and the trade deficit increased.
Kamala Harris can’t really critique these proposals, because she largely agrees with them—the Biden administration has kept most of Mr. Trump’s tariffs in place—and her own economic policies might be even worse. Ms. Harris wants to increase levies on corporations, income and capital gains, which historically has discouraged investment and retarded economic growth. She has also proposed increasing the minimum wage, notwithstanding that teenage unemployment and prices at fast-food restaurants shot up after her home state of California raised its wage floor in 2020.
Whatever her proposals, Ms. Harris’s overriding problem is that she can’t run away from the Biden administration’s record. Her campaign’s closing message is that Mr. Trump is a fascist threat to the republic, which is something you come up with when you can’t defend what your administration has been doing for the past four years about inflation, the economy, border security and other issues that voters care most about. Ms. Harris has spent a lot of time ducking serious interviews and deflecting tough questions so that she could focus on telling people what they already know about Donald Trump. Will it work? Not if Mr. Trump’s own closing message resonates.
“I’d like to begin by asking a very simple question,” Mr. Trump said at the top of his speech in New York City on Sunday. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Unlike his opponent, Mr. Trump can run on his economic record, which surveys show is fondly remembered by a growing number of Americans. A poll released by NBC News earlier this month found that 48% of voters retrospectively approve of Mr. Trump’s performance as president. “That’s a higher job-approval rating than Trump ever held in the NBC News poll when he was president,” according to the network. “It also stands in contrast to Biden’s current 43% approval in the poll.”
Ms. Harris’s greatest fear is that working-class voters will see through her scaremongering and give some thought to the question that Mr. Trump is posing. If they do, the Democrats are toast. The southern border remains a mess. Cities are still being overrun with illegal migrants who force officials to divert resources away from communities that were already struggling. And people are still paying more than they were during the Trump administration for life’s basics: food, energy, housing.
The Journal reported this week that the housing market is “stuck.” The median price of a home has risen by more than 35% since 2021. Sales of existing homes “are on track for their worst year since 1995 for the second year in a row.” Higher mortgage rates have reduced the number of existing homes on the market because homeowners who have low rates don’t want to sell and take on a higher one on their next house.
The average 30-year mortgage rate is down from its peak in 2023, but at 6.54% it remains more than twice as high as it was when Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris took office. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta show that the share of household income needed to cover housing costs fell during the Trump presidency. Under Mr. Biden, it’s up by nearly 50%.
Is it any wonder Ms. Harris and the Democrats would rather talk about threats to democracy?
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