Op-Ed: Two visions of government contend in the 2024 elections

At present, it appears that the 2024 elections, especially for the presidency, will ultimately be all about policy. That may seem unlikely given the rather eccentric personalities vying for president and vice president. It is nonetheless true. Vice President Kamala Harris will run on abortion, and former president Donald Trump will run on the economy.

The two campaigns are engaging in a fundamental argument about who can be trusted with power.

By foregrounding the removal of a potential impediment to women’s economic independence, Harris’s emphasis on abortion highlights the left’s centuries-long struggle to eliminate natural obstacles to personal self-fulfillment. That is what also drives the Democrats’ support for DEI, forgiving student loan debt, greater government control of health care, stricter economic regulation, overt redistribution of wealth, and so on. Even Harris’s retreat from her history of defund-the-police and empty-the-prisons rhetoric – and her spotty record as a prosecutor – fits the pattern, as it can be represented as a push for equality centered on making lower-income neighborhoods less uninhabitable than they have become since 2020.

Trump’s emphasis on the economy highlights the preference of Republicans and the political right for material improvement through private initiative, self-reliance, family formation, and freedom of association, with differing individual outcomes accepted as a necessary consequence of freedom, and with government control to be used sparingly.

A focus on the economy is greatly to Trump’s political advantage, of course. Lower- and middle-income people have taken an economic beating during the Biden-Harris administration, with inflation and higher taxes reducing real median disposable income per capita by 7.55 percent under their reign, from $54,539 in January 2021 to $50,423 in June 2024.

Inflation, high housing costs, and the continued erosion of the nation’s manufacturing base have greatly increased the burdens on American workers and retirees during the Biden-Harris administration, Trump argues.

Trump’s discussion of immigration likewise works to his advantage. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “shows that illegal immigration spiked massively after Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, and it has not dropped since,” Fox News reports. In fiscal year 2020, CBP recorded 400,651 illegal border crossings. Under Biden and Harris, the number reached 2.5 million in 2023 and is on the same pace this year.

Trump cites mass immigration and U.S. job losses to other nations as harming American workers by increasing the supply of job seekers while reducing the demand for labor. Trump’s policy proposals focus on creating jobs and favoring current U.S. workers, attending to both sides of the problem.

Although the numbers on the economy and immigration are in Trump’s favor, there are good philosophical reasons for him to emphasize these issues, as he has consistently done since 2016. Trump says the Democrats’ approach to the economy and immigration concentrates power and money in government and government-favored big businesses, to the detriment of the American worker. Harris, like Biden before her, says she wants to protect the middle class from the depredations of greedy business owners.

That difference is what is really at stake in this election. Central to the left’s positions on all issues is the premise that government is essentially altruistic and that people engaged in economic activities are naturally selfish. Thus, government must have power over everything people do. Nothing less can overcome the inequities created by the mass pursuit of self-interest.

This system, however, results in a two-tier society: the rulers and the ruled, with the elites as exceptions to all rules, in honor of their outstanding wisdom, compassion, and altruism. The heavy hand of government suppresses economic activity and lowers the quality of life. Meanwhile, competition for government favors creates immense social tensions. Government micromanagement and the welfare state create moral hazard by undermining natural rewards for success and penalties for failure.

The right’s premise is that government control impedes the innovation and productivity improvements that drive economic growth, and that economic inequality is an unavoidable outcome of the freedom that continually improves the material conditions of life and lifts all boats. A government that treats people equally will tolerate a certain amount of inequality while encouraging private and public efforts to ameliorate needs that cannot be met other than through joint action.

This system can result in greater wealth more evenly distributed, if and only if people are not allowed to use government force to their advantage. Unfortunately, the latter is the norm rather than an exception. Nonetheless, a government that concentrates on protecting individual liberties will by nature encourage economic growth and foster personal virtues.

In short, the central issue in this election is the concentration of power.

Both candidates are calling for change, but of very different kinds. Harris wants to continue the “fundamental transformation” of the United States away from its traditional ways and protections of individual liberty, as initiated by President Barack Obama and resumed by President Biden. Trump wants to move toward a relatively decentralized political and economic order seen in the nation’s past, though without engaging in major structural changes such as ending entitlements or rolling back the Sexual Revolution.

That is the real difference between the two political programs before us.