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“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

The above quote is from the 1967 film, Cool Hand Luke; the reason it is such an iconic line is that it is quintessentially American, something obvious but seldom recognized. If you can’t tell someone at any given moment who you are, then they will not know you, except for what you have said in the past; that is essentially what happened this past Tuesday in the Presidential election.

I do not subscribe to the view that when given a choice between the lesser of two evils, pick the lesser evil, even though in the end you still get evil. The American political system is dominated by the duopoly of Republican and Democratic parties such to the extent that third parties often can’t even get on the ballot due to the repressive system controlled by what we call the “establishment”; consequently, the choice is either the lesser of the two evils, vote for your principles, or not at all.

After the 2020 elections and the 2022 midterms, Trump’s political career was considered over, written off by the media as a brief chapter of chaos; in the meantime, we had even more chaos with “lawfare”, the Biden/Harris administration’s bizarre and destructive COVID policies, Woke agenda, proxy censorship, irresponsible and inflationary fiscal and monetary policies, and irrational immigration policies. Then there was the political thuggery of a coup against a sitting president, all in the name of saving democracy. Without even the semblance of a democratic process, Harris was anointed the new candidate.

Back in August, following the Democratic National Convention, most media pundits forecast a Harris win, but then she and her Party committed a series of self-inflicted wounds that were inexplicable; first and foremost was the inability, or as some thought, the strategic practice of evasion; Harris either talked around questions regarding policy, or avoided them altogether. Communication is all about both the ability to listen, and the ability to speak in a clear, concise, and accurate manner; evasion therefore would be counterproductive, especially in a political campaign.  

This was not the only fatal flaw in the Harris campaign; it is a given in any marketing strategy to avoid talking about the competition as that appears not only as negative messaging, but a sign of weakness; it also provides the competition with free airtime, name recognition on your nickel. Calling the competition a danger to democracy, Nazis and garbage makes Clinton’s insult “deplorables” seem mild in comparison; that coupled with the evasion strategy made the Harris campaign appear hollow. Add to this Obama’s lecturing Black men that not voting for Harris was misogynistic is a repetition of Biden’s 2020 gaff that “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

There is a theory proposed by the author Robert J. Hanlon, fittingly called Hanlon’s Razor, that states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”; this is an excellent theory, but there are times when experience provides examples of both malice and stupidity. The crash and burn of the 2024 Democratic campaigns are attributable to their failure to address their own bad policies, a refusal to define what new policies will be proposed to fix the problems they created, and dismissive and insulting rhetoric. When the official position of the incumbent administration is that MAGA is fascist, you are in essence expressing hatred for at least half of the American electorate, a declaration of war with the very voting population you are hoping to win over; stupidity coupled with malice is not a winning strategy.

I did not vote for Trump this past Tuesday, I voted for Chase Oliver, the Libertarian candidate. John Quincy Adams was forever right when he said, “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” Given the overwhelming win by the GOP, I am not naïve enough to believe my vote mattered, especially as many Libertarians voted for Trump; in all due respect the GOP and Donald Trump ran a very smart campaign, reaching out to all those that felt they were dismissed by the elitist regime that the Democratic Party has become. The contrast could not have been more telling as they gained support of minorities, some Democrats and third parties, winning a huge electoral and popular vote.

Now that the election is all but over (except for Nevada and Arizona who seem incapable of counting in a timely manner), we still are subject to irrational behavior from both Democrats and the media; first, why did it take Harris so long to concede the obvious, and secondly, why are there accusations that the results are due to racism and misogyny? The growing disillusion among minorities with the Democratic Party is hardly based on race, and despite the Democratic focus on abortion to harvest women votes, that just did not resonate; just because you evade or ignore reality does not mean it will ignore you.

“You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out.” John Kennedy, US Senator, LA

“It is so easy to be wrong, and to persist in being wrong, when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.” Thomas Sowell

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a huge spending bill that only added to inflation, was proposed and passed on the promise that it would reduce it. While it was one of many similar acts in a series of irresponsible fiscal policies, it was something much worse than the usual cronyism between corrupt politicians and their corporate partners; in this case, like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it was a further nationalization of an already over-regulated health industry, the degree to which has become apparent with the advent of the 2025 Medicare Enrollment period.   

Besides all sorts of “Green New Deal” provisions in the IRA that we were told would reduce American energy costs, the same was promised regarding prescription drug costs. It’s a huge piece of legislation to wade through, so much so that many in Congress admitted they never even had a chance to read it all before it was pushed through by the VP’s tie breaking vote in the Senate; I doubt many Americans, including myself, ever read more than media summaries. Unless you like the legislative equivalent to a Russian novel, rambling and often incoherent, you were not aware of what the fine print had in store for seniors on Medicare.

When we started getting letters and emails from the various services for Medicare Part D supplemental coverage, including insurance agents, insurers and pharmacies, the dots started to get connected exposing the huge increases coming our way. We were always suspicious about all the promises the government made for how drug costs would be lowered by allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with Big Pharma, but we never suspected that our prescription drug supplement plan premiums would be raised more than 1,000%; additionally, the deductible was raised 12%, co-pays were higher, eligible pharmacies were reduced, and agents were no longer compensated by the plans they found for us, eliminating their services.

How such egregious manipulations and price hikes could be seen as a benefit to Americans is hard to understand. The only increased benefit to be found was the threshold for annual co-pays, at which point there is no further costs to the insured; that threshold was greatly reduced to around the average American’s annual drug costs. Then we have the “Advantage Plans”, which are heavily subsidized while strictly network limited, but include such benefits as travel costs to/from medical services, healthier food, and even rent for financially eligible members; the premiums for such plans do not cover the benefits, so the funding had to come from somewhere.

I knew very little about RFK Jr. until he ran in the 2024 Democratic Primary for the presidential nomination; one thing that his campaign made us aware of was that in the US approximately half the population suffers from at least one chronic disease, most have at least two, the highest rates worldwide. Most of these diseases are not genetically based but self-inflicted due to poor lifestyle choices like smoking, fatty and processed food diets, and a lack of exercise leading to respiratory, cardiac and obesity problems resulting in cancer, asthma, COPD, type B diabetes, etc. Little wonder then that the US also has the highest per capita health costs.

In auto, home, business and life insurance premiums are calculated based on risk, the greater that is so are the premiums; to some degree this was the case with health insurance until the incidence of chronic diseases rose to the point where those affected became a significant electoral group that politicians could manipulate, something they are very good at. The reason for the lowered threshold costs and attendant egregiously higher premiums are obviously related as the government transfers the costs for prescription drug insurance from those with chronic health issues to average Americans. Politicians justify such parasitical policies with altruistic concern and use deceptive legalese like the IRA on the belief that Americans are gullible or willfully ignorant due to some perceived self-interest. I have not heard either Harris or Trump talk to this issue so it doesn’t seem likely that things will change anytime soon.

All Medicare supplemental plans are legislatively proscribed, so the structure, terms and conditions are regulatorily identical regardless of the insurance carrier; the differential is the efficiency and quality of service resulting in variations in costs and in the case of prescription drug plans the variations can be significant, although all are now much higher. Add to this that while Social Security Benefits have been increased with the Cost-of-Living-Adjustment (COLA), the Medicare deduction nearly eliminated the increase. For seniors on Medicare, you are virtually living under a socialized medical regime; if you are still working and have employer provided (but likely shared cost) health insurance coverage, you are less so, but all health insurance companies are heavily regulated. The alternative is private health insurance, but unless you are among the very rich, those plans are unaffordable. Since the advent of the ACA, overall health care costs have nearly doubled, and with the IRA, they are getting even worse; so much for making health care more affordable or lowering inflation.

Henry Hazlitt, a famous financial journalist, insightfully observed that “Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!”

“Political tags, such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth, are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein is a famous science fiction author whose many novels displayed his insightful social and political observations; his quote above is one of the most concise descriptions of politics, distilling it down to the issue of control. Historically, if a society is at peace with itself, tolerant of the differences within it, and providing for the safety and security of its people, which is the only morally legitimate reason for a society to create a government, its politics will reflect that and the result will be a productive and prosperous one; if not, its politics will be coercive and chaotic, divisive and ultimately self-destructive.

Many Americans today can’t differentiate between society and government, or explain the logical foundation of whatever ideology they espouse; their electoral preferences are swayed more by media narratives than principles. American society has become consumed by partisan marketing campaigns that make everything political; food, sex, religion, weather, education, race, health, and just about everything that actually has no place in politics at all, become divisive issues rather than simply common interests of a society at peace with itself.

Politics has the genetic code for power which attracts manipulative personalities by offering control, the drug they are addicted to; if society has no safeguards against this, or allows them to become corrupted, its existence apart from the state becomes just a semantic distinction. To work around such safeguards, manipulative personalities create narratives about those very things that don’t belong in an honest political dialogue; everything is in play, everything becomes political. Such narratives often create “claim rights”; these are not the freedom to do something, but to get something, an entitlement that requires two things, money and the power to make them happen.

In order to defend “claim rights” against those who reject them, you make them villains who would deny people their rights. While there are some who can see through such scams, all too often many don’t, hopelessly confused by the word play. This is not a syndrome reserved to any one political group or ideology as all who crave power often resemble each other; progressives at universities profess dedication to free inquiry while suppressing it, and conservatives in Congress speak to due process while supporting things like the Patriot Act. When everything is political, the boundaries between the state and the people become blurred.

As Heinlein said, the labels are all wrong; the left/right paradigm of political ideology is poorly conceived and totally inaccurate in defining policy or concept. Progressivism is regressive, and conservatism is just as paternalistic and nationalistic, perhaps even more like socialism than liberalism; all seem addicted to power and make everything political to achieve it. What’s really being missed is the attitude that someone knows what’s best for everyone else, and that’s what destroys the liberties of a free society.

“Liberty is hard to achieve, which is what makes the cult of power so seductive, even to those who identify as libertarian. Once consumed by the desire for power, there’s no going back to the principle of liberty for all; liberty will always feel like a strategic error.” Justin Amash

“Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.” Warren Buffett.

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in a recent study by its Investor Education Foundation, only about 34% of US adults surveyed could answer basic questions about finance; compare that to most European countries at 65%. This helps to explain why so many Americans make such poor decisions undermining the stability of their own lives, that of their families and society in general. Prior similar US studies had better results, which means that financial illiteracy is getting worse; this has become so alarming that the US Treasury recommended that Congress consider making financial literacy courses mandatory at the college level. Besides the fact that both Congress and the US Treasury are not exactly stellar examples of financial stability, such courses should have better results at the high school level; in fact, it’s very encouraging that 35 states starting this year require in their curriculum personal finance courses for a high school diploma.

Warren Buffet’s missive about saving and spending is a good place to start in teaching children the basics about finance, especially when we see such ridiculous phenomenon among the younger generations like “Doom Spending”; the rational for such behavior is depression about the future. Also disturbing is the attitude among some of the older generations that such education is too little, too late; that only back feeds such irrational behavior by writing the younger generations off. Compounding all of this is the grossly irresponsible behavior and cronyism of financial institutions and government. It’s understandable that without financial literacy and basic economic knowledge, such a situation can lead to depression.

The average US personal savings rate in the US has declined steadily over the years to the current 4.8% (except for the Covid period of 20%). There are countries with much higher rates, but some like Argentina are due to interest rates at 113% to counter hyperinflation; contrarily Norway, with many of its fiscal and monetary reforms, balanced budgets, low debt and low inflation has a savings rate over 60%. Clearly there’s a correlation if not causation between financial literacy, savings and stable economic conditions.

There is another underlying societal issue at play besides the lack of financial literacy, and that is a self-centered sense of entitlement that somehow society owes you stuff, whether we call it the “American Dream”, or some imagined claimed rights to things you haven’t earned; pandering to such irrational behavior only serves to perpetuate the ignorance of financial illiteracy, and that is not limited to just our youth. When politicians claim as a right the transfer of the cost of education, medical services, home ownership, etc. from some to others, it creates distorted perceptions that underwrite this ignorance.

Financial operations are the mechanics of an economy; if such operations fail or become distorted and corrupted, they will in turn destabilize an economy. It’s odd that some economists and the government use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to evaluate how the economy is doing; it’s actually a measure of consumption and not production because it’s a metric of consumer spending. The reason why the US became the largest economy in the world was its productive capacity, which was fueled by its ability to accumulate capital that feed this capacity, and that in turn came from savings, the ability of people to defer consumption for future benefits.

The word “future” is so essential to understand when looking at finance and how it functions to the benefit of an economy. Thinking about the future is also essential to a healthy psychology; when people don’t see the point in doing so, it leads to depression and all sorts of bad behavior can come from that. What we need to do as a society is focus on education that gives our children the tools they will need in the future to make decisions that in turn benefit their futures; what we don’t need is to rely on a government that creates trillions of dollars of debt that will burden their ability to do so.

There are many financial instruments available for people that represent savings such as CDs, stocks, bonds, etc.; what they all represent is a financial means to contribute to wealth, which is something that is more complex than just money, but a good place to start. One thing that children need to understand very early in life is what money actually is; given that all “money” in the world today is fiat currency, that can be very confusing, so for children, keep it simple and just say it’s a means to purchase what you need.  For adults, they need to understand that all currencies today are simply debt instruments; take out any US currency and look at the top of the portrait side that reads “Federal Reserve Note”.  A note is a debt security obligating repayment of a loan, at a predetermined interest rate; try telling that to the Federal Reserve.

It’s not difficult to understand the motivation of politicians like Wilson, Roosevelt and Nixon to divorce the US dollar from a commodity base such as gold because that provided Americans the means to be free from government control of their money; fiat currency provides government the freedom to tax without legislation through inflation, and we’ve seen where that leads. However, while an essential part of financial literacy and economic intelligence, the subject of sound money is addressed in prior posts (Gold Myths 07.12.19) and will be revisited in future ones.

For this post, the message is that if we want to help our children learn what it takes to make a good life, in addition of course to integrity, good work ethic, healthy diet, etc., then get involved with their education and that must include financial literacy and economic intelligence.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin

“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.” Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville was a classical liberal in the tradition of the Enlightenment and a student of natural law, although at times he is difficult to categorize in the chaotic French politics of his time; he wrote “Democracy in America”, his most famous work of sociology and political science based on his 1831-1835 travels in the US commissioned by the French government. It is a work that illustrated his keen sense of observation and methodical analytical style based on first principles; in regard to political parties, he understood correctly what they seldom if ever are.

It was Aristotle who first proposed the original concept of first principles, an analytical method of breaking something down until it can’t be dissected any further in order to understand it correctly. This method of analyzing something has been used by many in both the arts and sciences in successful problem solving because the essence of whatever the problem is can be exposed; it’s useful in both invention and discovery by avoiding going off in the wrong direction leading to erroneous conclusions.

We can use this concept of first principles to see through the confusion created by all the chaos around us today, and better understand what is going on, rather than passively accepting the narratives bombarding us. Most of these narratives are little more than extremely partisan rhetoric filled with defamation, and stoking fear of whoever is the target; when examining any of these narratives, first look for the idea behind the message. If it’s why you should not support whoever is the target, then you need to understand what those reasons are. 

Once those reasons are identified, you then proceed to find out if there is any substance to those reasons; often we find that the substance is a chain of other narratives in support of a conclusion expressed in the initial narrative by using analogies such as whoever supports “X” is like someone who another narrative says is bad. If that happens, then what you have discovered is that the initial narrative lacked principles itself and is just part of the political echo chamber, i.e., it is not meant to inform, but to deflect away from civil discourse by redirecting the debate to better serve the narrative. Denouncing someone with name calling for having a position contrary to your own without addressing what is wrong with their position is an indication of fear coupled with a lack of intelligence.

Using first principles also provides insights about the sources of such narratives; if the substance of the narrative is not about the issues at hand but a denunciation of someone, the source itself is lacking in principles representing a resolution to those issues and instead creates narratives filled with divisiveness. When we dig deeper into divisive narratives we will discover that the consequence, intended or not, moves people away from civil discourse to the tribalism of them versus us; what we can also discover is that shrill and abusive rhetoric in the narrative lacks a rational foundation or perhaps even conviction for the opinion expressed.

There are also narratives that politicians create about policies that, when you drill down on them, you are left with little substance but many meaningless platitudes; this too you will discover is meant to deflect your attention away from a resolution of issues, if not from the issues themselves. Often such policies represent more of a way to focus blame and increase power than solve problems. Politicians often use such narratives to avoid speaking about issues that may expose either their ignorance about them, or their flawed policies to address them. Consuming such narratives is like eating processed foods that fill you up but provide little nourishment.

The first principles concept also provides what we should do about such narratives, and that is to ignore them; the resulting tribalism of those echo chambers only serves to stoke fear which creates an environment counterproductive to rational thought. While fear is a survival instinct we all have, it is one we need to control for the sake of rational thinking; divisive narratives are used to create the herd instinct, a collective and corrosive fear intended to drive people into divisions based on ignorance, which in turn is often the source of fear itself.

Like all principles, Aristotle’s concept of how to correctly understand things is not subject to moderation because that undermines its very purpose; in applying it to political narratives we can avoid the fear intended in the messaging, some subtle, some obviously playing on the very prejudices in their content. The practice of first principles means you never stop questioning so that regardless of what something may appear to be, you come to know the reality it is.

“The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.” Ron Paul

The US funding of the proxy war in Ukraine is another example of an historically proven failed policy; it’s also a principal contributor to the national debt, now greater than our GDP. The irrational nature of such policies inevitably leads to abdication of support, or direct involvement as the proxy war fails. The result of abdication is very Viet Nam and Afghanistan like as the US loses even more credibility, whereas the options of direct involvement are either as combatant or enforcer of a peace agreement; these two options are more of a distinction than a difference.

The current administration insists that only Ukraine can decide to negotiate with Russia; this does not make sense when the US and EU are practically Ukraine’s sole means of support, a position that gives them the ability to effect an armistice and peace talks, and one that has bipartisan support in Congress. The US and EU are funding a proxy war against Russia without a legitimate treaty as Ukraine is not a NATO member; European nations had rejected Ukraine’s applications to join the EU until 2022 when they granted it candidate status. This is actually a war between NATO and Russia similar to the past, except this is not a Cold War; this time it’s very much a hot war in a recycled old feud.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has been dragging on since 2014 and so far resulted in Russia annexing Crimea and most of Donbas. For whatever reason, many in mass media refer to the February 2022 Russian invasion as the beginning of this war, even though Ukraine lost a large amount of its territory to Russia early on in what is now a decade’s long conflict. Most military experts assess Ukraine’s ability to win this war as little to none, even with an astronomical amount of US and EU aid; the main reason for this pessimism is the corruption endemic to the Ukrainian regime as made apparent with the various times the security and military leaders in Zelensky’s government have had to be replaced. The US and EU are aware of the NAZI backgrounds of the oligarchs that engineered Zelensky’s election; since then, they have declared that only their party is legitimate, which now controls all mass media and press.

Despite the fact that both the US and EU know the sordid reality about the Ukrainian administration, they both backed Zelensky to be considered a candidate for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize; while bookies and the media predicted he would win, fortunately for what’s left of the organization’s reputation the winner was an Iranian human-rights activist, Narges Mohammadi. While the US and EU have presented Zelensky as a democratic leader, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee found a legitimate and far more worthy candidate.

A reasonable question is why would the US and EU continue with the same failed policy time after time, but expect a different result; is it just an example of Einstein’s definition of insanity, or is there something else in play? What is it about this perpetually corrupt former province of Russia that motivates so much support from US and EU leaders? Why are the political and media narratives about Ukrainian democracy and not tyrannical oligarchs? Why does the Biden administration persevere in this policy when the July 2022 CNN poll clearly showed that most Americans were against further funding? Politics is a transactional affair, and Ukraine is a very resource rich area; the answers to these questions can be found in those realities.   

“What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?” Ron Paul

“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and everyone knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.” H. L. Mencken

Menken got it right in the first part of his quote above, but not so much the second; most Americans today likely do not give this any thought at all as they live in the illusion that these two things are the same. The word liberty is seldom even used by politicians or the media; instead, what we hear from Democrats, Republicans and the media is how everything they don’t like puts “…democracy at risk…” or is a “…threat to democracy…”. For politicians, everything they don’t like is a threat to their power, and what they really don’t like is when they’re called out on that; this is the “trigger” for their most vicious rants.

Democracy blurs the differences between the state and the people, between government and society; its goal is to somehow make everyone equal, not in opportunity, but in outcome. If an individual loses the focus on that goal in any way, on any subject, and speaks or writes something contrarian, they are spreading misinformation, hate or fake news; consequently, free speech becomes a problem for the state because it allows the expression of ideas that pose a threat to that goal.

Recently, Bill Gates supported the idea of a global digital ID system to track behavior and facilitate identification of those creating misinformation; he lamented the fact that “The U.S. is a tough one because we have the notion of the First Amendment.” Apparently, Bill Gates does not value liberty as rights are now just a notion, no longer an essential element of humanism or the Constitution; elitism is inevitable in a democracy contrary to its professed goal of equality because it is a government ruled by the mob, which is represented by political parties that in turn are ruled by those who control them, such as Bill Gates.

Politicians pay homage to democracy to facilitate state power and not because they value liberty; they use the ballot box as a tool to create the illusion of legitimacy for an increase in state power mandated by the people. The consequence of the democratic process is an unrelenting evolution to collectivism; it’s easier to wield power over the many if they become one. The US population is approximately 346M people; that includes a federal government, civilian and military, of approximately 5.75M people. It takes a huge bureaucracy to manage such a large democracy; perhaps it’s not so much that liberty is a threat to democracy as it is a threat to bureaucracy. A managed democracy benefits the managers who, in the name of democracy, decide who the beneficiaries are.

If politicians tell us that saving democracy means voting for only their party, but also that democracy is for all the people, then there is a contradiction in their narrative; it is a useful narrative if the intent is to vilify all those who don’t agree with them, and successful for convincing the ignorant they’re right. The political science synonym for democracy and oligarchy is ochlocracy, literally mob rule; as noted above, democracies inevitably create an oligarchy, popularly called the elites. The elites arise in power the more that the people decline in their understanding of the difference between liberty and democracy; it is an inverse ratio as a result of an anti-intellectualism fostered by an ever increasing reliance on information technology – why think when someone can do that for you?

This phenomenon is most apparent in two areas, economics and foreign affairs; in both cases democracy is corrosive to liberty as it undermines rights in order to project power over people it falsely claims to represent. The simplest and most concise definition of economics is the study of humans making choices about what they produce, consume and trade; when government intervenes in those choices, you get socialism, and when they don’t, you get free markets – it’s not complicated as even Karl Marx recognized that “Democracy is the road to socialism.” In foreign affairs, a free society doesn’t impose its will on other societies, whereas a democracy seeks to remake other societies in its own image and likeness through interventionism, creating conflict for a regime change. In both cases democracy professes the moral imperative of the greater good.

Both progressivism and conservatism use racism and classism to promote their narratives about democracy; this creates a divisiveness which leads to chaos, an environment that best serves whichever mob is in power. It is liberty that provides the rights and mutual respect for all individuals in a society without imposing whatever the majority believes is the greater good; the politics of democracy have no such tolerance.

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams

“If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership, you are practicing followership.” Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was first called “The Iron Lady” in a Russian newspaper; initially thought to be derogatory, she and her supporters embraced the title as a compliment to her principled and uncompromising style. She became Great Britain’s first female prime minister after first securing leadership of her party, and contrary to what the polls had forecast. The same happened in Thatcher’s re-election bids, sometimes winning in a landslide. She became the longest serving prime minister in Great Britain’s history since Robert Walpole more than two centuries ago.

Polls are curious things as they attempt to forecast the most unpredictable thing on earth known as human behavior. Most pollsters use similar methods for surveying public opinion; the most common are sampling by zip codes, computer-generated lists of phone numbers, or email addresses for online polling. The problem that arises is twofold, one being population density and the other composition of the questions. There’s actually another issue that is often ignored as there are still many Americans, especially senior citizens, who either disdain technology or have no access to it, effectively isolated from polling; maybe they’re the lucky ones.

For example, PEW uses zip codes, randomly taking an address from each to harvest a pool of about 10K potential respondents; the problem is there are over 41K zip codes in the US and the distribution is by population density, not geography. Consequently, you get far more zip codes in urban areas that are predominantly Democratic than rural areas that are predominantly Republican; this skews your data field despite being chosen randomly.

The composition of polling questions can be influenced by whomever is in charge of doing so. Richard Wike is director of global attitudes research at Pew Research Center; previously, he was senior associate for international and corporate clients at GQR Research, a Democratic polling firm established by Stanley Greenberg in 1980. It is fair to be concerned that the composition of PEW’s survey questions will be structured for answers compatible with those of the pollster.

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative organization often in support of the RNC; they conduct polling using RMG Research, founded by Scott Rasmussen in 2003. While promoted as being non-partisan, they are Republican aligned. They use some novel methods like video and audio polling, but their respondent base is not clear. They call their work “Counter Polling” but that’s not clearly defined. For example, RMG conducted a poll regarding the support for additional funding for Ukraine and found the vague result of wanning interest in doing so; questions were prefaced by Ukraine not being a member of NATO and not having any treaty with the US. While this is factually true, its inclusion as a preface to the question shades it reflectively and provides the respondent with a qualified context in which to answer.

The above does not mean all pollsters are inherently biased, but it does question the value and the accuracy that any poll can provide depending on who the pollsters and respondents are, and the composition of the questions asked. Many pollsters mail, email or text surveys with questions that are to be answered as multiple-choice, single-choice, or with options like yes-or-no, or true-or-false; this is efficient but the responses to this format depend as much on the composition of questions as on the viewpoints of respondents. This becomes especially relevant with the American electorate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans at about 30% each, with the largest segment being independents at about 40%.

According to most pollsters themselves, polls have been about 60% accurate historically. That should not be surprising when we consider that polls reflect mostly the population of their polling base more than the predictable results from voters; random sampling by computer programming does not assure accuracy of results, especially given political demographics that are so skewed geographically, which is becoming even more fluid with the increase of US migrations.

Curiously, most polls do not focus on third-party candidates. The third largest national political party is the Libertarian Party; both then incumbent presidential candidate Biden and former President Trump made overtures to the party for support, but few pollsters ever bothered to find out where Libertarians stand with either candidate. Most pollsters have made the mistake in the past, and apparently again now, that Libertarians would vote for the party’s candidate, Chase Oliver; this ignores the fact that many Libertarians vote for Democratic and Republican candidates. The Libertarian Party presidential candidate on average gets only 3% of the vote, while Libertarians overall represent about 19% of the total electorate; the same crossover occurs among other third parties, but most polls do not account for this.

Another aspect that often skews poll results relative to outcomes is the effect that principles versus affiliations have on a respondent’s answers; people who evaluate a candidate by their own principles, even when they bother to respond to pollsters at all, may answer a question by its context implying affiliation, when that’s not their intent. Given the large composition of the electorate as independent, this adds another complexity to polling that can’t be mathematically resolved.

In economics it is human action that accounts for outcomes; the same is true in all human activities, and the larger the society, the more unpredictable the outcome. Taking a sampling of any society in an effort to accurately predict an outcome like an election is extremely difficult; in that context, having a 60% success rate is not all that bad. In baseball, the highest batting average recorded to date is .466, a statistic based on outcomes, not forecasts; relying on polls to know who might win an election is to rely on the opinions of others, fair in marketing the candidate, marginally successful in predicting results.

In the 2024 presidential election, the polls rate the race as a dead heat with an estimated margin of error somewhere around 3%, which may be very generous if not wishful thinking; realistically, it should be more like 5% given the biases and variables in polling. Both major candidates carry a lot of negative baggage which may also contribute to the complexities in current polling. Chase Oliver as mentioned above humorously summed up his advantages as a candidate prior to Biden’s withdrawal with “I’m under the age of 80, I speak in complete sentences, I’m not a convicted felon; it’s a very low bar, but I’ve managed to clear that.”

This is not just an issue for polls in the US when we look at Argentina last December where now President Javier Milei was tied in the polls but wound up getting the highest number of votes in Argentina’s history. Then consider the Israeli polls where Benjamin Netanyahu often trails, but as he repeatedly says “I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.” Americans would be better off ignoring polls and really listen to what a candidate says, or fails to say, and think about what value they would bring to their lives so they can better judge who to vote for. Warren Buffet is one of the most successful investors of our time by making value the ultimate goal, and knowing that “A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” H. L. Mencken

Mencken was a very astute observer of politics, especially of what many Americans refer to as the democratic process; his cleareyed analyses of its failures to preserve liberty and devolve into the extreme partisanship that leads to tyranny has proven prescient considering the state of American politics. Mencken was also a very outspoken critic of censorship, which was almost as rampant as it is today.

Speaking of today, it’s 9/11, yet in last night’s presidential debate, we never got any discussion about that. What the media said we were supposed to finally learn is what Harris’ policies actually are given her denial of what they were as VP of the current administration and earlier in her career; we didn’t get that either. We were supposed to hear Trump stick to policy points; we got little of that.  What we got out of this debate is that we have two candidates with childish ambitions and a startling amount of incompetence; in other words, we learned nothing new. We also learned nothing about how either candidate intends to address the $35T debt.

What we already knew and heard more of is that both will be raising taxes, Harris with higher rates to fund spending and Trump with tariffs to create jobs; both will contribute to inflation, the most insidious of all taxes. Neither candidate understands that the reason for America’s involvement in endless wars is a result of the failed policy of US interventionism. Neither candidate expressed a concern for the constitutional mandate of a separation of powers as they spoke of executive action regarding health care, abortion, the economy or foreign policy.

Both candidates lied a lot, but it was not the job of the sponsoring network or its moderators to fact check either one; the purpose of a debate is for the electorate to judge the candidates, not for the sponsor or moderators to do so. The fact that ABC did so exposes the outcome to partisan prejudice; the performance and credibility of the candidates as judged by the voters is the purpose of the debate. The sponsor and its moderators should abstain from any and all commentary in order to project objectivity and leave it for other members of the press to opine to the public.

A critical issue that was completely ignored in the debate was free speech, especially if we consider that Elon Musk endorses Trump, yet Trump never brought up the horrors exposed in the Twitter Files and Zuckerberg’s recent testimony regarding the same malpractice with Facebook that would indict the current administration’s attempts at proxy censorship; maybe that was intentional given both the media and the candidates’ tendencies to exaggerate, deceive or just outright lie. It should be apparent to us that we are being played for fools by both candidates, but unfortunately Mark Twain was right when he said that “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”