How to Fix What the Democrats Have Broken

After almost two years of controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, the Democrats’ have broken American society. Through their war on fossil fuels, their culture wars, their big spending to advance the role of the state and gain the favor of voters, their increased regulation of American life, and their reluctance to confront foreign adversaries, the Democratic Party has created new catastrophes at every turn. If, as now seems probable, the Democratic Party is thoroughly trashed in the 2022 midterms, what could we do to fix what the Democrats have broken?

What the Democratic Party Has Broken

So, what has the Democratic Party broken in American society, exactly? First, there is the American economy. Following a mixed Keynesian and socialist view of economies, they are in the process of destroying the American economy. A big part of this destruction comes from Democrats’ big government spending that has mandated a huge increase in the money supply by the Federal Reserve.

Then, there is their Green New Deal and their war on fossil fuels. While these have huge negative implications for the economy, they also pose threats to the health of plant life.

Next, there is the Democrats’ culture wars against their political and ideological adversaries. Fed by critical theory and critical race theory, the culture wars drive Americans apart and threaten a virtual — if not actual — civil war.

Another aspect of Democrats’ policies destructive to society is the opening of our borders to illegal immigrants. Not only has this immersed us in a flood of immigrants, but it has allowed Mexican cartels to flood the U.S. with illegal drugs, especially with the scourge of fentanyl. Due to the U.S. government’s disinterest, the Mexican cartels are in control of the border, not the U.S. government.

Finally in our short list of how Democrats are destroying America is their inconsistent foreign policies. The usual past Democratic practice has been to be as non-hostile as possible toward our foreign adversaries. This proclivity could be seen in Joe Biden’s disgraceful and idiotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year. Biden’s Afghanistan record seems to have convinced the Russians and the Chinese that he is a weak leader who can be had. In addition, that chaotic withdrawal did nothing to inspire European leaders in Biden’s leadership. To be fair, Biden has responded to these perceptions by supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. However, even this support has been reluctant for fear of inciting Russia to wage a wider war.

This small list of existential threats Democrats and the Biden Administration have created through their policies begs a very important question. What can we do to fix their catastrophes, assuming Republicans wrest political control of the Congress away from the Democrats?

Look to the Classical Laws of Economics for Guidance

Recently, I wrote about how progressive Democrats would like to violate the classical laws of economics. (In case you are not up to speed on these four laws, you can find a brief summary of them here.) This is extreme folly. An individual might not believe in the law of gravity. However, if he steps off a cliff, he will end up just as dead at its bottom.

I addressed the fact that the four classical laws are in fact, stringent laws of human economic behavior some years ago in the post Are There Economic Laws? I answered this question in the context of the seeming conflict between Say’s Law of Markets and Keynes’ law. However, I also showed why economic laws in general are just as accurate in predicting average human economic behavior as the laws of physics are in describing fluid physical interactions. The economic laws are laws in the same way that the fluid mechanics laws of statistical mechanics are laws.

This suggests the first thing we can do to reverse the Democrats’ damage to the economy: We can be guided by the classical laws of economics in forming government macroeconomic policies. As reflexive Keynesians, Democrats believe increasing economic demand by whatever means will increase supply almost automatically. This is not always the case, as we can see with today’s broken supply chains. The Keynesian view of what happens in terms of Alfred Marshall’s graphical illustration of the Law of Supply and Demand is shown below.

The blue curve labeled S is the supply curve for some good or service. If the price for a good is increased, then the quantity of the good produced by companies also increases. Also shown on the chart are two red demand curves labeled D₁ and D₂. Let D₁ be the starting demand curve at any particular time. The aim of Keynesian policies is to shift the demand curve upwards from D₁ to D₂ by increasing government expenditures for the good. The Keynesian belief is that the prices of companies tend to be “sticky,” and the supply curve determined by companies will shift upwards in response slowly, if at all. Then, as the demand curve shifts upward, the equilibrium market price where the two curves intersect increases, but the quantity produced by companies also increases. The GDP then increases and the country prospers.

However, this Keynesian view ignores a number of nonlinear effects of shifting the demand curve. For example, if the supply curve is very steep, it will require a very large growth in price for a given increase of the good’s production. A large price increase might inhibit customers’ demands. This would cause a shift the demand curve back down again. Inflation tends to refocus spending to goods and services households absolutely need. Also, the amount of a good’s production is often predominantly determined by factors other than demand. Broken supply chains are created both by a loss of foreign supply for various reasons and by a lack of domestic production. To increase production in those situations, one must encourage the producing companies to invest directly in their productive capacity and efficiency. The very last thing a country should do is to increase demand through government expenditures. That would not necessarily increase the amount of goods chased by many more dollars. The Democrats’ policies have been intrinsically inflationary.

If we increase supply, then we shift the supply curve in the Law of Supply and Demand upwards. What happens then depends on the circumstances. Consider the more neutral display of the Law of Supply and Demand shown below.

The equilibrium market price is where a producer is willing to supply the same number of the good as people are willing to buy at the same price. If the price is set lower, say a P_L as in the plot above, then what producers are willing to supply is much lower than what customers want to buy. A shortage of the good then develops. If the price is set higher, say at P_H, then companies will produce more than customers are willing to buy. Companies will produce a surplus of the good that will create an expensive inventory.

The discussion above is a microeconomic discourse about a single good. It can repeated in Keynesian macroeconomic language in their Aggregate Demand / Aggregate Supply model, which of course emphasizes the role of demand. Also, see the video below for a more complete discussion.

If you follow this video closely, you will see the safest way to maximize GDP with no inflation is to decrease taxes and to minimize government spending.

The trick is to allow the market equilibrium price to develop. This allows everyone to get their desired goods without companies wasting scarce resources to produce expensive inventories. The Federal Reserve keeps track of inventories through a statistic that is the ratio of inventories to sales for all businesses. This is shown in the plot below for the year 2022.

Because surpluses are growing, this plot tells us that market prices have been higher for most goods than their market equilibrium prices. The amount of goods in inventory exceeds what is being sold. And this has happened during the highest inflation in 40 years. Apparently, the price levels have been so high that aggregate demand (consumer spending + company investments + government spending + foreign exchange) has fallen. Keynesians would say the best way to increase aggregate demand would be to increase government spending. This is the course Democrats have taken for the past two years, yet inflation has skyrocketed. A much safer way to increase aggregate demand would be to minimize government spending and decrease taxes to match. This would increase the spending power of individuals. Also, it would empower companies to invest more to increase production, which would hold down inflation.

Another way to fix our broken economy would be to completely repeal the Democrats’ misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. Not only does it not do anything to reduce inflation, its nonlinear effects on the economy will greatly increase inflation. I wrote about this in some detail in the post The Inflation Reduction Act is an Economic Disaster.

Yet another way to improve GDP growth in a noninflationary way would be to halt the progressives’ war on fossil fuels. This is the subject of the next section.

The Progressives’ Green New Deal

Other than higher business taxes and a humongous increase in government spending, Democrats have broken the American economy through their war on fossil fuels. Progressive Democrats hope that by limiting U.S. production of fossil fuels and thereby increasing their cost, people will be encouraged to substitute electricity for their needs. Using electrical vehicles in place of gas-fueled vehicles, and wind and water driven turbines and solar cells for electrical energy, people are expected to eliminate their need for fossil fuels.

However, available “green energy” sources are not now sufficient to meet all electrical power needs. As a corollary, they would not be sufficient to charge all electrical vehicles if EVs replaced all gas-driven vehicles. To have a growing economy, electrical power output must also increase. Right now, electrical power needs are increasing much faster than “green energy” growth. This might change, but it would take decades to make the transition.

In addition, the restrictions on fossil fuel production have decreased food production and increased the inflation of food prices. This has happened in two ways. One is by the high cost of fuel for farm tractors and machinery. The second is by increasing the cost of fertilizers produced from oil.

The availability of energy affects almost everything else that happens in a modern economy. It affects the transportation of goods, the travel of workers to work and back, the use of machinery, and the production of fertilizers to sustain large crops. If energy is not available to sustain all these functions, economies collapse.

An obvious fix to these problems would be to stop the federal war on fossil fuels. Why should we not? The Democrats say if we do not eliminate fossil fuels, we will all die a heat death caused by man’s carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. If this were true, it would justify the destruction of the American economy. What do the facts say?

We can list at least five reasons why our emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere can not possibly be the cause of the observed global warming. Those facts are listed in the post The Idiocy of Joe Biden’s Climate Plan. They are listed again here in a much shorter form.

• The fraction of the troposphere (i.e. the lowest level of the atmosphere where all the weather lives) that is carbon dioxide is only 0.0004. It is a true trace gas.
• The carbon dioxide molecule has only three absorption lines for heat radiation, and two of those are deep in the tail of the Earth’s black body radiation spectrum.
• The excited energy states of CO₂ molecules can not absorb infrared photons at the same frequency without emitting a photon at that frequency and falling to the ground state. The infrared excited states have lifetimes shorter than or comparable to the time of flight of photons from the surface of the Earth to the top of the atmosphere.
• As CO₂ is added to the atmosphere, the increment has less and less effect in heating the atmosphere.

The last point is a result of all the previous points plus the added fact that CO₂ molecules are depleting the supply of photons at the appropriate frequencies. All of these points are covered in somewhat greater detail in the post The Idiocy of Joe Biden’s Climate Plan.

But beyond these considerations, to greatly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide would threaten all life on Earth. During the Cambrian explosion of life 540 million years ago, most plant and animal phyla came into existence. Back then the typical atmospheric CO₂ concentration was around 7,000 parts per million by volume. This is shown in the chart below.

As you can see in the plots, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations generally decreased from the Cambrian period to the present. Why? It was because plants were steadily taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and using it in photosynthesis to make their food. In the process, the oxygen in the molecule was split off and emitted into the atmosphere, while the carbon became part of the plants. When the plants died, they took the carbon into the ground with them to eventually form fossil fuels. If this process is not reversed, plants would eventually destroy themselves by exhausting their CO₂ food.  Biologists have shown plant life begins to suffer greatly once CO₂ levels fall below 500 ppm, the situation we suffer today. Should the CO₂ levels ever fall below 150 ppm, massive die-offs of plant life could be expected. As a NoTricksZone post by Pierre Gosselin put it:  “Do we really want to live on the brink of extinction?” Better to subsidize the burning of fossil fuels to replenish our atmospheric CO₂!

All these points tell us we gain nothing at great cost to society if we stop the production of carbon-based fuels. Much of the damage down by Democrats to American society can be fixed by ending their war on fossil fuels.

The Culture Wars

One of the most distressing ways Democrats have broken the United States is through their culture wars. I will offer you a somewhat eclectic list of their policies that comprise their various battles in the culture wars.

Although both Democrats and Republicans are fighting in the American culture wars, the Democrats started the conflict. They insisted critical theory and critical race theory reveal a corrupt, racist, and evil U.S. Hostilities began with the New York Times’ 1619 project. One of the assertions of the 1619 project is the American Revolution was fought not to ensure human freedoms from a dictatorial state, but to save slavery in the American colonies from an increasingly abolitionist Great Britain. This claim is disputed by a number of history professors.

The Democrats then increased their culture war efforts with the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. This led to the well-known demands by Democratic politicians to defund police departments. It also led to race riots in the second half of 2020.

Another aspect of the culture wars that is not usually viewed as being part of them is the open borders policies of the Democratic Party. Since Joe Biden entered the White House, 4.9 million illegal immigrants have crossed the U.S. border with Mexico. This number includes at least 900,000 “got-aways” who eluded capture by the border patrol. The “got-aways” include drug runners for the Mexican cartels. They also include some foreign terrorists seeking access to the United States. The drug runners are the source of deadly Chinese-made fentanyl that has killed great many Americans.

On October 18, 2022, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Dan Stein, stated that “Roughly the equivalent of the entire population of Ireland has illegally entered the United States in the 18 months President Biden has been in office, with many being released into American communities.”

The most dangerous aspect of the culture wars is the way they divide the American people into irreconcilable blocks. The danger is magnified by the way culture wars induce us to hate each other. To the political left, Americans on the right are evil fascist and racist monsters. To people on the political right, those on the left are the destroyers of valuable American traditions and institutions. This hatred for each other cannot be solved by political means. A reconciliation can be only be made through mutual conversations persuading one side or the other to change their beliefs.

The open-borders problem has much more straightforward fixes. We should go back to the Trump policies of building and patrolling the border wall. Entrance to the United States should be denied until a court has determined applicants for asylum have a good claim. Other than that applicants for immigration should follow set legal immigration procedures.

It will not be easy to fix everything the Democrats have broken. However, with the exception of reconciling the various ideological sides, we should find the fixing of Democratic-created problems straight-forward.

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