America is a nation still at war with her mythologies. For all the electoral postmortems, in which a teeming desire for some kind of break from the economic status quo continued to ring out in the exit polls, there was a blank space. While it seems to have been missed by most of the pundits, I’ve regarded it as a serious omission: an enveloping misunderstanding among the electorate about what American capitalism actually is. 

This is not the same old song and dance you might hear from some quarters: I don’t dismiss anxieties about personal solvency, the challenges faced by small businesses (I’m a small-business owner myself), or the future of our entitlement programs. Most of us are going to worry about money for the duration of our lives.

But a delusional mythology about American capitalism has taken hold—one that has seemingly instilled in We the People that we have an inalienable right to prosper; to be immune from the risks that are part of capitalism’s natural order. This is an imaginary right that’s been made to seem real by politicians who are afraid of educating their constituents on what our model of commerce actually is. Frankly, our national press has been mostly lazy on this, as well. 

“Are you better off today than four years ago?” is an illogical question in a capitalist nation. Are some worse off today than four years ago? Sure, and I make no light of that. There are also millions better off; not only did President Joe Biden oversee the regaining of millions of jobs lost during the Covid pandemic, he led in the creation of millions more. But if there’s a lesson to be learned from the past few decades, which have pivoted from an economic crash to a fitful recovery to a pandemic to a more robust comeback—really, the envy of the rest of the world; an actual instance in which American exceptionalism actually holds true—it’s that life comes at you fast. There are some who will be doing worse off by the time they finish this article than when they commenced reading. That’s not flippancy, just reality. 

Welcome to capitalism, whose proponents always cite unequal outcomes as a reason to extol it. But some things are easy. Eggs are expensive? Eat fewer of them. Cut down on egg whites. Let them eat yolks. Gas prices high? Insurance for your health, properties, and vehicles? Supply chain constraints harming your livelihood, or your quality of life? Remember when the price of gas steadily increased during former President George W. Bush’s second term? Gas was cheap in 2020 because, well, tens of millions of drivers weren’t, uh, driving. In fact, Trump threatened the Saudis, in the early days of the pandemic: Cut oil production, or lose our military support. Why? Because more oil would have made gas even more useless, and “useless” and “oil” aren’t the mellifluous chimes of cash registers ringing. 

Meanwhile, we have endless debates about whether needs such as access to medical care, food, and affordable housing should be rights or should be left to the exigencies of good luck and near-perfect health. We’ve flattened what should be an invigorating debate, one that might be the crucible for good policy ideas, into the sorriest matchup of fake political identities: pinko communism versus rugged individualism. I promise you, there are vanishingly few pinko Communists or rugged individuals wandering around. 

I’m all for good jeremiads........

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