A PAC supporting Kamala Harris runs an ad that features Harris making the following impassioned statement, “We are helping dig families out of debt by telling billionaires to pay their fair share!” The commercial presents this exclamation as Harris’ “reason for running” for office, but does not explain what it means. Some of the audience tries to guess what this statement means while Harris’ supporters do not care and will vote for her regardless of what she says. Those who care to understand must speculate for an explanation. To whom will “billionaires” pay this undefined “fair share?” We can guess that she is talking about paying taxes. She does not explain how billionaires paying more taxes will help dig families out of debt.  

After three years of the Biden-Harris administration, consumer debt reached an all-time high of 17.8 trillion dollars in quarter two of 2024. This total was comprised of more than 12.5 trillion dollars in mortgage debt and over 5 trillion dollars in automobile and credit card debt. There is no official federal program to relieve consumers of this debt -- except for bankruptcy, which brings its own complications. There is no connection between higher taxes and lower consumer debt. Higher taxes hurt the economy, cost jobs, and make it more difficult for consumers to pay their debt. Harris has strung together two unrelated concepts.  Both of these concepts appeal to a left-wing base that neither understands nor cares to understand what is destroying the country. Everyone would like to owe less money, while leftist politicians have talked vaguely about “fair share” for many decades. Harris does not expect her base to question whether there really is a connection between vague “fair share” talk and their own growing consumer debt. She expects them merely to grasp at anything that provides something for nothing. 

Of equal importance, the total net worth of American billionaires is a fraction of total consumer debt. Were the federal government to confiscate all wealth of the richest Americans and use it to pay consumer debt, consumer debt would still exceed at least a staggering 12 trillion dollars. Much of those confiscated amounts would recycle back to those richest Americans in the form of debt payments -- but that is beside the point. By confiscating that wealth, the government would destroy investments, the economy, and the ability of the middle class to find work. This confiscation would also destroy the retirement and investment accounts of the “families” that she claims to support. Massive debt would still exist, but with far less ability to repay it than exists now.

Whatever amounts the government seizes in the name of “fair share” would not reduce consumer debt, the federal government’s debt or even the rest of our taxes by any amount.  For every new dollar that the government seizes, they will spend a larger amount.  New federal revenue invites even greater federal spending and greater federal debt. New taxes do not reduce the amount the rest of us pay either in taxes or debt repayment.  It is irresponsible and dishonest to suggest otherwise.

It is unlikely that Harris would actually follow through with a program that extracts a “fair share” in order to reduce “family” debt. Consumer debts will continue to rise and her own wealthy contributors would likely stop her from harming billionaires. But it is likely that she will maintain programs that further erode the economy, investments ,and middle-class income.  These programs will likely include the tax increases that she has promised since she started campaigning. All this discussion is necessarily speculative because Harris is purposefully vague and relies on meaningless catch phrases.

It is also curious that Harris used the present tense to describe her efforts to reduce “family” debt. She wishes us to believe that such reductions are already underway -- even though consumer debt continues to rise. It has become obvious that the Harris campaign is not even trying to deliver a coherent message.  They string together fantasies, wishes, and random attacks designed to comfort a specific audience.  That audience is energized by promises that make no sense and attacks that are not true. Many of Harris’ ads include the claim that Trump has proposed a “national sales tax” even though he has proposed no such thing. Left-wing media provides cover for this claim with a debatable proposition that tariffs will cause certain prices to rise despite positive benefits to American manufacturing sectors.  Those interpretations are a far cry from the idea of a sales tax. 

The campaign and its friendly PACS now use minority actors to repeat the talking points, with one such actor saying “the one percent don’t serve anybody but themselves.”  This scripted line reflects and promotes ignorance among the left-wing base.  The party does not want its voters to understand the value of capital accumulation, investment, entrepreneurship, the profit motive or anything else that has enriched all of our 401(k)s, IRAs, and other investments for many decades. Without the “1%” investing their money and providing an opportunity for us to join them through mutual funds, etc., we would all be poorer with far fewer employment opportunities. The Harris campaign takes none of this into account as they harangue us about “fair share.”

The ”fair share” card is nothing but a political weapon. Politicians seek power by inducing angry followers to stampede for undefined “fairness.”  Those who speak this language have never been able to tell us what constitutes a “fair share” of other peoples’ earnings. There has never been an accepted definition of “fair share” because it cannot be defined.

Some of the blame belongs to Republicans because they do not focus on the philosophical underpinnings of individual rights, private property, the profit motive, or the other bases of a free society and its resulting prosperity.  The Democrats spend every day of every year promoting class warfare and denouncing wealth, profit, and “greed.”  They saturate television, movies, music, books, schools, etc. with this script.  The Democrats do this without regard for any particular election.  But when the next election comes around, the Democrats are ready to exploit their class warfare groundwork by simply repeating the phrase “fair share” and denouncing unnamed wealthy people.  

It takes time to spread any basic message, especially our message of freedom, private property and individual rights. We cannot wait until a presidential election year. In the off-years, we must discuss and spread the writings and ideas of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand and many, many others. We cannot yield, by default, issues related to income equality and tax fairness to the Democrats and their ready-made phrases. If we do, we give them the ability to trot out this nonsense every election cycle in order to distract voters from the various crises of their party’s making.    

Image: AT via Magic Studio