Below is my column in The Hill on the importance of capitalism to not just the foundation but the future of our Republic. The Trump Accounts could prove critical in the revival of capitalism in the United States.
Here is the column:
Capitalism is under attack from classrooms to town halls to voting booths. According to polls, a rising segment of the population is calling for socialism or even communism as young people embrace a radical chic in the country. And this week, another socialist looks ready to join a growing “squad” in Congress.
On our 250th anniversary, the fight over capitalism and economic freedom could prove critical to the future of this republic. However, there is an unexpected change that could help reverse this trend.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced that one million families have already signed up for the new tax-privileged Trump Accounts, which will be seeded with $1,000 in taxpayer funds for children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.
With an anticipated 25 million participants, the initiative is one of the most ambitious and potentially impactful in U.S. history. But its true impact may be far greater than the wealth that it could generate for families. It may just be the determinative factor in preserving this Republic in this century.
This month, Simon and Schuster released my new book on the founding and the future of the American republic — “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” The book asks whether this unique republic can survive in the 21st century amid growing economic, political, and social challenges.
What many celebrating our 250th anniversary do not appreciate is that this is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, released around the same time as the Declaration of Independence. The book was not a great success in Great Britain. In addition to its foundational support for capitalism, it challenged the mercantilist policies of the British Empire and supported the claims of the colonies in seeking greater economic freedoms.
Smith, however, was immediately embraced by the founders, who saw his work as the perfect economic theory to advance their political theory. Ours was the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.
Yet, the founders knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” offered an idea of individual economic freedom where whole economies were driven by the individual tastes and choices of citizens.
The combination would prove transformative, as the U.S. became not only the world’s oldest large-scale democracy but also history’s greatest economy. We will need that combination in the years to come to maintain what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”
The book looks at the expected impact of new technology, from robotics to AI, in the possible creation of a large population of unemployed, unproductive citizens. The question is how the likely state support for a large segment of our population will change their relationship to the government, changing the dynamic of what it is to be a citizen.
The danger of a “kept citizenry” is that we will lose the essential independence that our founders wanted to instill in new Americans from their government.
As we face these challenges, we are seeing a rise in support for socialism and communism in the West. It is the rage among young people who have no experience or memory of the socialist governments that collapsed in the prior century. Their understanding of socialism comes from armchair revolutionaries in colleges and the sloganeering of figures like Zohran Mamdani about introducing them to “the warmth of collectivism.”
That brings us back to the Trump accounts. The insidious aspect of past socialist systems is that their consistent failure often resulted in demands to “double down,” to increase state subsidies, nationalizations, and central planning. For their part, citizens can become accustomed to government support.
When socialist François Mitterrand came to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism,” he quickly destroyed the country’s economy. However, he continued to dazzle French citizens with promises of free money, even appointing Andre Henry as the Minister of Free Time to assist citizens in their new socialist leisure.
The same seductive appeal is evident today in the U.S. and other Western countries. Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism. An even greater percentage of young Britons want to live under socialism, and 72 percent favor nationalization of industries.
Capitalism was key to the success of the American Republic, and it will be even more important in the coming years. As jobs are wiped out through robotics and AI, we will have to shift to homocentric jobs and productivity to preserve not just economic but also political liberty.
We cannot preserve that liberty as some arts-and-crafts citizenry, entertained with state-subsidized leisure and distractions. The $6.25 billion gift of Michael and Susan Dell (now augmented by dozens of corporations) could offer the single best hope for the survival of our system. Millions of young people will be able to experience the benefits of investments, savings and, most importantly, economic independence.
It has the benefit of being a tangible lesson about capitalism — not simply an abstraction pulled from the pages of the Wealth of Nations. As socialist experiments replicate the failures of past eras, these accounts will offer a stark contrast for a rising generation. It is an investment that must be extended beyond 2028 to inculcate values of economic and political independence in the 21st century.
For young Americans, there has been a continual barrage of anti-capitalist sentiments. However, there is still muscle memory in this country of the gifts that free markets brought to a free people.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
There are health professionals predicting trump has 4-6 months left. Is it possible for him to grift more than 4 billy in that time? Took him the first year of this train wreck of an admin this time around to grift that much. But it seems spanky has goals, stakes and urgencies now.
The trump accounts are just a ponzi scheme. Yet another source for trump and fam to personally grift and loot.
^ DNC-paid troll. Ignore. ^
Got proof there “perpetually irate” anon commenter?
Russians here in America point out from family experience how the “warmth of collectivism” works: the representatives of the collective come into your town and look at your family business that has been generations in the making. They assess its value and decide that the people need that value more than your family does. So they take it from you without compensating you. You’re then left outside in the cold to appreciate the warmth of collectivism.
“without compensating you.”? Can cite law on that?
OldManFromKS,
Well said. Stalin did pretty much the same to the farmers, killed them, sent people out to these collectives who knew nothing about farming and millions died. Anyone who dissented, they were give a Stalinesque trail, found guilty, sent to the gulag.
re: Elder Patriot
Bush Republicans practiced ultra liberal “borrow & spend” economics. Bush Republicans never paid for their liberal spending, instead they figuratively put the bill on the nation’s credit card. Then they gave the richest 1/10 of 1% of billionaires a tax cut.
Bush inherited a balanced budget from Bill Clinton. Even if you deduct wartime spending Republicans were very fiscally-liberal and wreckless in their spending spree (not paid for but put on credit).
If Bush Republicans had instead given tax cuts to working class Americans, it may not have thrown the economy into a deep recession in the short term. But Republicans’ liberal “borrow & spend” policies are still very bad long term.
Those fiscally-liberal Bush policies nearly collapsed the Stock Market in 2008.
Gee
I thought Greenspans derivatives, repeal of Glass-Stiegel act (Bill Clinton), bank loan mandates from Franklin Raines (Fannie and Freddie) and the mortgage greedy hedgehogs were what the cause of our economic crisis was.
Socialism can’t work because the people voting for it are consistently believing in those advocating for it. Nancy Pelosi is the prime example.
Pelosi adamantly objected to George W Bush’s proposal to allow FICA taxes to be invested in the stock market. Meanwhile, she made hundreds of millions directing her personal income in the stocks of companies that she controlled the governing legislation over.
Greed governs personal decisions. Capitalism takes that greed and turns it to the greater good by resulting in the highest possible return. Something the Pelosi’s of the world vigorously oppose lest the people’s dependency wanes and her control (re:Illicit profits) is lost.
Our Framers sought tp create an enduring Republic based on individual rights. Socialism is completely incompatible with those goals because the election of single malevolent leader could destroy that republic forever. Just look at Europe. Their rights are being eviscerated. Especially, their right to speak freely. They now hate us because, after 80 years of freeloading off of the US we’ve asked them to pay for their own defense, the singular role of government. Typical of the spoiled brats that they have become.
Mises should be required course work in every school in our country.
Mises is good, but there is a small army of perfectly good works that everyone shoudl be exposed to
Smith. Bastiat, Ricardo, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Coase just to name a few – there are far more.
Free Works like Reads I, Pencil are excellent and can be found on yourtube, or many many spinoffs, like I, toaster or I, Whiskey.
Hazletts “economics in one lesson”, Walter Blocks “defending the undefendable”is excellent and terrifying – demonstrating that free markets work best even in areas all people think absolutely require government.
Coases “How China became Capitalist” is not only an excellent history of China pre Xi, but also a really easy to understand primer on economics.
De Soto’s The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else is also an excellent demonstration of the criticality of property rights.
and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Few have the time to read all of this, but no one should escape High School without more exposured to these authors and works than to DEI or frankly history, sociology or psychology.
An understanding of basic economics will substantially improve the rest of your life more than most anything else.