Autocracy and Poverty

Trump and Vance bring them together

When I am on media, television hosts ask how democracy is relevant to people who are voting on kitchen-table issues.  That’s easy. 

When Trump destroys our democracy, he will also destroy our economy. 

Autocracy will bring poverty.

Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.  The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse.  It is not hard to see why Trump likes them. 

Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies.  Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country.  The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.  Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.  And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.

The lesson is clear.  Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers.  When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked. 

And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law.  In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many. 

Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform. 

Trump is running as a candidate who has attempted a coup against constitutional rule. Vance has already said, multiple times, that law does not govern who leads the country, and that he would have supported Trump’s coup attempt.

The rule of law begins from the principle that we are all equally subject to to it. Trump promises to weaponize the law to immunize himself and his supporters and to pursue his political opponents.  Those who worked with him in the White House believe him. 

Laws are executed by trained civil servants. Trump and Vance back a plan to fire the forty thousand federal employees who now execute the law and replace them with forty thousand loyalist hacks.  That is Project 2025.

It doesn't take much imagination to see where this leads.  Here are five quick examples.

1.  The very rich will not be taxed, but you will be taxed more. The hardest thing the IRS does is to tax the wealthy.  In an atmosphere of lawlessness and favoritism, this will become impossible.  Insofar as the federal government runs at all, it will be by taxing the middle class.

2.  The banks can collapse.  As we saw in 2008, our financial system is held together by a very thin tissue of regulation.  Unless laws are enforced, as they won't be under a Trump-Vance administration, the overadventurous will very likely draw us all into another financial disaster.  The bailout will be paid for by the average taxpayer because the rich won’t be taxed (see number 1).

3.  Americans will be at risk of losing their benefits.  Social Security and all the rest depend upon a functioning federal bureaucracy, which is exactly what Project 2025 guarantees that we will not have.  Americans take for granted federal institutions, from VA Hospitals to the insurance of bank accounts (see number 2). 

4.  The stock market can crash.  It depends upon the laws that prevent insider trading and other abuses.  If these laws are applied selectively, and if the people who used to enforce them have been fired, then corrupt investors will win while others lose out.  After a time, the stock market loses its prestige, investors go elsewhere, and everyone loses. (And those who were treating their investments as cushioning to their retirement benefits are now poor: see number 3).

5.  Businesses will get stuck.  Doing business depends upon all sorts of interactions with the federal government.  When the federal government loses its civil servants, much of this will stop happening.  Or, worse, companies with personal connections will be able to continue functioning without following any rules, while others will grind to a halt.  This means millions of people losing their jobs. (And it is now hard for businesses to raise money: see number 4).

This list could go on.  The collapse of the economy is not a bug of autocracy, but a feature. 

There is an autocratic logic to economic failure. When nothing works, when law does not matter, when elections are irrelevant, the only way Americans will be able to get anything done is by appealing to those who have power.  We will have to give bribes to the corrupt and hope for favors from the top. 

Once we behave like this, we get used to the idea that only the leader can fix things, which is of course what Trump likes to say.  And so the circle closes and the new regime is installed.

The new autocracy is confirmed by our new poverty. That is, in any event, the Trump-Vance plan.

They are talented politicians, and they have an alternative to democracy and prosperity, which is autocracy and poverty. Whether they bring America this new regime is up to us.

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