In a recent podcast appearance, left-wing journalist and former MSNBC host Joy Reid explained that economic freedom is what is wrong with the political Right.
“If you go back before the 20th century, there were no income taxes,” Reid said. “There were no regulations on business. You could earn as much money as you want and leave 100% of it to your children with no taxes. That’s the world they want back.”
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If only the Republican Party were the free-market capitalists that exist almost exclusively in Joy Reid’s head. Unfortunately, in recent years, the GOP has taken a hard-left turn away from free markets. There has never been a serious push to abolish the federal income tax, and President Donald Trump unilaterally imposed the largest tax hike in generations last April in the form of his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Republicans, including the Trump administration, have, at times, made deregulation a priority. The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced the elimination of the landmark 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and subsequent emissions standards for the auto industry. While this was a major step in the right direction, we are still light-years away from Ms. Reid’s nightmare of “no regulations on business.”
Reid is correct, in a roundabout way, that the Right needs society to change. Her comment on the necessity that people be less modern doesn’t track — modernity only goes one direction. However, the GOP will need to convince the electorate to expect less handouts from the state if the debt and deficit crisis is going to be meaningfully addressed.
2008 Republican presidential nominee, the late John McCain, famously prevented Republicans from repealing the Affordable Care Act, the socialist boondoggle that sent medical costs through the roof. The 2005 Republican plan to privatize a portion of Social Security via personal investment accounts failed spectacularly. The measure would have set the nation down the path toward fiscal sanity; instead, Democratic propaganda won the day, and GOP leadership, including former President George W. Bush, backed off. Remember “Paul Ryan wants to throw granny off a cliff?”
Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., currently have a death tax (estate tax, inheritance tax, or both), which Joy Reid and Democrats support. With notable exceptions, Iowa and Nebraska, these states are run almost exclusively by Democrats, and many of them, most notably New York, are hemorrhaging members of their tax bases, as those with the means to do so are leaving for states with lower tax burdens.
The future of the GOP looks bleak in regards to free market capitalism. Trump, who on a personal level is as capitalist as a Super Bowl commercial break, has made a habit of interfering in the economy, and pledged since his entry into politics never to touch the failing entitlement programs. Vice President JD Vance, an avowed “postliberal” and current front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, has repeatedly rejected “shareholder capitalism” in favor of interventionist policies around the idea of serving the “common good.”
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Vance argues that when markets produce the “wrong” outcomes, the state should step in and correct them. He recently returned from Hungary, where he was campaigning with the New Right’s hero, Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban has repeatedly imposed price controls on various sectors, “windfall taxes” on certain industries, and is a favorite of both the Russian regime and the Chinese Communist Party.
The U.S. recently surpassed $39 trillion in debt and is running multitrillion-dollar deficits. The debt crisis is coming, whether we like it or not. The only path forward is for the right to get serious about fiscal responsibility and for GOP leadership to become the capitalists that Democrats such as Joy Reid like to pretend they are.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a writer, musician, and host of the No Gimmicks Podcast.
