There's No Debate

Trump and Harris square off in hours. Remind me: what are we arguing about again?

As the news trucks and security details begin lining the streets of my neighborhood in Philadelphia, obstructing traffic and causing general chaos over the next few days leading into tomorrow’s debate, part of me wonders if I’m being crass and partisan when I shrug and wonder what there is to actually debate.

As I wrote about last week, the substance of what Kamala Harris is going to bring to the debate stage tomorrow night will have very little to do with policy and will instead likely rely on jabs about Trump’s personality, mistruths about media hoaxes like Charlottesville, and statements ascribing to Trump things he has publicly disavowed, like Project 2025.

This gaslighting campaign will likely be combined with strategic flip-flopping to acquiesce to policy positions that were Trump’s to begin with. We’ve already seen this leading into the debate. First, it was stealing the “no tax on tips” policy, then it was reversing her stance on fracking, then it was claiming she’s not for an electric vehicle mandate, and then it was using photographs of Trump’s border wall in advertisements, claiming she is tough on immigration.

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t instead deeply, deeply sad for our country.

The cold, hard facts are that when it comes to policy, there is no debate – and so tomorrow turns mostly into an exercise on how to run a crisis public relations campaign by Kamala Harris while Trump does what he always does: bludgeons his way forward ruthlessly. Trump will say what he’s been saying for the better part of a decade, with little change, and Harris will attempt to present a $2,500/hour McKinsey consulting, focus group approved, slide deck book report on a book she clearly hasn’t read.

As I said to Andy Schectman on our podcast this weekend, I can understand voting for a Democrat if your number one priority is abortion. If the right to be able to get an abortion in all 50 states at any time, for any reason, is the most important thing in your life, it makes sense to me that you would vote Democrat. Even though Trump reportedly won’t push for a national abortion ban and has taken the stand that he only wants to move the decision back to the states, there is still a significant amount of “my body, my choice” fear after the Roe vs. Wade repeal, ironically, from many people on the left who were perfectly fine with trampling on people’s rights to travel, work and otherwise live their lives due to vaccine mandates.

I don’t pretend to understand how that could outweigh all the numerous other issues that would heavily impact our quality of life for some people. I believe strongly in everybody’s right to prioritize whatever they like in their lives. We used to call that freedom and, in this country, it’s supposed to be sacrosanct.

And so there’s my one concession for the left side of the aisle: abortion.

When it comes to almost every other major key issue, when understood properly, to me there really is no debate.

There’s no doubt that the country experienced an incredible surge in illegal immigration over the last four years under the Biden-Harris regime. If you are pro-undocumented, illegal immigrants, who rely on taxpayer cash to get by and who take jobs and opportunities from both existing citizens and legal immigrants, then I argue that you don’t understand the problem well enough.

Emotionally, it’s a lovely gesture to say something like “no human being is illegal,” but when Haitians start taking over your small town, cutting the heads off of park geese to eat them, while sleeping on mattresses on your front lawn or living in 5-star hotels on taxpayer cash, the reality of a country bloated with illegal immigrants becomes clearer.

On the issue, there really is no comparison: Kamala Harris was not tough on the border and, on the contrary, actively fought against Texas when they tried to secure their own border. Though his rhetoric may be uncomfortable to some emotional amoebae who have little understanding of how the real world works, Donald Trump kept the country secure and made the border a top priority to his presidency. To me, there’s no debate on who handled this issue better.

Taxation is another commonly misunderstood issue. Kamala Harris’s tax policy of raising capital gains taxes and considering an unrealized gains tax not only lives at the far end of the Laffer curve, where capital flight out of the country would be extensive, but it would also almost assuredly guarantee a stock market crash and obliterate the entire U.S. economy — quickly.

Taxing unrealized gains is also dangerously close to confiscating private property. As my friend, professional investor Chris DeMuth said this weekend:

Confiscating unrealized capital gains isn't a tax policy; it is a declaration of war. It transforms the concept of private property. Nothing would be private and nothing would be your property. You would be in a 24/7 partnership with the government that no amount of taxation would ever extract you from. America's founders rebelled against policies that were a fraction as expensive and invasive to our basic freedoms.

Again, the tax issue comes down to misunderstanding. Malleable leftists think that we can tax billionaires ad infinitum to prop up our social services and give a free ride to the middle and lower class, regardless of their productive output. This simply isn’t the case and eventually leads to the destruction of the country. When taxes become too burdensome, job creators who would be responsible for footing that enormous bill are simply going to move their money out of the country. And once they leave, it does far more damage than keeping their capital and their businesses here in the United States, taxed at a reasonable rate. If ever taxation would be brutally counterintuitive, it would be taxing unrealized gains to try to confiscate wealth from the richest people in the country.

Ask yourself a very simple question: why do millionaire politicians like Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who advocate for higher taxes for the rich, not voluntarily send the Treasury Department tens of millions dollars of their own wealth that they don’t owe every year? Wouldn’t that be putting your money where your mouth is, literally?

The answer to that logic problem comes from another basic misunderstanding about taxes — the idea that we can tax our way to prosperity with the government spending other people’s money. There is simply no more efficient way to allocate or invest money than the choices made by a free market. A rigorous, vibrant free market made up of billions or trillions of transactions every week sifts through the best and worst possible ways to move capital, and through a constant, never-ending process of deductive reasoning and trial and error, always eventually winds up at the most efficient means to allocate capital.

This compares to the government, which has no profit motive to deliver good service, use capital wisely, or create programs that generate productivity. There is no incentive for the government to spend your taxes wisely, except potentially at a municipal level where transactions can be scrutinized far more heavily than at a federal level.

Either way, the notion that your tax dollars are better off in the hands of the government than they are in your own bank account is simply a misperception that always surprises me with how many people don’t understand it. Sanders, Harris, Warren and other politicians that choose not to overpay their taxes as a political statement understand it.

And while immigration and taxation may have a roundabout effect on our quality of life, the calls for defunding the police, allowing activists to burn down a portion of the country in 2020, and the idea of vilifying all police and those who keep law and order in place has a direct impact on our quality of life.

There’s no way to put polish on it: during the “summer of love” in 2020 when the George Floyd riots took place, far-left politicians like Maxine Waters and Kamala Harris encouraged the destruction as it took place. They supported the lawlessness, and along with a horde of Democratic district attorneys and big city mayors, have been soft on crime in a way that makes repeat offenders of violent crime across the country an everyday news item.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep police in check and holding their feet to the fire so that they are there to protect and serve the taxpayers who pay their salary.

I am all for this. I am all for objectivity when it comes to examining police interactions with the public. I’m the last person who wants laws to be too strict. But to apply the ideology that “all cops are bastards” or that we need to “defund the police” and vilify first responders does damage to our country. Maybe it’s because it has been almost 25 years since we’ve had a nationwide reminder of who shows up when the shit really hits the fan.

The demonization of police is another misunderstanding by many on the left who very likely have never needed these first responders to come to their aid and rescue when they are the victims of crimes or they need immediate assistance.

For limousine liberals who live in gated communities to opine on civil unrest in cities that they don’t live in is hypocritical. Remember, the Seattle “autonomous zone” only closed up after the protesters made their way to the mayor’s house. Then the problem became real for the mayor, who likely wondered to herself: “Why the hell hasn’t somebody done something about this chaos yet?”

Meanwhile, activists today have taken to the streets of cities like New York, waving the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah in a show of support for the terrorist groups directly responsible for the kidnapping and killing of innocent Israelis on October 7.

There’s always an argument for peace, and I’ll concede that discussions about minimizing civilian casualties from an Israeli response are just and worthwhile. But in a show of blinding ignorance, supporting terrorist organizations openly in the United States attempts to ascribe a moral equivalency between law-abiding Israelis and radical Islamic terrorists. It may sound uncomfortable for people on the left, but there simply is no moral equivalency, and rather than have a backbone to take a stand on the right side of this issue, almost all Democratic lawmakers (except for John Fetterman) waver in their support of Israel and make excuses for the activists.

It’s “the summer of love” all over again, only far more blatant in their hatred for the United States. Activists even burned flags outside of the Democratic National Convention this year. Sadly, it makes me believe that, if God forbid, we have another terrorist attack on our country, a large portion of the nation is going to celebrate it.

Then there’s the issue of how to deal with inflation.

Kamala Harris has proposed Soviet-style price controls – a policy prescription that hasn’t worked any time over the last hundred years and is almost assuredly guaranteed to create a black market and supply shortages. As is often the case, it would be better if the government did nothing at all as opposed to trying to implement policy like this, which would do far more damage than it prevents.

As Trump is fond of saying at his rallies: “Joe Biden could have just gone and sat on the beach for four years and let the country run on autopilot from the way I left it, and we wouldn’t have any of these problems.” It is a bit of hyperbole, but it’s also true. The price control idea is one of many that sounds good to people who don’t understand the difference between capitalism and communism. It also sounds good to people who have never studied history and certainly have never lived in communist countries. But again, embracing such policies would have a drastically negative impact on our quality of life, as economist Peter Schiff recently detailed on my podcast.

And since we’re not OPEC, a good majority of rising prices have been catalyzed by our country’s standoff with its energy industry. Having a strong energy industry in the United States not only lowers the cost of energy, which in turn lowers the cost of producing goods and services, which lowers their price to the consumer, but it also contributes to the productivity, and by proxy the creditworthiness, of our country.

Having a vibrant energy industry can act as a significant backbone for a nation, as we saw with Russia after they invaded Ukraine. Even Politico admits that Russia outlasted the sanctions of the West and being kicked off the SWIFT banking system. This is helped along by the country having a strong portfolio of oil and gas companies to fall back on and diplomatic relations with trading partners.

In other words, embracing the energy industry wouldn’t just help fight inflation, it would help secure our nation and its resources. Instead, President Biden and Vice President Harris have been standoffish with the industry while depleting our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, robbing the country of our rainy-day fund, should we ever need it in the event of a true supply crisis or military conflict.

Chart: Zero Hedge

Either you understand that having a vibrant energy industry helps contribute to a better quality of life, or you misunderstand the issue. If you want to go live out in a field in Oregon off of solar panels at a commune, that’s your prerogative. Just know the rest of the world doesn’t provide you with the things that you love and the quality of life you’re used to from living like that – oh, and the power is gonna go out every once in a while.

When it comes to war, you’re either for it or against it. Somehow, someway, the left has become the political party of warmongers, happy to continue perpetually funding a war in Ukraine that we can’t afford and, to be honest, don’t have much to do with.

Those on the left side of the aisle are ironically pushing for this war to continue while demanding a ceasefire in the Middle East. No matter what your take is on the current geopolitical unrest, there’s one thing that the left would love to ignore but can’t: we had four years of peace under President Trump. Whether it came just by luck or it came through peace by strength, President Trump’s four years in office were marked by peace across the world, diplomatic relationships with difficult countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and success in moderating tensions in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords.

For years, heading into a Trump presidency, all we heard was that he was going to lead the country to nuclear war, and now after 3 1/2 years of Joe Biden in office with Kamala Harris, we’re closer to nuclear war and World War III than the world has ever been before. You either understand that fact or you misunderstand reality. Either way, there’s no debate on which side of the aisle has kept the world at peace longer over the last eight years.

And so on the key issues that matter to this columnist, there’s really no debate. If you want to vote with your heart due to the abortion issue or the gun control issue, you’re well within your rights to do so. But I think most people don’t understand that the negative effects on your quality of life from all of the policies strapped to the back of those two issues very likely could outweigh the perceived benefits from guns and legalizing abortions everywhere. It’s like communist policies: they sound nice and give you a warm fuzzy feeling, but they don’t keep you safe at night, put gas in your tank or moderate the cost of your grocery bill. And they don’t allow for prosperity or liberty.

Ironically, people are going to need guns for protection more than ever if we keep allowing immigrants to flow through our border unchecked, demonizing law enforcement, and encouraging rioting disguised as “activism.”

I have confidence that most Americans understand the best way to lift the country up is to unleash the energy industry, cut back on burdensome taxes so people have more cash in their pocket, secure the country and secure our respective states, communities, and cities, and put the bad guys in jail and keep them there. This isn’t some overthought, fake-intellectual set of policy prescriptions, because every time our nation tries to overthink the problem, we always make things worse. And the “intellectual” and “academic” solutions of the Democratic Party over the last three years should remind us that we need to go back to very simple “blocking and tackling” solutions to very simple problems. Keep the country safe. Bad guys go to jail. Bring costs down by increasing supply. Don’t take more from people’s paychecks or investments.

The simple fact is that there really is no debate. The country needs common sense solutions, and while some people don’t like the packaging they come in because Donald Trump can be sharp-tongued, there’s no doubt that he is the only one of these two candidates that will be delivering common sense policy prescriptions.

It’s going to be a spectacle tomorrow night because Kamala Harris has 3 1/2 years of doing a terrible job as Vice President to run on. I’ve seen a lot of political bullshit and doublespeak, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time examining public relations crises in some of the largest companies in the country, and I can’t even begin to conceive what kind of nonsense Harris is going to try to put in place in lieu of actually having substantive solutions for our country tomorrow night.

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