This Could Be a Historic Election—and Not for the Reasons You Think

For decades, voters have trusted the GOP to keep the gross domestic product growing based on one misleading idea: They know that the GOP is the party of business, so they just assume surely the pro-business party is better for the economy. 

But voters are turning away from that, and the reason why could mark a seismic change in American politics: Now, they aren’t so sure that what’s good for businesses is good for them. They’re looking for candidates with not just answers but different kinds of answers than they’ve heard before. If Democrats win next Tuesday and actually deliver next year, it could usher in a new era of policy that finally closes the door on the neoliberalism that has dominated for nearly half a century.

The idea that what’s good for the private sector is good for working people has deep roots in the GOP, but in our time, it comes from Ronald Reagan, whose economic policies pointed to government spending as the cause of inflation, claiming it crowded out innovation and cost workers jobs and opportunities. He slashed the federal government’s spending and said he would focus welfare programs on only “the truly needy,” the definition of which was always shrinking. He promised that public revenue would grow even as the tax rates that individuals paid fell, because of overall growth in the economy. “Our aim is to increase our national wealth so all will have more, not just redistribute what we already have, which is just a sharing of scarcity,” Reagan said soon after being elected in 1981. “We can begin to reward hard work and risk-taking, by forcing this government to live within its means.”