“Affordability” has become the buzzword in criticizing both the Trump administration and our longstanding capitalist system. Although I acknowledge the disparate impacts of the K-shaped economy, the Left’s constant harping on fairness and wealth inequality is largely a red herring.
It is the Left’s own policies that have caused most of the damage, while free-market capitalism has lifted vast numbers from poverty, as real incomes, consumption, and life expectancies have generally risen across demographics — i.e., the economic “pie” grows faster than inflation and allows each slice of the pie to grow larger. It certainly doesn’t warrant dismantling an economic system that has created so much innovation, value, efficiency, and wealth for this country and the world.
In fact, the exception to broadly rising living standards nationally seems to lie in many of our deep-blue cities and states, which tend to have the worst affordability. U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 rankings of states, which put California dead last in its specific affordability metric, followed by a lineup of other deep-blue states: New Jersey, Hawaii, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Colorado. It also put California in 50th place for the broader “opportunity” category, which combines economic opportunity, affordability, and equality across demographic groups.
According to a March report from McKinsey, “At 250 years old, the United States is the world’s most competitive economy. [With just 4% of the global population], it generates 26% of global GDP and is home to 59 of the world’s [largest] 100 firms.” And yet, we are seeing stunning momentum for the Democratic Socialists of America, an openly subversive organization that admits to using the Democratic Party as a Trojan horse to get on the ballot, take over the party, and ultimately to “overthrow our empire and tear it down from within” (their own words) in an unholy alliance with Islamists, and remake the country into some naive fantasy of a utopian society.
In the socialists’ vision, national borders, prisons, and police don’t exist. The means of production and private property are confiscated by the government. There are no ultra-wealthy citizens, and all necessary services and healthcare are free to all. They see our economy as a fixed “pie” that the rich are hoarding in a zero-sum game, so they demand punitive taxation (up to 75% top marginal rates) as an “investment” that builds a more equitable society, along with national policies that prevent interstate capital flight.
Then, a “benevolent government” redistributes income from the rich “oppressors” to the marginalized “oppressed” — or, more specifically, to government bureaucrats who control the bloated budget and vast zero-ROI entitlement programs. The inevitable result is stunted economic growth while enforcing roughly equal outcomes and living standards, which means bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator of wealth and success.
Indeed, history has proven that the policies espoused by the DSA candidates (virtually none of whom have any private-sector leadership experience) suppress freedom and individual liberty and remove the incentive structures and free-market mechanisms required to generate wealth — ultimately leading to widespread poverty and necessitating more state coercion. For instance, after embracing a number of socialist policies, the United Kingdom’s GDP per capita is lower today than that of 49 of the 50 U.S. states.
Instead, capitalism and an unleashed private sector (that has proven quite adept at high-ROI capital allocation) leverage rugged individualism, the entrepreneurial spirit, low taxation, light regulation, and a merit-based incentive structure to encourage work, innovation, productivity, capital formation, business startups, and job creation, thus expanding productive capacity. The economic pie grows to everyone’s benefit without necessarily causing inflation.
DEMOCRATS ARE CONTROLLED BY DANGEROUS, LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS
So, don’t be gaslighted by deceptive electioneering. Yes, affordability is a genuine problem, particularly in several high-cost blue states. But the answer is not to double down on the same misguided interventionist policies that created the problem in the first place — such as onerous zoning, permitting, and rent-control restrictions, high energy prices, punitive taxation, mandated worker benefits, sanctuary policies, and permissiveness on crime and homelessness — that have degraded quality of life for everyone while inviting fraud and corruption.
Rather, voters should pivot back to embracing free markets, meritocracy, property rights, the rule of law, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the good ol’ American work ethic that built our great country. Such principles have proven much more effective than a dogmatic bureaucracy at solving problems.
Scott Martindale is CEO of Sabrient Systems LLC, an independent equity research firm and RIA based in Phoenix.