Yesterday, the Vice President spoke for 28 minutes with nary a cackle. The crowd’s chants seemed less than spontaneous. The theme displayed on banners around the stage was Opportunity Economy, Lowering Your Costs.

VP Harris constantly referred to the middle class. While it’s true that between 1971 and 2023, the middle class in America shrank from 61% to 51% of the population, this was largely driven by the upper class increasing from 11% to 19%. This is a good thing.

The lower class rose from 27% to 30%. This was forced by the recent entry of 20 million (my estimate) people who would not otherwise be in the United States—a surge brought to you by the Biden-Harris administration.

The lies, misrepresentations, and false intimations that peppered Kamala’s talk are too numerous to mention. When she said the inflation rate was under 3%, she did not say that it was still double 2020’s inflation rate or that the cumulative inflation during her time in office has been almost 20%, with some price increases far exceeding that.

Image by AI.

Kamala plans to build an opportunity economy for the middle class, where everyone has an opportunity to compete, succeed, and build wealth. She will remove the barriers to starting a business or advancing a career. Sounds fine. She will do this by bringing labor, small business, and large corporations together to invest in America.

This is where her economic policy goes off the rails. Investment for growth comes from excess capital (cash) and other resources. Labor unions drain funds from workers’ paychecks. Big Labor’s only investment seems to be in (D) party political candidates.

Small businesses drive employment, accounting for nearly half of job creation, yet 90% fail, 10% in the first year, and 70% by their fifth year—consistent figures for many reasons, not the least of which is that small business owners often discover that it can be far less onerous to work for someone else than to run their own company.

Kamala’s stated goal is to lower the cost of living. She hammered away at home ownership. America’s homeownership rate is 65.7%. If we presume all the upper class and none of the lower class own homes, then only about 4% of the middle class does not. Not much of a problem, but she has solutions.

Econ 101: Capping rental prices will dry up rentals. Federal oversight of a surge in new home construction will be costly. Giving $25k to help with a down payment will not lower the purchase cost or the lending rate but will set up marginally unqualified buyers to be exploited (just what she says she is trying to avoid).

Grocery prices are “still too high.” Kamala recalled prosecuting electronics and pharmaceutical companies for price gouging. Most are imported into the US. Almost all (90%) of groceries are domestically produced. Valuing all the inputs into a bag of potato chips is vastly different from looking at the shipping invoice for a smartphone.

Kamala wants the grocery business to be more competitive. Here, she is disguising social policy with economic policy. I believe her next volley on the food industry will condemn the closure of urban stores and restaurants and the growth of food deserts.

They closed due to rising local crime rates, jumping state minimum wages, increased taxation and regulation, unaffordable insurance and competition for qualified workers, and a declining customer base (demographics and higher prices due to all factors). Kamala knows the big chains will not be back. She knows that small grocers will carry huge costs that they have to pass on to customers. Nothing will change.

Kamala plans to pay people $6,000 to have a baby. She plans to pay down medical debt for millions of Americans, just like student loan debt. Student loan debt is owed to the government. Medical debt is owed to thousands of credit card companies, doctors, hospitals, and other medical care providers. Add 40% for the cost of federal management. Who will pay for this?

Here’s the kicker, though. “We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.” No, she won’t. States’ rights and all that.

Here’s a real opportunity: Half of all state and local taxes go to fund education. Americans pay this cost for 12-14 years of everyone’s life. In 2025, the Biden-Harris administration proposes adding $82.5 billion in federal Dept. of Education funding on top.

This is something I’ve written about before. If the Vice President really wants Americans to have the opportunity to succeed, she should be working with local and state governments, and especially labor, to ensure that educators are doing their jobs and students are learning and gaining every possible skill, no matter what it takes.

Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant who X-tweets at @oh_yeahMee.