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Biden-Harris: A Government of the Elites, by the Elites, for the Elites

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Democrats like to depict themselves as the party of the underprivileged. Their slogans, headlines, and programs are designed to capture the attention of disadvantaged minorities, the destitute, and the poor. And to a large extent, they win elections that way. The white coastal elites, plagued by their eternal sense of guilt, vote for Democrats to redeem themselves of their privilege. However, when we look at the detailed plans behind the slogans, the reality is quite the opposite.

The Biden-Harris ticket positioned themselves as the candidates of equality. Their main talking points were of fighting against inequality, for a “level playing field”, against a billionaire businessman in the White House who doesn’t care for the disadvantaged. Some of the key platform issues they campaigned for are going to have exactly the opposite effect on the population. Let’s review them.

School Choice

If there is one thing that is fundamental to social mobility, and specifically to enable children to get ahead regardless of the economic situation in which they were born, it is education. Enabling children from poor families to access quality education is fundamental to breaking the cycle of poverty. Biden and Harris will make it difficult for parents to choose schools, closing off the easiest and fastest way for children from poor families to receive a good education.

School choice is about giving grants to students rather than to educational institutions that often fail to provide good service. School choice is about families being able to choose the best schools for their children and the state subsidizing that decision rather than forcing children to go to low-performing schools.

If Biden and Harris really wanted to help the poorest, immigrants, Latinos, and African-Americans, allowing families to choose the school where their child will be educated – subsidizing demand rather than supply – should be their priority. The traditional system of giving money to schools regardless of their results, and simply tying the children of poorer families to bad education, is perpetuating poverty from generation to generation.

Student Debt Relief

At this time approximately 44 million people owe a total of $1.6 trillion in student loans; 92% of these loans are federally owned, which means they fall under any official government provision. One in five adults who have a student loan is in debt. And as we’ve discussed in other editorials, government funding for education is causing the price of college tuition to skyrocket year after year.

The Biden-Harris formula for contributing to the “solution” to this problem is two years of free college fre and forgiveness of student debts up to $10,000. But the issue is still being negotiated. For example, New York Senator Chuck Schumer asked Biden to forgive student loan debts up to $50,000 and other Democrats even suggest that the millions of debtors be forgiven in full.

Doesn’t anyone wonder where that money will come from to forgive the loans? What’s behind the Democratic proposal to free millions of college students from much of their debt is not only frightening but also totally unfair.

At the end of the day, both taxes and inflation, affect not the wealthy but the middle and lower classes, by whatever means they choose to finance that college debt forgiveness, what is behind it is nothing more than a massive transfer of wealth from the underprivileged to the college-educated upper classes.

Once again, the Democrats’ proposal is not on the side of those who most need it, but those who don’t.

“Defund the police”

Despite it being obvious, it seems that the Democrats do not realize that those most affected by defunding the police are those to whom they supposedly want to give protection: lower classes, immigrants, blacks, uneducated people, etc.

The wealthy, big business, politicians, socialites, and in general the upper classes that live in safe neighborhoods in the U.S., that move around in their vehicles, that have safe houses and put their children to study in good schools are not the ones who need the police the most. In fact, many can even afford private security!

But what do poor families in depressed neighborhoods do without law enforcement? Who will they call when they become victims of crime? Defunding the police is, again, an idea that may appear benevolent, but in reality, will only worsen their situation. The last thing deprived people need are neighborhoods with more crime and fewer police.

Minimum Wage

How easy it is for a politician to tell people that the federal minimum wage will be raised to $15 an hour? Yet they never consider how difficult life becomes for the young person who becomes unemployed as a result of these measures.

It’s a shame that the economy is so counterintuitive. Because, contrary to what many believe, it is a science. Even if the Democrats don’t understand it, increases in the minimum wage that are made by law – not as a result of increased productivity – cause unemployment and/or increases in the prices of products.

If raising the minimum wage by law were such a good idea, then why $15 and not $50 an hour? Why not lift everyone out of poverty by enforcing a much better minimum wage?

Raising the minimum wage by law hurts those who are laid off because companies cannot afford to pay the required minimum wage increase; it hurts the buyers who will see product prices rise, but it also condemns those most in need to informality and in many cases to poverty.

An employee is only paid what contributes to the production process. Those people whose contribution to the process of a company is less than the minimum wage will lose their jobs. In the majority of cases, we speak of “vulnerable” people, those who have not studied, who do not have experience but need to work (single mothers, the elderly, young people, immigrants).

All those that the Democrats claim to defend are those who are out of work on account of a high minimum wage imposed by politicians who don’t know the basic rules of economics.

Latinos, black people, and minorities as a whole began to see in this election the proposed Biden Harris plan for what it is: a Trojan horse, from the elites, by the elites, for the elites.

As a wise thinker said many years ago, you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The Editorial Board

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