Every position along the conventional spectrum supposes that it is a fine idea to have a large and coercive state, larger and larger, more and more coercive. See any book by Daron Acemoglu. The only dispute is what or whom the state should coerce. In the old left-right disputes, the right wanted liberty for the boardroom yet wanted state coercion for the bedroom; the left the other way around. The middle wandered in between.
We true liberals at Cato live in a treehouse well above the spectrum, sending amiable messages down to our friends on the spectrum, saying that they might want to consider whether the state is too big, too coercive, or too careless of liberty. Consider again the authoritarianism of Anthony Fauci, which most people fell for.
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The conservatives claim that they are taking the ethical high road. So do the progressives. All I can say is that we liberals really take it. All political theories, except true liberalism, treat citizens as children, which easily morphs into slavery. The right treats them as bad children who, for their own good, need to be policed, disdained, disciplined, and fooled. The left treats them as sad children who, for their own good, need to be policed, managed, subsidized, and fooled. The purpose of the state, according to conservatives, is to make people virtuous. The purpose, according to progressives, is to make them equal. True liberals reply that running the lives of adults is not the business of Congress or of the Harvard faculty. One of the Heritage debaters proposed “prudent protection” for strategic production against the Chinese. Does anyone here think that Congress is going to do anything “prudent”? True liberalism is a philosophy of realism that treats citizens as adults. It is the sole “adultism.”
GMU alum Tom Savidge and Ryan Yonk lay out the problems created by government debt.
Ms. Harris’s support of price controls fits neatly into her worldview. She is hostile to corporate profit, which she sees as exploiting workers and consumers. Her running mate, Tim Walz, confusing government coercion and the generosity at the heart of the American character, says socialism is neighborly. The Republican populists are a mix of those who have thrown in the towel on doing the hard work of explaining to voters the ideas that promote economic growth and the true believers who don’t understand how an economy grows.
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For his part, Donald Trump rejects core tenets of the free-market model such as the idea that voluntary exchange can benefit both the buyer and the seller. He promises to impose massive across-the-board tariffs. He wants to keep interest rates artificially low and devalue the dollar. His running mate JD Vance argues that the key to higher wages is reducing imports and immigration. How do any of these policies raise output? Mr. Trump’s emerging second-term agenda is dominated by populist themes and looks markedly less pro-growth than the first.
Pandering by politicians is nothing new, but it’s clearly on the rise as both parties abandon sound economic principles. Both parties’ embracing the notion of excluding tips from taxes is a good example. There is no good policy reason why waiters should get to exempt a portion of their income from taxes while truck drivers, and everyone else, pay taxes on all their income. Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are in an arms race to buy votes with taxpayer funds. Both are promising they won’t reform the entitlement programs that are the main driver of our massive, growing deficits.
Harris, of course, says she would target only unjustified price increases, the kind that amount to “illegal price gouging” by “opportunistic companies.” But as she emphasizes, there currently is no such thing under federal law, and any attempt to define it would be plagued by subjectivity and a lack of relevant knowledge.
The fact that Harris pins the sharp grocery price inflation of recent years on corporate greed suggests that her judgment about such matters cannot be trusted.
Andrew Stuttaford warns of the downsides of industrial policy.
The best economic evidence suggests that workers pay more than half, and likely three-quarters, of the cost of the corporate tax. Thus, cutting business taxes is a tax cut for working Americans.
