You can't deliver a better tomorrow with voodoo economics

Unless someone comes along prepared to face the truth that 90% of America is drowning in this new world of prosperity for the few at the expense of the many, nothing will change.

Image - Yuki Iwamura / Bloomberg /Getty

It’s no surprise to me that Trump is now attempting to run a ‘Return of the Red Scare’ strategy for November following the victories of Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, who, among others, defeated incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat, a five-term member and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. All of these candidates describe themselves as Democratic Socialists and were endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, a move that was at odds with the Democratic leadership in Washington.

This is just another example of the growing number of progressive candidates winning in primary contests. What Mamdani has managed to do is to prove that you can swim against the prevailing political tide and still deliver. I’m sure he’ll be the first to tell you that it’s exhausting to be a people-first politician. That placing people before party will always be an uphill struggle in a system designed to pay only lip service to constituents' needs. The key to transformative change is to make a start and work hard to deliver on promises made. You won’t always be able to deliver, but if people see you leaving it all out on the field attempting to deliver, they’ll be fine with that.

I’ve talked about a quiet revolution, and this is how it starts. It’s about being true to your community, understanding the challenges they face and working hard every day to address concerns. But above all, taking the time to LISTEN. From a voter’s perspective, it’s about elected representatives gaining their trust, because once trust is established, you have a joint interest in creating a better tomorrow. It has long been said that all politics is local, and that’s as true today as it has always been.

The reason these primary wins are important is that they prove not just to Republicans, but to democratic leaders that there is an appetite for change, just as we saw in the New York mayoral campaign. The big challenge for anyone railing against the status quo is fear, and those in power are very aware of how to weaponise it against any challenge. If you are a progressive in the Democratic Party, you don’t only have to fight the Republicans; you also have to fight for your survival within your own party, and that should not be the case. It’s a sad reflection of what corporate ownership does to politics.

At a time when the country is seeking meaningful change amid a huge trust deficit, what we are seeing is a Democratic Party living in fear of a ‘people first’ revolution. That’s a good thing; it keeps everyone on their toes. It should be no problem for anyone who calls themselves a Democrat to embrace a progressive agenda. One thing is for sure, voters have long realised that words are cheap. They know that promises don’t pay the bills, feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads; actions do. In a tragedy of epic proportions, it seems to me that the current democratic leadership is void of both vision and ambition, and that’s a social tragedy. As a result, voters see no hope beyond the same old political tinkering at the edges. In contrast, Mamdani has enough vision and ambition for everyone.

What you have to ask yourself is this:

• Do you believe in universal health care?

• Do you believe in affordable child care?

• Do you believe in paid family leave?

• Do you believe in a living wage?

• Do you believe no child should go to bed hungry?

• Do you believe in free college education?

If the answer to all or most of the above is yes, the Republicans believe you are a communist. Do you realise how absurd that sounds to a European? If you walked the streets of a rural, deep red Republican town and asked people the above questions, few, if they were being honest, would answer no, because these represent the foundations of a contented society. They represent the unquestionable building blocks of a prosperous society. So you have to ask yourself the question: why would MAGA Republicans answer no to every question? It’s just not normal and represents a symptom of cult behaviour.

We don’t have to make the litmus test complicated; these questions are foundational to the argument that a government that is not working in earnest to achieve these goals is simply not serving the interests of its people. That’s a simple indisputable fact. The next question is, why are these goals not enshrined in every election campaign run by a Democrat? I can assure you that every progressive Democratic candidate would sign up to the pledge in a heartbeat. So, does that make those who believe in these objectives communists?

Democracy is autocracy’s kryptonite. It’s the passport to a baseline that allows any individual, regardless of wealth, creed or sexuality, to compete on a level playing field. I have no problem with wealth and rewarding innovation and risk-taking. We will never live in a class-free world. Wealth will always deliver better opportunities; it’s a simple fact of life. Capitalism and human nature are like strawberries and cream; they seem to belong with each other, but if you eat too many of them, you will make yourself sick, and that’s how it should be with obscene wealth. Alas, for apex economic predators, vomiting is a pain they are more than happy to endure to benefit from the economic distress of others, and that makes this a structural societal issue.

The classic phrase we hear like a beating drum is ‘I have worked hard for what I have; I put in the hours; I made sacrifices, and nobody has a right to take a cut of what I have earned’. Why does that argument have less value when a single mom working three jobs on minimum wage to feed and support her kids works arguably much harder for far less reward, especially when her effective tax rate is often higher than that of someone in the top 1%? Make it make sense.

The problem is that, as time progresses, this meritocracy argument no longer holds up for those at the top of the income tree. The value of inherited wealth increases year on year. To provide some context, the total wealth of global billionaires increased by 13.4% between 2024 and 2025, and the US has the most billionaires of any country, at around 30%. Take a moment to think about that. In the US, the collective net worth of all United States billionaires is approximately $8.4 trillion, shared among nearly 990 individuals.

In a report examining wealth inheritance by the top 1% written in 2017 by Nathaniel Lewis and Matt Bruenig for The People’s Policy Project, they dispel the assertion that the billionaire class is, as Forbes reports, largely ‘self-made ’.

They note:

Although media coverage of the super-wealthy, e.g. Forbes 400, tend to emphasize entrepreneurs and other "self-made" scions. In reality, inheritance plays a huge role in determining who winds up at the top and bottom of our society.

If you take a look at the chart below, which provides a decile analysis where ‘inheritance values are converted to 2016 dollars using the CPI-U-RS’, you will see that very few billionaires start with nothing; the average starting-gate inheritance is around $4.8 million, and remember, this data is from a decade ago.

You will see that the higher up the ladder you are, the bigger the head start. It’s time we put aside the notion that these people acquire their wealth through the meritocratic illusion peddled by the rich. I have no problem with wealth and reward, but this disingenuous notion that obscene wealth is the product of hard graft is frankly laughable.

The big question is not whether a progressive agenda can deliver change; there is plenty of evidence to show people-centric politics works. The challenge comes from a political mindset deeply embedded in American society that fears the very thought of wealth redistribution, yet since the mid-1980s we have seen the largest wealth redistribution in history, and it’s not been from the top down; it’s been from the bottom and the middle up. To put the cherry on the cake, we are indoctrinated into believing that this is perfectly normal. IT’S NOT, and that, my friends, is why we have the problem we have.

To understand this better, we need to get a grip on the basics. In 2025, the US government generated $5.23 trillion in tax receipts, which was against a GDP of $30.76 trillion. That’s a tax rate of around 17%. If you add in state taxes, that number rises to 25.6%. To meet its federal budget commitments, the government had to borrow $1.78 trillion. Now, if you or I were earning, let’s say, $30k and, to make ends meet, we had to borrow $1.78k to survive. If, on top of that, we had $39k in debt from borrowing money for decades to get through each year, no bank would lend us 1.7 cents, let alone $1.7k. Before you chirp in, I know they are not the same, but in order for normal people to understand what we are talking about, these metaphors are very relevant.

Simply put, the current debt is unsustainable. Republicans would have you believe this is because of Medicare and Social Security. While there is the smallest grain of truth in the assertion, I would respectfully suggest you take a long look at the cost of providing endless tax breaks to Trump’s rich friends and donors. The world didn’t end because Biden didn’t hand them a cent in tax breaks, so this notion that the economy will collapse without corporate welfare is frankly nonsense.

The average tax rate on GDP for OECD nations is 34.1%. Now, before we blame tax revenues for the now almost $40 trillion national debt (which is around $117,00 per citizen), it’s never as simple as that. If we examine the basic numbers and the US tax revenues using the OECD average, this would raise an extra $2.5 trillion each year. These are, of course, raw numbers; raising taxes in an economy like the US would unquestionably alter the velocity of private consumption and investment. As a result, it would likely reduce GDP growth and prove self-defeating, calling into question its actual impact.

Image - Getty Images

This then plays into the Laffer curve theory, espoused by economic comedian Arthur Laffer in the 1970’s, which suggests there is a sweet spot for optimising the tax rate. Donald Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Laffer on June 19, 2019, so you won’t be surprised to learn that the optimal tax rate in his voodoo economics theory was for the benefit of the rich, and yes, it was literally designed on the back of a napkin while having dinner with Dick Cheney and the master of the ‘known unknowns’, Donald Rumsfeld. There’s a certain irony that has seen this nonsensical doodle written over dinner still holds a special place in the heart of Republican snake oil salesmen, sorry, economists, to this day.

If you would like a more in-depth analysis, I suggest you take a look at the clip below from Professor Richard Murphy, who teaches at a University less than half an hour from where I sat to write this. Richard is the co-founder of the Tax Justice Network, the Fair Tax Mark and Finance for the Future. He’s a British former chartered accountant who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion. He also advises the Trades Union Congress on taxation.

The fairytale every Republican president has told the American people is that tax cuts for the rich spur business investment and increase GDP. For example, in 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) led to a drop in corporate tax collections of around $1.5 trillion, while overall fiscal revenues fell below baseline projections. In short, just as in all these fairy stories, your tax dollar investments in the rich return a loss. They NEVER, and I really do mean NEVER, pay for themselves or deliver a fiscal return on investment. What they did do, though, in 2017, was make stock buybacks great again, just as, in 2020, Trump’s further incompetence made gravediggers great again.

Now, it won’t surprise you to learn that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act from 2025 is projected to reduce federal tax revenue by an estimated further $3.7 trillion in the decade ahead- that’s over double the value of the 2017 tax cuts. It won’t have escaped the more astute among you that, after one of these now-mandatory tax-bonanza giveaways during each Republican administration, there is no big rush to repeal them by the incoming Democratic administration. That brings us back, once again, to the question: who really runs the government?

In the next episode in this series, we’ll dive into the details and examine why transformative change is the only option. It’s no exaggeration to say that history shows the only time opportunities did not disproportionately favour the wealthy was after the two World Wars and the Great Depression. I’m not advocating for either, but I believe a people-driven quiet revolution is more than within reach.

Being away from writing for a week reminds me just how important it is to my soul's welfare. Remodelling my garden to create a space to try growing my own produce, albeit at a micro level, has been an essential escape from the mental challenges of making sense of the new political reality we all inhabit. It has reminded me of how blessed we are to live in a world where nature will always prevail. I am reminded that while I have spent a couple of months taming a wild patch at the bottom of my garden, if I walked away for a year, it would be as if I had not lifted a spade.

Just as I have embarked on a fight with the elements and pests that want to ravage my new vegetable plants, so we battle to preserve democracy, which, for all its imperfections, has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people over the years since World War II.

If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help offset some of the ever-increasing costs of research and analysis. It really does make a big difference and is always greatly appreciated.