The cost-of-living problems in the Western world are a mortal danger to conservative parties. In England, the Tories are about to find electoral death because they are unable to reconcile the ever-diverging interests of existing homeowners and aspiring home-buyers.
I think Oren Cass has done really important work with his Cost-of-Thriving Index showing that the elements of a secure middle-class existence — housing, education, health-care coverage, and a car (though constantly improving on their own terms), are harder and harder for Americans to secure through their labor.
Among Republicans there is — or used to be — wide agreement on using deregulation to make these goods more accessible. Why can’t our candidates begin talking about that?
The GOP can justly point out that Obamacare failed to solve the problem of health-care inflation — which is driven by several factors, not least of which is our complex third-party payment system, which works to disguise prices and thus hides efficiencies and suppresses healthy competition. Of course reform would mean “disruption” and some associated political costs. But lack of reform comes at too high a cost, not just to us as taxpayers, but also to policy-makers who are constrained by the cost disease that is making Medicare and Medicaid so ruinously expensive.