Spend five minutes listening to the most theatrical tribunes of the American left—Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—and you're likely to hear stories of a country on the brink of collapse, crushed by a rigged system that can only be fixed by a radical redesign of government. Then spend five minutes with the new right (including Vice President JD Vance, Senator Josh Hawley, and countless nostalgists who long to restore an idealized 1950s America) and you'll hear much the same thing.
They say the American experiment is failing. The economy is broken. Our society is in decline. Only broad power exercised by government can save us. For two sides that claim to despise each other, their worldviews are actually quite aligned.
The populist poles of the left and right are now linked in what political scientists call the “horseshoe.” As each moves further away from the center, it leans more toward its counterpart on the other side. Both distrust markets, both want to micromanage industry, both are protectionists, both idealize manufacturing work, and both resent the disruptions that arise from open global competition. In other words, both are hostile to the fundamental principles of the liberal economic order that made America prosperous.
Each side blames a different villain. For the left, it's corporations and the rich; For the right, it's immigrants and trade. But both sides insist that a better future is only possible through top-down political control, and neither wants to face the real risk: a government that is already too big, spending money it doesn't have, and heading toward a fiscal crisis.
In the Dispatch, Kevin Williamson captured something important: Nostalgia is as easily manufactured as plastic trinkets and distracts adults who should know better. The 1950s, mythologized by the new right in its push for a more traditional social and economic order, was no idyll.
Rather, it was an era of shorter life expectancy, greater poverty by today's standards, legal and de facto discrimination, limited economic opportunities for women and minorities, often persecuted gay Americans, and far fewer consumer goods, technologies, and conveniences. To imply that it was a golden age ignores the economic facts and the individuals whose rights and opportunities were severely limited.
The left's narrative—that America remains fundamentally unfair and economically disadvantaged by working families—is equally disconnected from empirical reality. As Michael Strain and Cliff Asness recently detailed In the Free Press, we live in the richest mass society in the history of humanity. Real wages for typical workers are dramatically higher than they were two generations ago. The after-tax income of the bottom fifth of the scale has more than doubled since 1990. The wealth of the poorest quarter of American households has tripled. Consumption, the best measure of lived well-being, is reaching record levels.
This data does not deny that some people are struggling, but it shows that the dominant narrative of national economic decline is false.
Pessimism is dangerous. When voters believe they are experiencing an economic apocalypse, they are willing to adopt the same policies that would create one: price controls, industrial planning, more trade barriers, more centralized economic management, and political control over our lives in general. History books and contemporary accounts can tell you that these policies have failed everywhere they have been implemented. America's flirtation with them is part of the reason why so many people criticize the current economy.
There is no denying that, despite its long-term strength, many Americans could do much better. Housing costs are high and rising. Childcare and health care are too expensive. The energy infrastructure is inadequate. Immigration is poorly managed. These problems are real, but the cause is not capitalism, markets or global competition; They are often barriers created by the government itself, at the state and local level and in Washington.
Local zoning laws that prohibit building where housing is most needed are widespread. Energy is expensive because permitting rules block pipelines, transmission lines and modern generating capacity. Child care costs skyrocket due to regulations unrelated to safety or quality. Health care is complicated because federal and state policies overlap with mandates, distort prices and limit competition, while massively subsidizing demand. Domestic products cost more because tariffs, adopted by the New Right and segments of the left, raise the price of the inputs that American companies need to produce things competitively.
It is much simpler than the far left and new right narrative would have us believe. If we want lower prices and greater opportunity, we must reduce the size and scope of government, build more housing, reform permitting, expand energy capacity, liberalize childcare regulations, eliminate tariffs, and open the doors to more workers. These are supply-oriented solutions, based on evidence and consistent with a free and dynamic society. They require humility, not the grandiose visions of populists who want to redesign the American economy in their own image.
Rugy Veronica He is a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.
