Americans Don’t Need to Be Saved

D espite their differences, President Biden and Donald Trump hold similar populist-nationalist views on big issues such as trade protectionism and entitlements. More consequential, but less discussed, is the salvation doctrine both of them preach. No matter who wins in November, this belief will result in a slew of bad ideas.

Our unpopular presidential candidates have policy agendas and a matching rhetoric that describe Americans as helpless victims in need of government salvation, whether through costly programs or a strong federal executive. Their language is strikingly devoid of the traditional U.S. belief in individuals striving to make a better life for themselves. Unlike Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, who all made room in their policy agendas for individual aspiration, opportunity, and the American Dream, Biden and Trump speak as though individual agency matters little in the face of overpowering external forces.

Joe Biden often characterizes America as a failed experiment in “trickle-down economics,” and his latest State of the Union address was a showcase of progressive populism rooted in the idea that we need to tax and tame billionaires and corporations in order to afford a host of federal programs without which Americans will languish. Donald Trump frequently anchors his Sturm und Drang nationalism in the idea that he is the “only thing standing between” his supporters and total destruction, and preaches about reshoring American manufacturing and rejecting globalism as if this would automatically revive middle-class prosperity.

Neither candidate talks with any regularity about the role Americans play in improving their own lives or the responsibilities we all share. They act as if individual agency — without which America’s cherished idea of liberty is merely an abstraction — matters little.

It is easy to see how this example of the candidates’ being out of step with the beliefs of most Americans could contribute to the low opinion most Americans have of them.

The economic rationale of the Biden-Trump nationalist consensus — that working- and middle-class wages have stagnated as globalization, domineering corporations, and “free-market fundamentalism” have made the rich disproportionately richer — has been weakening for a while, and ordinary people seem to know it. Despite its questionable empirical basis, this economic narrative has provided the justification for Biden’s populist redistribution plans, Elizabeth Warren’s various crusades, Trump’s trade policies, and the fascination of conservative nationalists with 1950s-style industrial, labor, and social policy.

Working-class wages have fared much better than advocates of the stagnation thesis admit. Even economists whose work has been most used by the stagnation lobby have changed their tune somewhat in recent years. The male worker whose plight has been central to many stagnation hypotheses is actually doing as well, if not better, now than he was a generation ago. Pandemic-era demand for labor has reduced inequality.

Increased job-hopping has played a big role in lifting wages, even though neither Biden nor Trump seems aware of it. Nothing shows individual initiative more than picking up and changing jobs. It matters more than minimum-wage increases in boosting low-income-worker pay or increasing the ability to climb the career ladder with a single employer. Half of the wage gains for low-income workers post-pandemic have come from job-hopping, according to a comprehensive 2023 study. A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 60 percent of job-hoppers had better wages than in the previous year, compared with 47 percent who stayed with their current employer. A substantial body of research shows that a more dynamic economy with lots of new companies starting every year makes this competition for workers — and the resulting increases in their wages — even more pronounced. Our presidential candidates ignore these realities in their rhetoric.

Ordinary Americans understand what the political and media classes do not. While the political class was obsessing about economic angst among non-college-educated workers, working-class Americans were optimistic about their economic future during the pre-pandemic years. According to two national surveys in the past five years, a majority of Americans — including black, Hispanic, and working-class people — believe they have achieved, or will achieve, the American dream. Both studies show that freedom of choice in how to live is the most prevalent definition of the American dream among respondents — far more prevalent than owning a home or being financially successful. In other words, most Americans closely associate the pursuit of happiness with taking responsibility for improving their own lives. They are not spending their time living in fear of forces they cannot control.

Our elderly presidential candidates inspire little confidence in the future, because they have little confidence in ordinary Americans, employers, and the messy economics of daily life that help workers achieve what government policies never will. Biden’s and Trump’s political successes may increase to the degree they change their tunes and agendas to achieve the economic future most Americans believe is possible.