Donald Trump reportedly just can't grasp why average Americans don't think the economy is doing great. It's doing great for everyone he knows. It's doing great for the the Trump family. It's doing swell for Jeff Bezos. It's doing great for Elon Musk. It's only not doing great for his pal Jeff Epstein, as he checked out before he could be spring from jail in one fashion or another and go back to being a teenage girl procurer.
So what, he must be thinking, is the freaking problem?
Well, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the entire Trump family are the problem (and people like Jeff Epstein are as well).
In other quarters people like to debate whether or not the United States is a "Christian nation". Whatever the answer to that might be (I think the answer is yes, but that it's a Puritan country) it was definitely a small freeholder country. That is, the country was mostly made up of small yeomanry and small tradesmen early on.
Indeed, the widespread use of corporations was illegal in the 1770s and for many years thereafter. Part of the rebellion against the crown was based on what effectively were export duties, a species of tariff, on chartered businesses, i.e., team importers, that the colonist had no control over and they reacted by destroying the property. Ironically the very people who emblazon themselves with 1776 themed tattoos in 2026 would have supported King George III doing what he did, just as they support King Donny doing them through executive order. Shoot, Parliament had actually voted on the tea duties.
Nonetheless, teh country has always had some very large business interests that, when allowed to, operate against the economic interest of everyone else. They don't want to "share the wealth". They think their getting wealthy is sharing enough, and good for everyone. Up until 1865, or instance, we had the Southern planter class, a market set of agriculturalist who destroyed land and people in their endeavors, but believed in it so strongly that they'd argue for the perversion of the Christian faith to support slavery.
It wasn't just Planters, however. Coal magnates, industrialists, foreign ranch owners, the list is pretty long.
It wasn't until later that absentee merchants dominated "main street", both the actual one or the metaphorical one. The first chain store is claimed by some to be The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was founded in 1859. Woolworth's started twenty years later in 1879. Piggly Wiggly, the grocery store, showed up in 1916, and proved to be the model for "grocery stores" that would wipe out locally held grocery stores, for the most party, in the next couple of decades.
Since the mid 20th Century this trend has continued unabated and unaddressed. Every Walmart represents the destruction, probably, of a half dozen or more locally owned family supported stores. The appliance section represents the closure of local appliance stores. The entertainment section of record and video stores. You name it.
None of this had to be.
There's been a lot of ink spilled on the rise of Donald Trump and what caused it. We've done that ourselves. Others have noted the presence of small businessmen in the MAGA ranks, but it's been underreported in contrast to the blue collar Rust Belt members of the MAGA rank and file.
It shouldn't be.
When I was young, which is now a very long time ago, the Democratic Party was still regarded as the part of the working class. Unions, which have never been strong here, were still strong enough to host the annual Jefferson Jackson Day that backed the Democratic Party. But by 1973 the Democrats started to board the vessel of blood that would end up causing thousands to get off the boat. By the mid 1990s the party that had been the one hardhats joined became one in you had to be comfortable with a focus on disordered sex and infanticide. The Democrats, for the most part, forgot the working class.
At the same time, the Republican Party was widely accused of being the Country Club Party, with good reason. If you were a member of a country club or chamber of commerce, you were probably a Republican or you were weird. The thing is, however that the economic outlook of the hardhat class and the country club class was closer to each other than they thought and the same neglect hurt both of them severely.
As early as the 1960s, successive Democratic and Republican administrations were really comfortable with exporting business overseas. Nobody ever outright admitted that, but they were. And both Democratic and Republican administrations simply stopped enforcing anti trust legislation. Aggressively applied, entities like Walmart would be busted up, but it just doesn't happen. Aware of what was going on at first, and trying to struggle against it nearly everywhere, local business failed to arrest the destructive march of the giants. In part, their efforts were so local that they were like those of Russian peasantry trying to arrest the Red Army. They tried, but doing it locally just won't going to work. You can't wait until the Red Army is in sight of the village. Nobodoy lifted a finger at the national or state level to help.
The march of progress (which it wasn't) and free enterprise (which it also wasn't) and all that.
So the small business class became desperate, and in desperation they turned to the guy who offered no answers but who seemed like he might help, Trump.
What an irony, really. Trump doesn't "shop local" and he doesn't have the faintest grasp of what small business is like. He's spent his eight decades around the wealthy and is more comfortable with bullying smaller economic interest than helping them.
Even now, the bones a small business economy remain. In order to advance that interest, however, small businessmen have to do something they really aren't comfortable with.
They have to be militant about it.
Part of that involves being militant at the polls.*
And that involves asking some questions, but first it involves waking up to economic and structural realities.
The first of those realities is that the United States does not have a free market economic system, and hasn't for a long time. It has a Corporate Capitalist economic system that favors state created economic creatures given fictional personhood which favors economies of scale. The goal is to make prices cheaper, and part of that is to make wagers cheaper. The consumers are expected to adjust to this by getting new jobs at higher wages, sort of like the protagonist in Kansas City Star.
So, in essence, if you have an appliance store and are taking home, let's say, $150,000 a year, and with that you are trying to provide for all of your family's living expenses, and Walmart comes in, well, you should have become something else, and now this is your chance to go and do that.
Except you probably won't. You'll probably close the store and retire, if you are over 50, or go on to another lower paying job if you aren't.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Okay, not facing that grim reality, what you need to do is find out if politicians are more interested in their super sized huge television having a low, low price, or helping you. And helping you means leveling the playing field with legislation, not "buy local" campaigns.
And I'll note here, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is trying to defend the Wyoming Business Council, is a prime example of people who are there to hurt you.
And so we begin.
1. Where is his bread buttered?
In other words, how does he make his money.
That may or not may not be a reason to vote for or against somebody. In Wyoming, fore xample, there are small businessmen in, and opposed to, the Freedom Caucus at the legislature, and voting for the WFC is a complete no go. So the question is informative, not determinative.
Having said that, there are certain answers that, in my mind, are nearly disqualifying.
One is a near complete lack of private business experience, even as an employee. Wyoming in particular seems to get a lot of candidates who cite "I was in the military" as a reason to vote for them, based on a lifelong military career. Well, that isn't like working for a private business at all. There's never been a time in the history of the U.S. military in which a soldier wasn't going to get paid, save for the government briefly shutting down. And almost all member of the military don't worry about overhead and payroll expenses. They also don't have to worry about the country coming to them and saying, "Gee, U.S. Army, we've really liked you here, but the British Army made us a better offer so we're doing to close you down. . . "
It's not just a lifetime of sucking on the government tit that should be concerning. People who have a lot of family money are in the same category.
I"m not necessary saying don't vote for somebody who is rich. I am saying you need to weight it carefully. It's hard to get politicians right now, at least at the national level, who aren't fairly well off, due to the Citizens United case. But if a person is rich because they inherited it, a pause should be made on the voting lever.
2. Do you support the American System?
Of course, when you ask this, you're probably going to get the answer of "yes", because it includes the word "American" and nobody wants to be against the American canything if they're a politician.
So you're going to have to ask them some questions or question which shows what they know what the American System is.
They probably won't know.
Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."
Okay, right now I'll note that this included tariffs to protect American industry, and I've been hard on those. I also don't live in the first half of the 19th Century when industry had barely achieved a foothold in the U.S. And, it might be worth noting, that Clay didn't propose tariffs as people hurt his feelings. At any rate, post 1890s tariffs have proven to be a disaster.
What I"m noting, however, is the second and third parts of the American System, that being a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.
What I'm really getting at is the use of public funds to assist local businesses.
A good example of the American System in Wyoming has been the Wyoming Business Council.. The carpetbagging Wyoming Freedom Caucus is attacking it basically because it uses public money. If you are in Wyoming, a good question is whether or not the pol supports the Wyoming Business Council being defunded. If the answer is yes, this pol doesn't care if you evaporate and is instead mindlessly adopting twattle that the WBC is "Socialist". First of all, I don't care if it is socialist, I only care, and so should you, about whether its effective in generating local businesses.
3. What actual legislation would they support to help local business.
By this, I mean concrete examples.
Chances are, you won't get any, so you'll have to press them.
4. What is their position on taxation?
By this, I mean the whole smash. Local, state and Federal.
The local press always asks this position of our pols, and they rarely give any kind of a detailed answer. Right now, most of them note that they aren't fond of taxes, but they don't support the WFC's effort to gut state property taxes either.
That's not specific enough.
5. What do they think of the out of staters buying up all the ___________and what would they do about it?
Here, and in much ag country, this would pertain to ranch land. But I'm sure it pertains to other things as well. Shoot ,around here it also would seem to pertain to tire stores, it's just ridiculous.
Expressing "concern" doesn't mean anything at all, even if you are Lisa Murkowski.
Doing nothing, I'd note, is an answer. It's not an answer too many would be willing to give, but at least its an honest answer.
6. What do their employees, if they have any, think of them?
For some reason, this is never asked, but it should be. If the answer is that the candidates employees hate the candidate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, that probably needs to be considered. If, on the other hand, the employees widely admire the employer/candidate, that says something else.
I'll note here that personally I had people come to me as late as the 2010s who had worked for my grandfather and wanted me to know how he had helped them out in tough times. He never ran for anything, but that says a lot about his character.
I don't think we've heard anything like that from any of Jeffrey Epstein's employees.
I'll also note that as a businessman myself, it seems some businessmen are willing to fire people the second they might have to take a little less home. That's a character defect that's disturbing, at the least.
7. Why are they in the party they're in?
Again, an honest answer.
Right now you can't be a Republican or Democrat and be 100% comfortable with either party. That would suggest that you are letting others do your thinking for you. Businessmen have a right to know what drew a candidate to the party, what ever it is.
They also have a right to know what a candidate disagrees with about the positions of their own party. If he doesn't disagree with any party position, he's an unthinking stooge.
8. What business related or policy related organizations are they in, or endorsed by?
This is often overlooked unless those organizations step out themselves, which they sometimes do.
Make Liberty Win is, in my view, a big no/go for a candidate. The Club for Growth is as well. The latter favors an economy that will screw you.
Footnotes
*They really need to be militant about it everywhere, however.
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