A Guest Writer on Fiscal Policy, Post-Biden

We have a guest writer! Our first guest writer, actually. Our guest writer is the esteemed Ross Gallo, an intelligent gent I met at an academic summer camp. He has some weird and wacky ideas occasionally, but generally, is pretty chill. The ideas and opinions he writes about do not represent the beliefs of the corporation, Pax Romana Capital. With that said, after reading through, I thought this was well-written. With that said, here is our guest writer.

Guest opinion article - Ross Gallo

Hey guys, 

This is my first article writing as a guest author for this esteemed publication. I’ve read a few of the previous articles, and you’re probably sick of hearing about this by now, but I thought I should share my thoughts on the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. My thesis is this: the American voters deserve better. 

I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m not writing to put blame onto the American electorate. I’m critical of their political decisions, sure, but it is unreasonable to expect the average American voter to be an expert on geopolitics or to have fed chair levels of macroeconomic understanding. But the biggest reason for me not blaming the electorate is because of the choices that we have. Former president Trump, the “pro-business” candidate, raised the national debt more than any president in history. Yes, this is unironically what our “economically conservative” party looks like. I’m genuinely bewildered at how we went from a Democrat (Bill Clinton) producing budget surpluses to two parties who can barely keep up with our colossal debt payments. And don’t even get me started on President Biden. 

I’d consider myself fairly economically conservative. Fiscal restraint, predictable monetary policy, that sort of stuff. On the topic of predictable monetary policy, I’m extremely pleased with Jerome Powell. I think he’s proven himself to be very competent so far, and it seems like he’s actually going to pull off the soft landing. But Trump said he won’t reappoint him. If you could see me right now, you’d see me cringing with my face in my palm. 

I won’t pretend to be some sort of macro expert so I’ll save the econometric arguments around fiscal restraint to others. Instead, I’ll use a more abstract/qualitative argument to illustrate my point. One of the main reasons why I believe that the government needs to show more fiscal restraint is something that I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about: the debt ceiling. I’m not a doomsdayer who thinks that the United States is going to collapse into financial ruin next year, but I would at least like to see the debt stop ballooning. The reason I don’t support increasing debt is that I’m not confident the average American is fully aware of what they’re getting themselves into. For example, 49% of Americans in 2024 think that the S&P 500 is down, and 56% of Americans think that we’re in a recession (The Guardian). Please remember, I’m not taking shots at the voters, but I do think that American politicians have a moral obligation to remind Americans that artificially propping up the economy comes with a debit against taxpayers in the future, especially future generations. I’d like to imagine that Americans are generally opposed to indebting their children. It’d be nice to have some modern day fireside chats where the president or politicians will work to inform the electorate about the economy instead of spewing half-truths and partisan ad hominem attacks. But unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting that, at least for the time being, because politicians benefit from boosting the economy whichever way they can and then bragging about it while simultaneously blaming any downturns on their political opponents. 

I’ll be able to vote in the next election cycle, so maybe my vote for some sane, normal, fiscally restrained politicians will be able to turn the tides of economic policy. Who knows, hopefully some miraculous change will happen, Biden and Trump will both drop out of the race, and voters will get two candidates that they actually deserve. Until then, I’m doing what my friend Henry suggested and going long on everything while I prepare for Trump to win and install one of his cronies as Fed chair to keep interest rates low for him.