Things most Americans want from politics but mostly don't get

When one looks at poll data from over recent years, a number of things most Americans claim to want come up. By and large, they get these things either partially or somewhat, just a little, or not at all. Some things Americans want and have to some extent are subject to being taken away by some or all of the federal government (courts, president, executive agencies, or congress) or by state governments. Abortion and reasonable gun safety laws are two examples of fading rights most Americans want but don't universally have. 

Dems vs Trump & MAGA

On the 23-item list, Democrats are usually much closer to majority public preferences than Trump/MAGA policy. Of course, the Dems don't have enough power to enact any of the favored policies most Americans say they want. As long as Dems stay out of power, average Americans much have less chance of getting more of what they want. 

The matter of what many Americans believe they are getting or not getting is a different issue. Millions of Americans sincerely believe they are getting various things they want from politics, while in fact that is false. Often the opposite is true. That is a well-documented phenomenon in modern American politics.

Between the two big parties, the differences are greatest on voting access, guns, abortion, immigration, citizenship, and due-process, paid leave/child care, health coverage, cannabis, global warming, and anti-corruption rules. For all of those issues, Trump and MAGA are bitterly opposed to what most Americans say they want. 

Now that is not to say that Trump and MAGA openly claim to be opposed to those things. For the most part, their demagoguery, lies, crackpottery, and irrational emotional manipulation indicate that they support those things. That is a major source of beliefs that tens of millions of Americans sincerely but falsely believe to be true.

That's just part of the human condition. In politics, many people can be terribly deceived, manipulated and betrayed. But, there's no law against it.

Q: What convincing evidence is there, if any, that the Dem Party is generally more opposed to what most Americans say they want than Trump and MAGA elite politics and policy have delivered since 2017? 

Info sources: 

2024 Democratic Party Platform

What We’re Fighting For

Americans Widely Support Paid Family and Medical Leave, but Differ Over Specific Policies

Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election

Trump’s protests aside, his agenda has plenty of overlap with Project 2025

Project 2025, Explained

Americans’ Views of Government’s Role: Persistent Divisions and Areas of Agreement

Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated

Poll Shows Americans Support Independent Commissions for Redistricting

America’s frustration with the cost of living continues to rise

Trump Clings to Inaccurate Climate Change Talking Points

Social democracy vs. democratic socialism

After recent primary election results, it's hard to ignore the concept of social-something or another rampaging around in the Dem Party. 

As usual and expected, Trump and MAGA demagoguery are spewing tons of toxic mental miasma about communism in the Dem Party. MAGA's tippy-top best hyperbole and lies attacks are trying to make the liberal social-whatever sound like a horrific, imminent overwhelming catastrophe. No surprise in any of that moral rot. 

MSM reporting like this, New CNBC Generation Lab poll shows almost half of 18- to 34-year-olds favor democratic socialism, is becoming more prominent. Apparently, most of those folks have a very negative view of the American economy and capitalism generally. 

Social democracy vs. democratic socialism

Social democrats support the concept of social democracy. Modern social democracy evolved from a movement seeking a peaceful transition to actual socialism into a politics that generally accepts a regulated capitalist mixed economy with significant public welfare. These people want much better regulation of capitalism than what the GOP has been arguing for since the 1960s, and what Trump and MAGA policy have been delivering since they came into power in 2017.

By contrast, democratic socialists are real socialists. This group wants a democratically run socialist economy, including abolishment of capitalism, not just regulation of it. This group has completely given up on capitalism, and they want socialism to replace it. That's true radicalism. They want public ownership of assets used to produce services and goods to insure that they serve the public interest before serving wealthy people and entities and their special interests. 

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected officials or candidates are generally aligned with the DSA’s stated premise, which is that working people should run the economy and society democratically to meet human needs rather than generate profits for a few. Apparently a growing portion of Americans find that appealing (but some of us do not).

 

Policy overlaps

Policy overlap between the two groups is huge. In general, both social democrats and democratic socialists want things like (1) universal or near-universal health coverage, often by Medicare expansion, a public option, or single-payer insurance, (2) stronger labor unions by easier organizing, penalties for union busting, sectoral bargaining, wage floors, and public-sector labor rights, (3) progressive taxation, expanded refundable tax credits, Social Security and Medicare protection, paid leave, child care, and affordable higher education, (4) investment and industrial policy that protects the environment, coupled with supporting labor standards and public infrastructure, and (5) aggressive antitrust, consumer regulation, financial rules, and public provision in selected areas.

Polling indicates that most Americans mostly support those policy goals. The Democratic Party platform itself is fundamentally aligned with those policy goals. The Dem Party still does not support full social ownership of the economy. The Dem Party supports reconstructing labor bargaining power and decommodifying or subsidizing some necessities (health care, shelter, education, water, mobility) while retaining a predominantly a private-enterprise economy. 

Obviously, MAGA elites and Trump oppose all of it, despite their gaslighting propaganda telling us they support the little guy and his concerns. By now it is crystal clear that MAGA propaganda is a huge pile of . . . . .

Big stinking pile of MAGA propaganda

about working for the little guy

Policy differences

There are big differences between the two groups. Democratic socialists support major changes like (1) worker-owned or worker-governed firms, (2) public, municipal, cooperative, or social ownership in essential sectors, typically energy, transit, housing, finance, health care, and broadband, (3) public banking and democratic control over investment, (4) social housing that is permanently outside speculative private markets, (5) a greater role for democratic planning, especially in climate transition and essential goods, and (6) universal programs for wealth redistribution, and as a means of reducing people's dependency on employers and markets.

That's real socialism. Those people aren't messing around with capitalism any more. The reasons for that level of discontent are obvious. MAGA and trickle down economics mostly trickles wealth and power up to elites and allied special interests. In the process, most of get shafted and are left in a grumpy mood.

Oats are natural resources, means of production, control of money and finance, the horse is the elites and special interests, the emoji is what it looks like, and we are the sparrow

A critically important point: American democratic socialism is not the same as Soviet-style state socialism. The American theory emphasizes pluralist democracy, civil liberties, decentralized or mixed forms of social ownership, and worker/community governance. By contrast with the USSR, which substitutes state bureaucrats for private owners, keeping nearly all of the citizenry in crappy, permanently shafted conditions. MAGA demagogues routinely lie about this critical distinction.

Where or what is the Dem Party establishment in all of this?

 The Dem establishment is heterogenous, reflecting the bigger tent it lives in compared to the GOP. It is composed of mostly of wall street Democrats or business- and finance-friendly liberals, labor liberals or New Deal liberals, civil-rights and rights-based liberals, and state and local party machines.

The Dem establishment is reasonably described as conventional social liberalism. That means market-friendly capitalism with targeted benefits, anti-discrimination law, limited regulation, and incremental reform when needed. Social democracy is generally to the left of that. Democratic socialism is further left than that.

Q1: Does it feel as if the Dem Party establishment is too timid, conservative and cautious to adequately deal with the aggression and corrupt power of Trump, MAGA elites and their brand of brutal political warfare?

Q2: To what extent is the rise of American style socialism on the left the fault of Trump and MAGA party politics and policies, with their failures to deliver for the little guy -- mostly their fault, some, a little, or none at all?

Info sources: 

Social democracy

Democratic socialism

What is a democratic socialist? Inside the movement behind Mamdani’s rise

Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism: What’s the Difference?

Tyranny and corruption hide in agreement, disagreement reveals it

It may seem counterintuitive, but right now in the US policy agreement, including false perceptions of agreement, helps hide tyranny and corruption. Conflict reveals authoritarianism and kleptocracy. That is the heart of the message from research by Martin Gilens and Ben Page. 

Their work, and that of other researchers, helps explain why a country like the US can retain elections, produce some popular policies, and still undergo serious democratic degradation. Majorities remain highly visible, but their power to get outcomes they want against bigoted authoritarian wealth, racial hierarchy, organized politics, and authoritarian influences disappears over time. Power and wealth quietly, usually unnoticed, flows from the people to the elites in control. 

That is what is happening right now in the US under Trump, MAGA elites and their major donors and enablers. Their agenda is kleptocracy and authoritarianism, the latter being mostly a mix of dictatorship, oligarchy, white-power nationalism, and virulent Christian nationalist theocracy. Such corrupt and authoritarian politics translate into core goals of concentrating wealth and power with a few trusted, mostly above-the-law elites, and their major donors, allied corporations and special interests. Except for the theocrats, it's almost all about wealth and power for themselves, almost always at our expense. 

Digression: The theocrats? They and their divine vision of God demand culture war. It's waged largely by attacking, hating, slandering, and/or oppressing immigrants, LGBQT people, women's equality, secular law, and transparency in government. For the most part, Christian theocrat elites are a very nasty bunch of hypocrites, liars, bigots and racists.

Anyway, public majority does not exercise governing power when because it sometimes receives policies it favors. If it receives those policies because affluent citizens and/or powerful organized interests also approve, that is not majority political power in effect. In those cases, the majority benefits from elite consent. Democracy is truly tested when preferences conflict. Unfortunately, research indicates that American policy has most often been tilted toward wealth and organized power. The wealthy and organized interests have systematically disproportionate influence, especially when preferences diverge on consequential economic questions. Wealth and power flows to the top, not to the rest of us.

The relevant test is not whether ordinary people ever get what most of them want. The real test of democracy is whether the majority prevails at least equally as often when their preferences conflict with wealth and organized power. For the US, the empirical truth is no. When the elites oppose, the American majority usually loses. That is exactly and inextricably how authoritarianism and kleptocracy work. Frighteningly, that ugly truth about Trump and his MAGA elites, is mostly or completely hidden from millions of demagoguery-deceived Americans.

MAGA's big new gift to tax cheats and grifters

MAGA's new gift

A new MAGA finance rule to reduce reporting burdens on businesses is in effect. Tax cheats and criminals all over the US are cheering. A WaPo article, Treasury ends ownership reporting rules for U.S. companies, reports about reporting rules that MAGA is gutting. The rules were put in place to combat and reduce money laundering and other financial crimes. Now, tax cheats and criminals can better hide and keep more of their assets, legitimate and illegitimate.

Trump's Treasury Dept finalized the new rule yesterday. It exempts US companies and individuals from ‌reporting beneficial ownership information to the Treasury Department's financial ‌crimes unit. That obliterates reporting requirements established under a 2021 law aimed ​at combating illicit finance and tax cheating.

Not only is Trump gutting the reporting rule, he goes a big step further. Trump's treasury will delete the information previously reported by Americans. The gutted rule was simple in principle. If a person ultimately owned or controlled a corporation or LLC, federal financial-crimes investigators could identify that person through a confidential database. The information was not a public registry. This isn't a minor regulatory tweak. This is deliberate removal of a fundamental state capacity. The government's ability to determine who owns what in a state-created corporate entity is now gone. Here's FinCEN's FAQ page to bring tax cheats and criminals up to speed on the new layer of secrecy that MAGA is giving them.

The size of the burden that MAGA claims existed under the old rule does not remotely justify the scale of this new rule. For an ordinary small business, disclosure meant entering the names and identifying information of the people who actually own or control it, using a free electronic system. FinCEN estimated that a straightforward initial filing would take about 90 minutes, with more complex ownership structures taking longer. But complexity is often precisely what investigators need to untangle who owns what. An honest government concerned in good faith with efficiency and reduced paperwork could have simplified forms, extended deadlines, funded free assistance, etc. Instead, Treasury chose categorical exemption to obliterate the targeted beneficial ownership reporting. That's real deregulation of special interests at the expense of the public interest! 

How much is this gonna cost us?

This one will have some bite. The consequences cannot yet be measured precisely because Trump's administration dismantled the reporting system before it could generate years of enforcement data. The IRS projects a 2022 gross tax gap (owed but unpaid taxes) of $696 billion and a net gap of $606 billion annually. Those official figures are conservative, not a full census of sophisticated tax evasion (tax cheating). The IRS and outside analysts acknowledge major measurement difficulty involving foreign and illegal activity, complex pass-through structures, digital assets, and corporate non-filings. Research on top-income evasion indicates that conventional audits miss a lot of hidden offshore and complex-entity evasion. A cautious estimate is that eliminating ownership data could cost the Treasury ~$5 billion annually in additional uncollected taxes. That does not count undetected fraud, laundering, corruption, sanctions evasion, or other non-tax violations.

Now, tax cheats can put a business, investment account, real estate holding, or other shielded asset in the name of an LLC controlled through nominees or layered entities. The cheater can then claim that income or assets belong to a separate company, not to them. That allows things like (1) business income or capital gains to be withheld from a personal tax return, (2) concealment of property and investment income from tax authorities, (3) shifting and laundering of legal and criminal money through an entity owned by another entity, e.g., in a secrecy jurisdiction, so the human owner is difficult or impossible to identify, and (4) frustrate collection of tax debts, civil judgments, child support, or restitution by appearing to have fewer assets than the cheater/grifter actually controls.

In addition, MAGA's new secrecy shield helps people who need to hide a conflict between their official or fiduciary roles and private financial interests. A public official, contractor, executive, politically connected intermediary, or grifter can use an entity to disguise that they are on both sides of a deal. A government official can steer a contract, permit, subsidy, or asset sale to a company they secretly control. A vendor creating a hidden related-party company can send out inflated or fictitious invoices. A donor, lobbyist, or politically exposed person can conceal their financial stake in a recipient of government action. The possibilities are just about endless!

Impacts on the rule of law

This new rule is part of a broader MAGA governing strategy. MAGA's authoritarian and kleptocratic policy is to weaken or eliminate the federal government’s capacity to regulate, investigate, tax, and expose powerful but corrupt private actors. MAGA's demagoguery calls the resulting transfer of power “freedom” or “relief from burdens”, but it relieves only special interests at the expense of the public interest and average individuals. 

That policy design reveals MAGA priorities. The administration here did not just lower a compliance cost. It privileged and sanctified anonymity for domestic wealth and corporate power over the public’s interest in enforcing tax law, tracing criminal proceeds, detecting conflicts of interest, and holding the real beneficiaries of corporate activity accountable. The beneficiaries are not ordinary citizens trying to run transparent businesses. They are people and institutions for whom concealment is extremely valuable. They are precisely the people and interests that a functioning rule-of-law state should be able to easily scrutinize, not shield.

Q1: Is it credible for MAGA elites to tell us this new rule was too much of a burden on businesses to report who owns what?

Q2: Can you see why tax cheats and criminals will love using this new way of doing business?