Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 309 | Trump vs. Biden 2020: The Economy

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

We continue our election series by analyzing the liberal and conservative perspectives on economic issues. We answer these questions: how does each side approach the dignity of work, responsibility for the poor, and equality of opportunity vs. equality of opportunity? We'll take a look at Trump's record and plans for his second term, as well as Biden's suggested economic reforms. Then, a few more thoughts on last week's debate.  Today's Sponsor See how much you can save on your car and homeowners insurance. Go to https://Gabi.com/RELATABLE Today's Links Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’ original Green New Deal Language https://web.archive.org/web/20190207191119/https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/blog-posts/green-new-deal-faq  Trump’s Economic Policies: An Assessment, Part-1 https://www.hoover.org/research/trumps-economic-policies-assessment-part-1 What Regulations Has the Trump Administration Eliminated So Far? https://cei.org/blog/what-regulations-has-trump-administration-eliminated-so-far The Economic Effects of Federal Deregulation Since January 2017: An Interim Report https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Economic-Effects-of-Federal-Deregulation-Interim-Report.pdf Preliminary Details and Analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act https://files.taxfoundation.org/20171220113959/TaxFoundation-SR241-TCJA-3.pdf The Historic Results of President Donald J. Trump’s Economic Agenda https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/historic-results-president-donald-j-trumps-economic-agenda/ The Obama-Biden Economy Redux https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obama-biden-economy-redux-11597793116 Previously on Relatable: Ep 306 | Amy Coney Barrett & Trump's Battle for the Presidency https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-306-amy-coney-barrett-trumps-battle-for-the-presidency/id1359249098?i=1000492842228  Ep 307 | The Dire State of American Theology https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-307-the-dire-state-of-american-theology/id1359249098?i=1000493073546 ------ Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. We are going to continue on our election series today talking about the economy and poverty. If I have time, I am also going to talk a little bit more about the debate and my analysis of that at the end. I shared a lot about that on Instagram.

and most of you follow me there, and so you know my thoughts, but I wanted to give a little bit more analysis and more clarity. For those of you who missed Theology Mondays, I am sorry that we've kind of reformatted this, but you might have missed when I announced kind of at the beginning of this election series that we would be changing it just temporarily until the election. And we have had a lot of Theology-centered interviews on Friday. So if that's something that you're missing, then certainly tune into those Friday episodes, but also we did a full theology episode last Wednesday that if you're looking for just kind of a refreshing biblical perspective that doesn't have to do with politics or really current events that much at all, they go back and listen to

Wednesday's episode. We, of course, are going to talk about that as well. But I don't compartmentalize my faith. My faith, as it should, as it does for all people, whether someone admits it or not or realizes it or not affects our worldview. It affects what we think about politics. It affects what we think about right and wrong and justice in the economy and all of these different kinds of issues. And so this is still a Christian conservative show. Sometimes we focus more on the politics and sometimes we focus more on theology. But everything fundamentally is theological. As I've said, many times, politics is downstream from culture and culture is downstream from theology. everything you think about the world goes back to what you think about God, whether you're an atheist or a monotheist.

It is all built on the foundation of who you believe, if anyone created the universe, who is the transcendent moral authority? Is it you? Is it the government? Is it the creator of the heavens and the earth? So, yeah, we are focusing more on the election than kind of breaking down a particular biblical issue. but we have done that a few times in the past few weeks. So definitely make sure that you are, that you are catching all of the episodes before you say that we have completely thrown something out or that we're not doing something anymore because chances are you might have just missed it. But today we are continuing to talk about the election in this particular election issue,

which is the economy and the issue of poverty. And this has been an issue in a presidential election since the beginning. of time since the beginning of having presidential elections in the United States. And of course, this election is no different, especially with all of the chaos that has been going on and the jobs lost that has the jobs that we have lost this year because of the lockdowns due to the coronavirus. And so this is a big topic of conversation. Trump, of course, has touted an economic boom. has given himself credit for that. And so we're going to look at some of those claims today and see if they are true.

We're going to compare a little bit Biden versus Trump and their plans and policies. What Biden has been a part of in the past as far as his senatorial career and his stint as vice president. And then we're also look at what Donald Trump has done and plans to do. But before I do that, I want to talk about the philosophies in general of left versus right. There is a big misconception. Of course, you guys know I am a conservative. And so I have a particular perspective on this.

I have an angle that I'm coming from. And for the millionth time, my desire is never to mislead. I try to give the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But you know what my worldview is and at what point I am starting. And you know that I am going to fall in line with conservative economic policy because I believe that not only do they make the most sense, but they're best for every demographic of the country. Trump has been pretty conservative economically, so I'm going to align with him. I'm not going to align with Joe Biden. I think that many times people assume that Christians,

and I think Christian women in particular, should be very agnostic on politics in order to truly be godly. Like we should pretend like we don't have a perspective and we should just say, oh, you know, some things are good with Biden and some things are good with Trump. Some things are good with leftism. I mean, one or two things is good with conservatism. That's only ever told, I feel like, to Christian conservative women, that they need to be less opinionated about it, that they need to be less sure, that they need to be less confident in their beliefs.

You never hear SJWs being told that kind of thing by the people who listen to them. So, look, I'm confident in conservative economic policy. That doesn't mean I know everything, every nook and cranny of it. that doesn't mean that conservatives have never been wrong or I've never been wrong on this. But you guys know where I'm going to land when it comes to this. And I am, I'm admittedly trying to make the case to you for conservative policies. I'm not hiding that. I don't know why people come to the show and they think that I'm not on one side of the issues.

I am very upfront about that. Everyone, unless they just don't know anything, is on a particular side of the issues. And that's okay. We allow the Bible. we allow the Word of God, we allow the Holy Spirit, a biblical worldview to inform the rest of what we believe and we're going to disagree on some things, hopefully not the big things, and that's okay. I'm giving you a perspective. You want a liberal perspective? You want an agnostic perspective? Then you shouldn't go to the podcast that has Christian conservative in the description.

Okay. Let me explain the conservative philosophy in general. I mean, there's so much that we could get into in general on the economy. So in general, conservatives, ideally, we believe in lower taxes. We believe in fewer government programs, welfare programs that actually incentivize people to get back to work rather than making it more lucrative for them not to work. We trust people to provide for themselves if they are physically and mentally able to provide for themselves and to provide for their families on their own and to give charitably as they see fit. Voluntarily. as they see fit. The liberal philosophy in general believes higher taxes, in particular for the rich, but also it ends up being higher taxes for the middle class. That's typically the consequence of

liberal tax policy. The definition, though, of who is rich, according to leftist dogma, very often changes. You heard a couple decades ago Bernie Sanders talking about the evils of millionaires and how they are all greedy. Well, now he is a millionaire with three houses, and so he talks about the evils of billionaires. And so that definition of who the rich is is changing. Nevertheless, they do talk about, have talked about for a very long time, that we need higher taxes for the rich.

And they believe the leftist philosophy, at least, believes in the redistribution of wealth from the top and the middle to those at the bottom. And though, and the thought is not just that this will lift up people at the bottom, but that this is fair. So liberals are concerned with a particular definition of fairness, which tends to mean equal outcomes. Conservatives are also concerned with fairness, but we have a different definition of fairness. We believe in fairness of process. So we believe that regardless of outcomes, people should be treated fairly and equally under the law. Of course, liberals also believe

that people should be treated fairly under the law, but they are more concerned with equality of outcomes and we are more concerned with simply equality of opportunity, whether or not people end up with the same outcomes. We believe that we should strive as a society for equality of opportunity. We realize there will always be disparate outcomes between individuals and groups because people are different. People have different interests, different abilities, different upbringings, different levels of intelligence, different levels of ambition, et cetera, and disparities. conservatives know do not mean necessarily that discrimination is involved unless direct discrimination can actually be proven so fairness from the conservative perspective and of course i believe the correct

perspective is that fairness does not mean that everyone ends up with the same lot in life or even a similar lot in life or everyone makes the same or even similar amounts of money or that everyone's neighborhood looks the same, but that people are treated equitably, that there are not two justice systems for the rich and the poor. And of course, liberals would also agree with that. The people that, the people should have the freedoms to pursue opportunities as we see fit. And we realize that there will be people who have greater obstacles in their lives than other people. Some people will have greater privileges than other people than other people. You are born with all kinds of privileges that a lot of people don't talk about.

There's pretty privilege. There is smart privilege. There is athletic privilege, other kind of talent privilege. There is inherited wealth privilege, having two parents stay together in your home privilege. But that does not mean conservatives believe that it is the government's job to try to reconfigure society so that everyone has the same obstacles and the same privileges or lack of privileges in order that we all have equal outcomes. We believe that attempt at reconfiguration of society from the top down is very dangerous and harmful.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they live. even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. The Laf's version of fairness is concerned mostly. I should say leftisms because there are always people who say, well, I'm on the left and I don't believe that. the chances are you might not actually know, and I don't mean this in a patronizing way, what is the why behind your leftist philosophy? That's a wonderful thing about leftism, is that it sounds really good on the surface and you can say, oh, you believe in women's rights,

you believe in equality, you believe in fairness, you believe in an economy that works for everyone, the rich should pay their fair share, and all of that sounds really good. And so you, You have a lot of liberals saying, well, I believe in these things, but that doesn't mean that I believe in all the things that Ali Stecki says I believe in. Well, I study leftism as a philosophy as an ideology for a living. And so it might be, maybe not, but it might be that I actually know what's underneath your worldview more than you do. Because you espouse the belief in certain philosophies, but maybe, I'm just saying maybe, I don't know. You have not actually dug underneath the surface to know the cohesive worldview and the logical conclusions and the foundations that some of your views actually belong to. So when I say the left or when I say leftism, I'm not saying every single person who considers themselves on the left, believe this way.

You might not know that the thing that you believe in, the thing that you support, that there's actually something underneath it that you don't agree with or that you don't believe in. And that's actually part of what I try to do to show the logical conclusion of leftism, to show where the policies have showed up in other places and how they have not worked in the worldview that it is connected to. That's part of my whole job is to show you that we all have a worldview. You don't just believe in these isolated policies. You don't just have a faith over here and politics over here and social issues over here. They're all combined and connected.

And just because you have not taken the time to realize those connections doesn't mean that I'm jumping to conclusions that are not there. That is never my goal. If I truly am, that I do want you to reach out to me and say, you know, I'm on the left and you believe we think this because of this, but here is why we actually think it. Here's what is actually underneath it. Logically, walk me through how I'm wrong. Don't just say, well, no. Allie doesn't really know because I do study this for a living in. So if you want to logically walk me through, factually walk me through, why I am wrong about a particular assertion about leftism. I would love to hear from you.

I talk to people every day that I disagree with who listen to this podcast. And most of the time we have wonderful conversations unless they get angry or something. So feel free to do that. So when I say leftism, I'm talking about the philosophy in general. It doesn't include every single person who ascribes to it. So again, the left version of fairness is concerned with outcome. So you will hear them say the rich should pay their fair share. Well, what is fair?

Rich people already pay the vast majority of taxes in this country. The top 50% of earners in this country pay almost 90% of the taxes in this country. They pay not only a higher dollar amount, but they also pay a higher proportion of their earnings and taxes. Fair, typically, to liberals, is the amount that will minimize the gap. between the rich and the poor. That's what they see as fair. Again, equal, more equal outcomes, less disparate outcomes, because they believe it is unfair, for example, for a billionaire to be a billionaire while a person in poverty is in poverty. They see that gap as proof in itself of an unjust system. They tend to see wealth as finite. If one person gets three-fourths of the pie,

metaphorically, obviously, there's only one-fourth left over for everyone else. That's kind of how they see it. So they attempt to make the pieces of the pie more equal through redistribution, more equal in size to make it more fair. Leftist tend to see the rich, especially billionaires, is stealing from the poor. So stealing pieces of pie from the poor making the poor person's piece of pie smaller while making their piece of pie bigger. The poverty is actually because of the oppression that is caused by the rich. That's kind of the mentality that you see shared by people like Ilhan Omar and AOC and Bernie Sanders and even now Elizabeth Warren. But conservatives don't see it that way. And I would say that conservatism sees it correctly from my perspective.

The rich are not rich because the poor are poor and the poor are not poor because the rich are rich, not in America in 2020. The solution is not to make sure that the pieces of the pie are the same, but to continue expanding the size. of the pie by encouraging more output from the people, not more input from the government. So there isn't a fixed size of the pie. The pie can get bigger and bigger and people can take as much as they are willing to work for. That is how conservative see it. Are there exceptions to that rule? Sure. But that is the conservative view of what is actually fair and who gets how much of the pie. The rich or not rich because the poor are poor and the poor are not poor because the rich or rich. Economist Thomas Sol wrote this, or he writes this in his book,

wealth, poverty, and politics. He says, it is by no means obvious why we should prefer trying to equalize incomes to putting our efforts into increasing output. People in general and the poor in particular seem to, quote, vote with their feet by moving to where there's greater prosperity, rather than where there is greater economic equality. Rising standards of living, especially for those at the bottom economically have resulted not so much from changing the relative sizes of different slices of the economic pie as from increasing the size of the pie itself, which has largely been accomplished without requiring heavy rhetoric, fierce emotions, or bloodshed, which of course is why it is much more difficult to make this a compelling election issue for Republicans because

it's not, our pitch is not emotional. Our pitch is that, you can do it. Our pitch is that you are responsible if you're mentally and physically able to work for yourself and to provide for your family to create those opportunities. And we want to create as much as we can those equal opportunities, but you take it from there and we believe that you can do it. It's much more compelling, rhetorically, emotionally, politically for people to say, you are pushed down by the oppression of the people at the top and we are going to rescue you. That is much more appealing. Equal outcomes aren't impossible outside of tyranny. As Thomas Soll also points out in discrimination and disparities if two siblings from the same family end up with different outcomes

in life, how is it possible that two people from different families, different backgrounds, different schools, different cities and states should have the same outcome. People are different. And this is going to take us into a direction that doesn't directly have to do with the economy. I will go back to the economy, but it's what I believe is underneath all of this that I think is important to point out. In my opinion, the biggest flaw of leftism is that it continually gets human nature wrong. So whether or not you identify as a Christian on the left, understand that the leftist philosophy, especially the brand that is under Marxism, which I know does not characterize the whole Democratic Party, hopefully not most of the Democratic Party, but it is

an increasing portion of the Democratic Party that certainly cowtows to Marxism and Marxist organizations like BLM and Antifa and some of the people who admire Karl Marx in the left wing of the party like Bernie Sanders and AOC, Ilhan Omar, Iona Presley, Julian Castro, and people like that. It is a secularist, humanist philosophy and God and the idea of human nature because we are created by God really gets in the way. way of Marxism. It gets in the way of leftism. And they have tried really hard to marry Christianity with Marxism by way of social justice. We actually talked about the quote from C.S. Lewis that talks about the problem with trying to do that. But as Marx said himself, he believes that religion is the opium of the masses, that it's actually getting in the way of people's happiness and fulfillment. and that's because his philosophy is an anti-God philosophy. And because of that, I believe leftism always gets human nature wrong.

If you don't understand that there is a creator who created us and he created us with purpose in a particular way, you have this evolutionary mindset that says that people can change according to what society wants, according to societal demands. And leftists not only believe that, but they believe it wrong. the idea that society can form people, that if society changes in a certain way, then every person will go that way too. You see this, for example, in gender ideology. They say gender is a social construct. So if we can change society's definition of male and female by saying that it's just a matter of personal choice, then one day they believe we will live outside the gender

binary. People will all identify is whatever individual expression of gender they want. Furthermore, the thinking goes, we can eliminate, if we can eliminate sex differences, we can eliminate sex discrimination. There will be no separation in any segment of society based on male and female and we will all live together and gender fluid harmony. But that won't happen. I'm here to tell you that that will not happen. It will never happen. No matter, how much academia and public education and the political class and leftist activists are pushing it, it will not happen because gender is not a social construct. Some expectations and fashion standards and things like that assigned to each gender may be arbitrary and social constructs. Yes,

absolutely. But gender is biological. Don't buy into the life that there's a difference between sex and gender. If there is not. Some women may be more traditionally male and how they present themselves in their interests, the way they talk, the way they dress, but they're still women that doesn't change that fact. Some men may act more traditionally female, but that doesn't make them any less men. And men and women are different down to our DNA. Our brains develop differently inside the womb. We are physically different, not just our not just our anatomy, but our anaerobic and aerobic capacity, our bone density, our capacity, our capacity for muscle mass. All of these things are different fundamentally. We have different hormones that affect

our mentalities, our behavior. If you watch a group of toddlers, of babies, people who have not been conditioned by society to be a certain way, you will see, except for maybe a minority of outliers, the boys behave a certain way and the girls behave a certain way. This is a good thing. This is a wonderful thing. This is how human beings have always been and are supposed to be. Men and women are fundamentally different in many ways, and we always will be. It is this very human nature that has perpetuated human existence. And of course, we talked about on last Wednesday's episode, how purposefully and beautifully, deliberately, specifically, God made them male and female and why he did so. So unless Jesus returns, it will swing back in the other direction.

Because truth, whether moral or scientific, is like a beach ball. You can try to push it down underwater with all of your might. You can put all of your weight on top of it. Eventually it's going to pop back up. And we will see how the eraser of actual definitions of male and female cause chaos in society and families and individual lives, there has never been a, society and history. That is not at the very least organized by male and female. Human beings need these basic categories. We require order. We require time. We require calendars. We require

measurements, instructions, guidelines, boundaries, definitions to survive and thrive as cohesive societies. Every tribe and civilization since the beginning of time has needed these things in some form and we do too. We're already seeing child abuse by way of dressing kids up as the opposite gender, giving kids cross-sex hormones when in reality their kids who will grow out of their confusion by puberty. This stuff has lifelong damage that we don't even know about yet. And unfortunately, so many platforms are silencing those who have detransitioned and who have said,

look, I didn't actually get the mental health help that I needed when I was a teenager. you need to read, you need to read Irreversible Damage by Abigail Schreier. I've had her on my podcast before talking about these young girls who have been swept up in what truly is a social contagion. It used to be very rare for girls to be involved in the kind of transgender community. And now girls 12, 13, 14 years old are getting swept up into it while they're in those awkward stages of wanting to be accepted and being uncomfortable in their bodies as all girls are when they're in middle school and early high school.

and they're being pushed into and swept into this movement and affirmed by unknowing parents, affirmed by ignorant and backward psychologists, affirmed by doctors, and no one is taking the time to pause for a second and saying, hey, is this actually what's going on? Do you actually have gender dysphoria? Or are you dealing with relationship problems? Are you dealing with an unstable home? Are you dealing with self-esteem issues? Are you dealing with a meeting disorder? Are there other psychological issues that are going on that we should treat and care about and focus on before we put you on a path to irreversible damage of your body that you will, that you will never be able to recover from? Unfortunately, we are sacrificing our kids and our girls

on the altar of this idea that human nature doesn't really exist, that we get to decide what we are and who we are based on the latest societal whim. So ideas have consequences. And I think this is the biggest consequence of leftism is the denial of human nature. And the debate between nurture versus nature, they always picture or they always pick nurture that we can nurture people into being and manifesting whatever society wants at the time. leftists continually, continually get human nature wrong. A great example of how leftists get this wrong, not just when it comes to moral things

and social things like gender ideology. They get it wrong when it comes to economic issues, namely in the support of socialism and communism. I know, again, not all Democrats are socialists and communists. I'm not saying that. I am talking about leftism as an ideology, which an increasing number of Democrats hold to, but I do think the party is certainly headed in that direction. Socialism and communism, which are closely tied, deny the reality of human nature.

They claim that people can be forced into generosity, which of course is not generosity at all. People can be forced into living happily in equal mediocrity, and that once the government exacts its powers and redistributes all the property, and wealth from the top to the bottom so that everyone has equal outcomes, everyone will finally live in harmony. There will be no poverty. There will be no racism. There will be no marginalization. There will be fewer crimes. We will finally live in what they believe to be a fair society. So how has that worked out? Because that's not a new idea. It's been around for 100 plus years. How did it work out in China and Venezuela and Cambodia and Zimbabwe and Venezuela and Soviet Russia and

Eastern Germany. Not well. Not well. It's ended in suffering and more greed, more corruption from the top. Bureaucrats always stay rich while the people get poor in socialist countries, starvation, violence, bloodshed, injustice, because socialism and communism go against all that is good in human nature. Canada, UK, Scandinavia, by the way, these places are not socialist. They are largely welfare states that still have forms of capitalism in order to be able to fund their welfare state, they still have too much socialized stuff. I still don't think those are good systems, but the means of production are not entirely owned by the state. So they're not fully socialist states. People try to point to these as, well, these are socialist places and they're working

out well, they're actually really not. Capitalism is not really a system. Capitalism is something that happens. So a lot of times you hear people say socialism might not be biblical if they finally comes term to the fact that socialism is not biblical, but neither is capitalism. Capitalism causes causes oppression and causes all these bad things to happen. So capitalism in its raw form, like in its most natural form, is just something that happens when societies get together. You will remember if you were in my book club and we read nothing to envy about ordinary life in North Korea, these people who had only learned anti-capitalism, their entire lives who were taught to believe their whole lives that the state was their

their provider that their state that the Kim dynasty was going to give them everything they needed that communism was good that communism was fair that communism was righteous and capitalism was evil and that it was actually because of the evil capitalist countries like Japan and America that they were that they were starving no no communism is good well what happened they created these black markets, these illegal markets, they started smuggling food from China and trading with each other. And they created this small illegal capitalist economy inside North Korea in order to stay alive. These people had never taken a class on capitalism. They didn't know supply and demand. They didn't know what it meant to be a free market. They actually just knew that capitalism

was really bad and evil. And yet, in order to survive, because they didn't have any other choice, because communism and the corruption of the Kim dynasty had so terribly failed them, they engaged in capitalism. Capitalism, supply and demand, again, and it's just its most raw form, its most basic form, the most basic philosophy is something that just happens when people get together and they need to provide for their families. Socialism is something that must be contrived. It must be pushed from the top down. And by the way, by the way, people who say capitalism isn't biblical. No, God doesn't say that we must have a capitalistic society. And certainly there is something wrong with greed, but capitalism doesn't cause greed.

It allows you. It frees you to be as greedy or as generous as you want to be. You can give all your money away in a capitalist system if you want to, or you can keep all of your money. Yes, you can be greedy in a socialist society. You only have greed. You only have the mentality of entitlement that says, I deserve what someone else has because I have less.

That is not a biblical mentality. that's actually covetousness, which is banned in the Ten Commandments. That's actually theft, which is also banned in the Ten Commandments. And so you only have greed in socialism and communism. You have greed in capitalist societies, but you also have amazing generosity that is not possible in communism or socialism. We can look at some verses in the Bible, again, that speak against socialism and for the importance of working, providing for your family, and freely being generated.

to other people, which again, is not possible in a communistic and socialistic society in which all of your money is going to the government to be redistributed. Obviously, as I've said, private property was God's idea. Two of the Ten Commandments make that clear. Do not steal. Do not covet. That's how important private property was. Ownership of your property, which ultimately Marxism says is illegitimate, that property should be shared. The proverbs obviously speak to the importance of working hard, investing smartly, not being lazy, not allowing yourself to be indebted to people, but being wise with your money, being a hard worker. Ephesians 428, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with

his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. And so he does honest work with his own hands. He earns what he worked for. And then he gives generously to those around him. that is what we are called to do voluntarily. The government outsourcing our generosity to the government is not generosity. I mean, that is compulsion. That is forced redistribution.

There's something godly about that. Second Corinthians 9-7, each one must give as he has decided in his heart not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. Second Thessalonian is 310. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command. is not willing to work, let him not eat. Remember, AOC's Green New Deal originally said providing economic security for those unwilling to work. That's a sin to God. And it goes against human nature.

Like I said, people see capitalism as a system of greed is causing greed. The reality is you are free to be as greedy or as generous as you want to be. But you are not being righteous or generous by forcibly giving all of your money to the government to redistribute as they see fit. are bureaucrats who will promise to redistribute your money in a way that is fair and takes care of the least of these. They never do. They never do. You can't trust the government for that kind of thing.

You only vote for socialism and communism once. You get convinced to vote for it because you're told that it's compassionate. You're told that it's the right thing to do. You're told that the government does a better job of spending your money and giving your money away than you do until you buy into it because you don't. want to be a bigot. You don't want people to think that you don't care about poor people. And so you vote for the politician who says that they care about the poor and they don't actually distribute the money to the poor because they need poor people to remain poor in order to continue

to get their votes. That is how it goes. That is the cycle that you might be being duped by. And then they take all the money in the control for themselves and they have power over your life until you are no longer free. That is the story of every single socialist and communist regime that has ever taken power. Isn't history a wonderful thing? When socialism and communism are implemented, they don't only not deliver on their promises of prosperity and equality. They deliver the exact opposite. They deliver poverty and injustice. And the closer we move in that direction with leftist policies, the closer we will be to that. Democrats have been fighting the so-called war on poverty since the 1960s. And as Thomas Sol and Walter Williams and lots of other economists have

repeatedly pointed out, it doesn't work. And in fact, At the same time, we have seen a rising crime and the disintegration of the family, which economists like that, have actually blamed the war on poverty for it has created more dependence rather than incentivizing work and has hurt more than it has helped. Conservatives do believe that there's a place for government. There's a place for welfare. There is a place for government assistance. I'm not a libertarian. I prefer, yes, that the burden of caring for your neighbor fall on you, fallen individuals in the church. but I understand there are situations in which people need government help, but we believe that

that help should encourage work and productivity if physically and mentally possible for a person rather than incentivize unemployment like it does in places like California. And that's not just because we want the economy to be helped with productivity, although that is very important, but because we believe in the inherent dignity of work and that it is inhuman nature to need to work and to be productive. Again, something that leftism often denies. Alexandria Acacio-Cortez, Democratic representative from New York a couple years ago, said that we should be excited by automation taking our jobs because that means that we

won't have to work those jobs anymore. And we will be free to do more of the things that we like to do. Andrew Yang has said, you know, universal basic income will make sure that people don't have to do jobs that they don't want to do. I remember a self-proclaimed communist on Twitter proclaiming there's nothing moral about work. The view on the far left is that work is a moral, that it doesn't carry any moral significance to it. And if people don't want to work, if they want to either just loot or they want to shoplift, that's a far left communist idea. But again, mainstreamed by NPR, obviously being mainstreamed by Black Lives Matter and Atifa right now, who are literally

looting in the name of fighting against capitalism, they believe that working for those things is not really important. If you just want to, if you want to do whatever you want to do and not actually work a job, then you should be free to do that. And society will be just a fine. But of course, conservatives don't believe that. And Christians don't believe that either. We know that there is something inherently good, inherently moral about work. God created work. He created us to work. Work pre-existed the fall. So Adam was told to work and to keep the ground, to name the animals before sin entered the world. So work is not a necessary evil. Work is something that we are called to do. It is part of human nature. And I'm not talking just about work that

actually brings home a paycheck. I'm talking about being a stay-at-home mom. I'm talking about being a volunteer and talking about taking care of your home. Any way to be productive that provides something that is necessary, provide something that is virtuous and good, provides a service or a product that people actually need is good productive work that God calls us to for his glory. God created humans to be productive without work, without productive work. We become listless. We become purposeless. Our minds atrophy and we get depressed. And so again, the leftist philosophy on work is against human nature if you believe that it is amoral. So any policy, I believe, needs to incentivize people to work.

It needs to reward work and hard work. I don't believe in institutionalizing envy by saying that those at the top, that those at the bottom deserve what was made by those in the middle and at the top. Do I believe that people who are rich should be charitable, that they should pay their employees well, that they should take care of them well, rather than hoarding wealth themselves? Yes, I absolutely do. But do I think it's the government's job, again, to reconfigure society, to try to eliminate greed, something that they will never be able to do. You can be greedy as a poor person or a rich person, by the way? No, I don't. And I think that actually ends up being very harmful.

Of course, as we know, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. So all of this said, we see from Trump's economic policies for the most part that the conservative philosophy that I've just explained is represented. There was the 2017 tax bill. It did a few things, according to the Hoover Institute. It dropped the top rate from President Clinton's 39.6% to 37% and it dropped most other tax rates as well. It raised the standard deduction for those who don't itemize from $13,000 for a married couple filing jointly to $24,000 and eliminated the personal exemption, limited to $10,000, the state and local tax deduction for those who itemize increased the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, ended the individual penalty that had been imposed by President

Obama and Congress under the Affordable Care Act. That is obviously extremely controversial. That's why the left say, oh, he wants to take away your health care. Well, what he's doing is making sure that it is you're not forced onto Obamacare. you don't have insurance. And we talked about that in the Amy Coney-Barritt episode, how controversial and arguably unconstitutional that individual mandate was raised the exemption on the alternative minimum tax from $86,200 to $109,400 for married filers, doubled the estate tax exemption from $5.6 million to $11.2 million, permanently reduced the corporate tax income rate to $2,000.

21% for most corporate income. It had been 35%. So a major drop there. And I actually heard Joe Biden say, well, it was a very confusing statement. Again, one of the reasons why I think Trump should have just let Biden talk more because he digs his own grave. He was saying how, oh, I'm going to, he literally said, like, I'm going to get rid of a bunch of those, a bunch of those taxes. Like 21% corporate tax rate. It should be higher than that.

It should be 28%. what? I don't really know what he was saying, but Trump in the 2017 Act, he dropped the corporate tax rate to 21%. Allowed full expensing of short-lived capital investments for five years, allowed repatriation at a tax rate of 15.5% on what at the time were deferred foreign profits, eliminated the corporate alternative minimum tax. So the tax foundation estimated that the increase in the U.S. capital stock due to the tax cut in the long run would be 4.8%, which is a pretty significant number. And one of the one of the accomplishments that people don't talk about quite enough that I think conservatives should be highlighting more is the deregulation that has

happened under the Trump administration. And he is also, the administration has tried to slow the growth of these new regulations. It started at the very beginning of his time in office. He had a two-for-one executive order that required at least two prior regulations to be abolished for every new regulation issued. That is an awesome policy. The administration, according to Clyde Wayne Cruz, Vice President for Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-market think tank. He said that the Trump administration in fiscal year 2018 undertook 176 deregulatory actions and 14 regulatory ones. That is a ratio of 12.1. to six. And this is why that that matters for the economy. The cost savings for that deregulation

amounts to about $23.4 billion. That's, you know, it's kind of a small amount, but it does matter. The Council of Economic Advisors estimates that after five to 10 years, this new approach to federal regulation will have raised real incomes by $3,100 per household per year, which is a big deal for a lot of families. Sure, it might not be a lot to someone like Nancy Pelosi who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but for most people, for you and me, that actually matters. Twenty notable federal deregulatory actions alone will be saving American consumers and businesses about $220 billion per year after they go into full effect. They will increase real incomes by about 1.3%.

And so that hardly ever happens when someone gets into office. They hardly ever shrink the power of the government by deregulation. Certainly is not something a Democrat would do because they want to grow the power of the government. So that is we should be giving kudos to President Trump and his administration for that. If we look at GDP growth under Donald Trump, he can't get any credit for what happened at the beginning of his presidency in 2017 because, of course, he had only been in office for a couple months at that point, and Obama can get credit for that. But we can give him credit for real GDP growth between the first quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2019. During that,

time, the real GDP grew by an annual average of 2.7 percent, according to the Hoover Institute, which was half a percentage point higher than the growth rate during Obama's time in office. This article goes on to say that substantial. What makes the 0.5 extra percentage point of annual growth even more striking is that it happened years after the economic recovery occurred and growth rates well after recoveries tend to fall. Also, according to President Trump's White House's own site. The employment rate reached its lowest level in half a century in 2019. Unemployment rates for African Americans, for Hispanic Americans, for Asian Americans, Americans without a high school degree and disabled Americans have logged record lows.

The Trump economy is bringing workers off the sidelines after they were left behind for years. The prime age labor force has expanded by 2.3 million under President Trump after shrieking shrinking by almost 1.6 million under the previous administration. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic and that resulted in the quarantines and the lockdowns and all of that, the U.S. economy was booming. The unemployment rate was at the lowest that it had been since 1969. Hourly earnings had risen to their highest level since the fallout of the 2008-2009 recession, especially among blue collar workers, the GDP growth, it exceeded our expectations, including those of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A lot of the critics of the Trump

administration, this is according to an op-ed in the Hill, were actually proven wrong when they were talking about how his economic policies are going to go. They had said that the economy would never recover from the 2016 election, that their plans for economic growth. were too optimistic. They said there was going to be stagnation, that we were going to be stuck in neutral, but that didn't actually happen. Now, President Trump has signed several executive orders to try to help the economy boost itself back up after the coronavirus directed the Treasury Secretary to defer the 6.2% Social Security tax on wages for employees making less than $100,000 a year. According to the Hill, although the suspension would last from September 1 to December 31st,

Trump has promised to make it permanent if reelected. And the article does go on to say this is less than ideal. Obviously, tax reform should be done by Congress. But I think during this time, the White House really didn't see any alternatives if the goal is to help people without giving them a wide array of policies and that it believes would hurt the country. And so I think that it felt the White House felt like they had to do this. according to the Wall Street Journal when we're looking at Biden's economic cheerleaders, the people who say that he's going to do a great job and they look at the Obama administration. The other night, you know, Joe Biden said that he left Trump a booming economy and Trump has tanked it during the year of coronavirus.

Actually, the New York Times actually fact checked Joe Biden on that and said that was false. That the Obama economy was a long expansion, but it was not an incredible expansion. It was not a boom. And of course, Trump did not cause the coronavirus, the coronavirus. And he also did not cause the lockdowns that created the economic fallout of the coronavirus. And so good job to New York Times. That was like one of the only fact checks I saw by them of Joe Biden. So obviously that was wrong.

WSJ goes a little bit more on that. And this article, Mr. Biden's cheerleaders say he inherited the deepest recession since the Great Depression and handed President Trump the longest expansion on record. And it's true that Obama did get some things right on this. But like I said, it was a long recovery. It wasn't necessarily a great recovery. The overall economic numbers tell a negative story. Annual economic growth adjusted for inflation averaged 2.3% after the recession ended in June 2009 across Mr. Obama's two terms.

Despite the length of the post-2009 expansion, it was shallow. Sluggish growth went hand in hand with the worst labor recovery in generations. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% in October 2009. It didn't reach the pre-recession level of 4.4% until March 2017. That painfully slow healing overstates the improvement since so many Americans dropped out of the workforce labor participation rate was low under Obama, fell to 62.8%. when Obama left office in January 2017 from a pre-recession 66.2%. Obama and Democrats also really changed the economy, transformed the economy with the Affordable Care Act in a way that was not good.

And Mr. Biden is now promising to repeat this, but on an even bigger scale with his version of another health care act and the Green New Deal, which is website, does say that he supports. According to WSJ, the Economic Manifesto, his policy team co-authored with staffers run the Bernie Sanders campaign, promises to install 500 million solar panels in five years, eliminate carbon emissions from power plants, and replace every school bus with a green model. The document doesn't explicitly ban fossil fuel production, but it promises new rules that will raise costs and curtail it. The Biden economic plan is best understood as Obama-Omomics pulled left by Bernie Sanders. He'd raised taxes by 30.

$3 trillion by his count, about $4 trillion by independent calculations. His spending plans run to at least $7.4 trillion conservatively estimated. His labor proposals are the most pro-union since the 1935 Wagner Act. Regulations on health care, energy, transportation, technology, and finance will multiply. So as Donald Trump deregulated in order to save the taxpayer's money, he is going to multiply regulations, often with the priority of reducing racial inequities rather than increase. receiving opportunity. And so this is one of those examples of Democrats trying to reconfigure society to create equality of outcome that always ends badly. The U.S. economy will have a growth spurt in

2021 as the pandemic ends no matter who wins the election, but over time, these destructive policies will inevitably lead to slower growth. The Fed will be called to do even more, perhaps including bomb purchases of private companies and modern monetary theories debt monetization asset holders will benefit more than wage earners. This may not matter in the election since Democrats and Donald Trump both want to make this a referendum on Donald Trump, but voters should be under no illusions about what they're buying in the Biden agenda and under no fog of amnesia concerning what happened last time. So there's been this myth that the Obama economy was wonderful.

And while there was a recovery there, like this article points out, and even like the New York Times pointed out, it was a shallow recovery. It was not a booming economy. labor participation was low and it was not this wonderful gift that was handed to President Trump, which he just has simply carried on. The economy really has boomed under President Trump. Unemployment really has gone down. Labor participation really has gone up. GDP really has climbed high and taxes really have gone down. And of course, the left doesn't want us to believe that. They don't want us to hear that because that is one of the winning. issues for Donald Trump. I do think that is part of why Democratic states and Democratic cities have continued to lock down even when the science tells us that that's not necessary.

Sweden is going to end the year with zero deaths and zero hospitalizations and they never shut down. And so we don't know that the science of lockdowns is good. We don't know that these lockdowns, the way that we have completely shut down businesses and people, lives has actually worked at all. And yet, Democratic governors, Democratic, you know, city council's mayors have continued to push these regulations. I think in part, I think in part because they do not want an economic recovery that President Trump is going to be able to take credit for. And I do think that as part of what is behind all of this in the United States. But the fact of the matter is is that Trump is not to blame for the economy going down the tubes this year, not just because he didn't start the

coronavirus, China did, but also because he is not the one who has set these draconian unscientific lockdowns on people's lives. Whereas Joe Biden, he believes that we need to continue to shut down the economy. He believes that we need a universal mask mandate and that that is going to be what puts us back on track. The science just doesn't prove that that is true. And so with Biden, you're looking at higher taxes. He admitted that. He has admitted that twice now. He has admitted that we are going to have higher taxes. He will have to raise the taxes on the middle class. He says that he's not going to, but the plan is going to require that, especially to pay for the environmental plan, the climate change plan that he has. Remember, when you vote for either one of them, but in particular, when you vote for Joe Biden, you are not just voting for Joe Biden.

Of course he wants to present himself as a moderate because he wants all the people that voted for Trump in 2016 and maybe feel like they can't vote for him anymore or the people in the middle of the country who would never vote for a socialist but would vote for Joe Biden because he's Uncle Joe and he authored the 1994 crime bill. So he's been tough on crime. He's a moderate. You're not really voting for him. They picked him strategically. The DNC picked him strategically even though he probably shouldn't have won the primary because they want these middle of the country votes because they realize that if they get this election, in the bag and they finally get power and they're able to do all the things that they've said that they want to do explicitly like pack the courts that means expand the supreme court and then pack it

with judicial activist judges um they can get rid of the electoral college they can reconfigure the senate so that is proportional to population size the same way that the house is they can give statehood to dc and puerto rico they'll never have to worry about not having power again um so when you are voting for joe biden you are voting for the furthest left wing of the party. I mean, we actually see that in his Unity Task Force, which is headed up by Bernie Sanders. I mean, we see this in the support of people like AOC. I don't think he himself is a communist or he himself is a socialist, but his administration will be. Kamala Harris was voted, or was according to her votes, was the furthest left, a member of the Senate right next to Bernie

Sanders last year. And she has said before, maybe it was a gaffe, maybe. Bios a fordying slip, the Harris administration with Joe Biden. Joe Biden is on such cognitive decline that he is not going to be making any policy. He is going to be the vessel through which the far left get their policies done. And it's very sad that they understand that their policies and their far left candidates would never be voted for. And so they have to force it upon people in this way. And that's exactly what's going to happen.

I just want you to hear this, that Joe Biden will not be a. return to normalcy. I know that that's really what the media wants you to believe that all the chaos will end. The coronavirus will end. All of the immaturity and the back and forth between the political parties will end and will finally be back to a place of stability. I guarantee, I hope that I'm wrong on this. I guarantee you the chaos will continue. The instability will continue. The far left bullies who are harassing people in the streets who are making diners get out of their car, raise their fists, say Black Lives Matter, the people who are looting and writing and the anti-capital capitalist anarchists are going to be empowered and your life is going to be worse. Again, I'm not

fear mongering because I hope that's not true. I will root for the Biden administration if he wins and hope that, you know, he, that America really does go to this wonderful, awesome place. I hope that. But I'm telling you, that's not what's in the bag here. We've seen this play too many times. Okay. Very, very, very quickly. I do just want to say, I do want to say one thing. about, I do want to say one thing about the debates. So if anyone from the RNC or Trump's campaign, which I'm sure they're not, but if they are listening, Trump, he's got a win over the suburban moms. A lot of them he's got, but a lot of them he doesn't.

He has to win over the Christian suburban moms who have bought into the lie that the Democratic Party is the party of all life, even though they're the party of dismembering babies in the womb, even though I don't believe there are policies at all assist people who are already born. Unfortunately, a lot of them have bought. to that lie. And a lot of these women are looking for someone to conduct themselves in a way that is calm and assured. President Trump started out that way in the debate. He did not end up that way. The constant interruptions and interjections and talking over people does not appeal to a wide array of people in particular women. And yes, they are going to be parts of Trump's base.

There will be suburban moms that will comment on this and say, I'm a suburban mom and I disagree with you. Okay. Yeah, of course, there are going to be people who disagree with me. I talked to hundreds of people that night. Who are Trump supporters? Some of them in the middle. Some of them undecided saying, please, I want Trump to stop talking. Started out well.

Some parts were well. I understand that he wanted to correct the record because they were lying about him. And it was two against one. Chris Wallace, Joe Biden against Donald Trump 100%. Frustrating. I probably wouldn't have been able to keep my cool either. But he's got to learn timing. He's got to learn self-restraint.

He's got to let people lie about him for a second before he corrects the record. his attitude matters, his personality matters. Now, I'm here to tell you, if you are questioning Donald Trump, I totally understand. I have been a critic of a lot of the things he said and the way he says them. So I do understand. But Trump's personality, his insistence upon interjecting is not going to be what shapes America, is not going to be what affects your life, your child's life, and the lives of your children's children. It is not going to shape the future of the country. but policies will. Policies well.

And I believe personally, and I think that I have helped make that case over the past few weeks in these election episodes that Democratic policies are destructive, that your kids' lives and your grandkids' lives are not going to be better by voting for someone that is going to usher in far leftism. I know that Joe Biden might seem like he is more polite,

which he's really not. Like if you've seen him with voters that he disagrees with, calling the guy fat at a town hall saying that he'll challenge. him to a push-up contest, calling, telling the guy getting in his face in the factory that one time when he was taking a factory tour that he was full of BS saying the actual words because the guy was saying something that he didn't like. I mean, the guy, Joe Biden certainly flies off the handle has all of the character flaws that Donald Trump has. But he is so far off his rocker at this point that he is actually unable to fight back to Trump on the debate stage. and he has the help of people like Chris Wallace.

And so I understand why he might be appealing to people that are like, you know, I just want someone gentle. I just want someone kind. I just want someone normal. And so the Trump campaign needs to realize that people are going to look at the different personalities in the debates and that Trump needs to conduct himself a little bit better in all of that. But you guys need to realize who are looking at the debates and trying to make your decision based off of that, that the debates aren't going to be what shapes your life or your kid's life or your grandkids' lives. It's just not.

And it's not going to be someone's personality. It's not going to be someone's interruptions. You are voting for so much more than one particular person. And by the way, Trump has denounced white supremacy multiple times. He denounced it three years ago after the Charlottesville protests, whatever you want to call those, demonstrations, riots. And then he also announced it one year ago after a shooting. You can look this up on YouTube, explicitly called out white supremacists. And during the debate, when Chris Wallace said, you know, I want you to denounce a white supremacist, I want you to denounce proud boys. Trump says, sure, I'll do it. I'll do it. Just tell me who to denounce. I'll do it. But he also pivots because he realizes the question is a trap. Because he realizes

that they are trying to make the violence that's going on in our major cities a right-wing problem when it is demonstrably, provably a left-wing problem. Antifa and BLM are not denying that they are the ones doing the looting and the arson and the rioting in these major cities. They're not denying that. They are taking credit for those things because they believe this is their resistance against capitalism, the Western rule of law. Like follow Andy No on Twitter. You will see their reports and the evidence and the photos and the videos of all of these people. I'm not saying that maybe some right-wing extremists are coming there and trying to be vigilantes or maybe even make the chaos worse. But that's not who's originating this chaos. And Joe Biden has never been made to denounce these

people. He said in this, in this debate that, oh, Antifa is just, it's just an idea. It's not, it's not, it's not a group. Okay. Well, Antifa is an organized movement. It's a well-funded movement. It is a pre-planned movement. This has been pre-planned and pre-orchestrated for months and months long before, long before George Floyd happened. By the way, as we talked about the person who wrote in defense of looting, saying back in April that she sees looting on the horizon. and a revolution on the horizon against capitalism and that involves looting and arson. That was in April that she said this, documented by NPR before George Floyd happened. So, no, this is a left-wing revolution that no Democrat has announced and actually has praised.

White supremacists are not the one. White supremacy is evil. Okay, we know that. It's evil. But white supremacists are not the ones that are writing our curriculum in public school. Like they're not the ones that are in our, that are in academia, they're in the highest levels of federal office and federal agencies preaching their theories, the way that far left activists are preaching critical race theory in a way that's going to divide us. You are not seeing entire corporations and politicians, political parties and sports teams going out and, and supporting white supremacists. But you are seeing them preach the divisiveness of critical race.

theory and the false narratives that go along with critical race theory and Marxist organizations like Antifa and BLM. And so Trump trying to divert attention away from that question is saying, I see that you have me in a trap. Look, we're in a tornado right now. You guys are asking me about floods, and I'm trying to deal with the tornado. We can deal with floods when floods are our main problem, but right now tornadoes are our main problem. And Biden and the Democrats are like, oh, no, no, no, but you must like floods then. It's craziness. So those are my thoughts on that. I just wanted give some brief, some brief analysis. I have more to say, but this is once again, another long episode. So I'm just going to end it there. Hope that was helpful. I will be back here on Wednesday.

See you guys then. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed,

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