MARK PENN: The midterms revealed a nation of unhappy capitalists. Here's the cure
America is suffering from having too many unhappy capitalists.
Indeed, in the Fox News poll of voters, 75% said the economy was not so good or poor. And 44% said their economic conditions were deteriorating rather than improving.
America is a nation obsessed with and reeling from increases in the cost of living. It is a bit odd because inflation has come down from 9% a year under President Biden to about 3% a year under President Trump, while economic growth and employment are excellent by any normal standard. We even have the lowest poverty rate in American history. And yet people are unhappy, and on Tuesday they voted for the people who were responsible for the lion’s share of inflation and who spent 10 years and $2 trillion on measures designed to increase the cost of gasoline and other fossil fuels.
FOX NEWS POLL: SQUEEZED BY COSTS, FRUSTRATED VOTERS TURN TO THE DEMOCRATS
And they also elected six new members of the Democratic Socialists of America to Congress this week, bringing their total to at least eight members advancing radical economic redistribution.
But when socialism was directly on the ballot on November 3, it failed. The California wealth tax, which would start a new era of taxation on wealth — a direct confiscation of property — went down in flames, with 57% or more rejecting it.
RADICAL SOCIALIST WING'S HUGE NIGHT REVEALS ASCENDING CLOUT WITHIN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
And in that same Fox News poll, 56% of respondents viewed capitalism favorably and 32% unfavorably. For socialism, 33% viewed it favorably and 53% unfavorably; the rest didn’t know enough to say.
So, capitalism had a 23-point net advantage in favorability. When asked in another Fox News poll whether moving the U.S. away from capitalism toward socialism would be good or bad, 38% said good and 61% said bad.
LEE CARTER: SOCIALISM MEANS TWO WILDLY DIFFERENT THINGS TO REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS
And interestingly, in a recent Harris poll, young people at first said they were for socialism but then said they wanted to own their own businesses and homes and be paid not equally, but according to their merits.
SOCIALISM'S GROWING APPEAL MEETS AN AWKWARD REALITY CHECK ON COLLEGE CAMPUS
So deep down, most of these socialists are really just capitalists drafted into a movement they know little about, fed by a stream of TikTok videos. Indeed, the social media platform itself is a form of capitalism, with people paid according to their clicks. Imagine the uproar if we declared tomorrow that all TikTok creators would make the same amount and that we were confiscating 5% per year of the followers of influencers with over 1 million followers. That would be the end of social media as we know it, given the uproar.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
So maybe socialism is in vogue, and some socialist candidates are slipping into Congress. But make no mistake, they are getting beaten when their proposals are isolated and put on the ballot. Capitalism still trumps socialism, and if you call it free enterprise, it soars another 15 points.
So what we really have right now is a lot of unhappy capitalists who see themselves as having trouble buying a home, a car or other ingredients of middle-class life. The numbers suggest otherwise, but there is no arguing with their belief that the economy is not on their side. But the real fix to these problems lies in policies far simpler than socialism — lower interest rates, lower taxes, more U.S. energy production and affordable health care without a big government takeover.