Reflection on the 2024 Presidential Election
This photo is my siblings and my mother at a ceremony honoring my grandfather, amongst others, who was a Chinese American and served the US Military in World War II. This photo is my siblings and my mother at a ceremony honoring my grandfather, amongst others, who was a Chinese American and served the US Military in World War II.
For me, the results break down to three things:
If there’s one “word” that sums up why Trump won, it’s Bidenflation. It’s truly ingenious. In fact, I use the term Bidenflation more often than inflation. It reminds every American that Joe Biden was president during the highest inflation in most of our lifetime’s (the last time it got that high was in the 1970’s). It is reinforced every time anyone buys anything with sticker shock (a price higher than what they perceive it should be worth based on their own anchoring bias) or feels the strain of their own finances. Which essentially means, multiple times a day people are experiencing inflation and are negatively associating it with the Democrats.
And the nuance here, that is vital to economics and policy, is lost upon people. Joe Biden is not responsible for inflation and in fact his administration (and Jerome Powell’s Fed) has done a pretty good job managing inflation and bringing it back down to manageable levels.
It all reminds me of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Quick background, it’s a theory that organizes human needs into five levels, from basic to advanced; as shown below. And you need the levels below to be able to focus on the levels above. Whether or not you agree with this exact layout, anyone agree that basically we all have priorities, and pick and choose what we will concern ourselves more with.
Democrats harping on about the sanctity of Democracy and America, respect, minority and women’s rights, equality, liberty, freedom, and justice just rank too high on the pyramid. President Trump spoke about people’s physiological needs and how they are becoming more expensive and difficult to attain. How can people focus on issues when they are worried about their increased grocery bill that they negatively and constantly associate with the Democrats.
Republicans have promised to reduce individual and corporate taxes, and increase certain tax credits. They have also suggested introducing tarriffs, increasing energy production, and reduce regulatory restrictions / oversights. I’ll address each briefly.
Individual tax cuts will generally help people, but they typically help wealthy people more, since a tax cut can only really save someone a percentage of what you’ve earned.
Corporate tax cuts will help corporations, not people.
Tax credits are situational, but could help many people, such as the Child Tax Credit (proposals suggest increasing it $3,000 to $5,000, children cost much more than this, so it isn’t very helpful).
Tarriffs, according to the majority of economists from across the spectrum, will raise costs for goods in America. At best, tarriffs can help protect and encourage certain domestic industries and increase revenue for the government. This doesn’t equate to cheaper prices though.
Increasing energy production would almost certainly reduce energy prices.
Reducing regulatory oversight and restrictions can potentially reduce prices, but in the long run, it equally has potential to hurt us in other ways (health, safety, price gouging, fair competition, etc.).
Exit polls showed that voters ranked The Economy as the second biggest issue at 31%. I understand people’s concerns. My own income has only grown annually 3-4% for the past four years (and I recognize that that is actually better than many people) and has not kept up with inflation. However, I personally believe that the Democrats would have done more to try and help the middle class than Republicans.
The Status Quo Is Not Okay
Now that said, let’s be clear, leadership in both parties benefit from the status quo. I’m convinced neither party really cares about people, beyond just getting their vote. The political machines of our two party system are monstrous. They raised over $2.5 billion for the 2024 presidential campaign. According to Open Secrets, the two parties raised nearly $5 billion in 2024. Post spending and debts, they seem to have about $400 million on hand now. I don’t know what their salaries are like, or how effective their usage of money is, but it’s hard to turn off a multi billion dollar machine. The transaction fees, consultants, lawn signs, advertising time, etc. All of that fuels businesses and pockets of certain people, and there’s no doubt that the winners of the election are the parties themselves. Campaign finance reform is necessary to remove some of the money in politics, allowing a for candidates to compete off of merit and ideas, not cronyism or fundraising ability. It could give third parties a chance.
The Democrats took a general position of liberal elitism. Pushing the macroeconomics of globalization and “we’re not going back”. People with college degrees and higher incomes generally voted blue, because they too are invested in the status quo. We’re making decent money, have savings and investments, we have security, and have a future we care about.
The Republicans took a general position of outsider. This allowed them to successfully court people who aren’t being effectively supported by our system. Lower income households, young men, latino men, amongst other groups who see the current direction the country is going in, leaving them behind. I like to put it this way, they’re upset at the board game, so they’re willing to “flip the table” and hope they have a better position when the pieces are put back on the table. They have less to lose, and are more willing to risk it for a change. Unfortunately for them, they’re just being used by the Republican party. Leadership of the party and Donald Trump’s cabinet are full of wealthy establishment figures who have no experience or interest in supporting the poor or the working class. At best… maybe through the stock market they can increase wealth for more people, and maybe even through crypto and some other chaotic financial ventures, they can get a few supporters some Dutch tulip bulb money, but all in all they won’t do much.
Parties care about power, because that equates to more dollars. As a side note, I just purchased a $5,000 of KRUZ and NANC, two ETFs that invest in equity securities purchased or sold by Republican and Democratic members of Congress and their spouses, respectively. (At $31.78 and $39.43)
This Is Who We Are
This is America. We voted for Donald Trump. There was no widespread voter fraud, there was no grand conspiracy, we just chose this path. We do not worship democracy, we worship capitalism. Time to stop pretending otherwise.
Sources
https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm
https://www.euronews.com/2024/11/05/democracy-tops-list-of-issues-for-us-voters-followed-by-economy-exit-poll
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-parties
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls