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Folk economics and its role in Trump’s presidential campaign: an exploratory study

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Abstract

This article focuses on an area of study that may be called folk economics and that is currently not on the social science agenda. Folk economics has as its task to analyze and explain how people view the economy and how it works; what categories they use in doing so; and what effect this has on the economy and society. Existing studies in economics and sociology that are relevant to this type of study are presented and discussed. A theoretical framework for analyzing folk economic issues is suggested, centered on the distinction between episteme and doxa or between scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and everyday knowledge, on the other. This is then applied to an exploratory case study of the role that folk economics played in Trump’s presidential campaign. It is shown that Trump and his voters thought in a parallel way on key economic issues, especially protectionism.

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Notes

  1. Marion Fourcade addresses this issue in her history of economics in the United States, Britain, and France (Fourcade 2009). In the United States she says that especially Paul Krugman has attacked those who speak on economic topics and lack academic credentials in economics. “In countless articles, books and opinion pieces Krugman [has] impugned the authority of people without academic credentials” (Fourcade 2009, p. 76).

  2. Some exceptions worth mentioning are the following. In a well-known article in the American Economic Review (Hayek 1945) Friedrich Hayek pointed out the importance of local knowledge for businesspeople. He chided his fellow economists for not realizing that there exist other types of economic knowledge than academic knowledge: “Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place” (Hayek 1945, p. 521). Hayek’s attempt to draw attention to the importance of what he called “unorganized [economic] knowledge” was not followed up by other economists. Instead it was channeled into the economics of information, which addresses a different set of issues than folk economics. Something similar happened to two other attempts to study how economic actors perceive the way the economy works. One of these was made by Richard Lester in the 1940s, also that in the pages of the American Economic Review (Lester 1946). Lester had done empirical research that showed that businessmen do not think in terms of economic theory; and his arguments were dismissed as ignorant and irrelevant (e.g., Machlup 1946). This was also the fate of the attempt around the same time to show that studies of consumer confidence are important. This type of study was not accepted in the economics profession until several decades later (e.g., Dominitz and Manski 2004, p. 52).

  3. For references to earlier studies on the attitudes towards the economy of both the general public and of economists, see, e.g., Caplan 2011, p. 397, n. 8, 9; Caplan 2007, p. 218 n. 2.

  4. The term “folk economics” is rarely used by economists (for exceptions, see, e.g., Ravetz 1994; Power 1996). When they speak of issues that are related to this topic, they prefer to speak in terms of people’s ignorance of economics.

  5. In studies of this type what is researched is whether people understand basic economic principles of the type that you need to know when you deal with banks and other financial institutions. People are typically asked very simple questions to see if they understand, say, what compound interest is, how inflation can eat away at your savings, and why it is important to diversify risk when you invest. The following question is often used: “Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow: [more than $102; exactly $102; less than $102; do not know; refuse to answer]” (Lusardi and Mitchell 2014, p. 10).

  6. People’s low level of financial literacy is by now a well-known fact and considered an important problem by many authorities, in the United States and elsewhere. A large number of educational projects, with the goal of raising people’s level of economic knowledge, have also been carried out. Their impact, however, has been negligible (e.g., Willis 2011; Fernandes et al. 2014).

  7. It was not until quite recently that it was realized in mainstream economic theory—the most prestigious part of academic economics—that what people think of the economy can be of importance for the analysis. When this happened, it was very much due to the work of two psychologists, Tversky and Kahneman, and especially to their argument that people’s notions of fairness influence their economic actions (e.g., Sheffrin 2013; Thaler 2015, pp. 127–147). Tversky and Kahneman have also established that people tend to use rules of thumb in situations of uncertainty and that this introduces various forms of systematic bias into decisions. Work of this type has become very popular in the field of behavioral economics. Since the rules of thumb are primarily viewed as biases, however, this type of research has not led to much independent interest in how common people think about the economy. It is hard to survey all of economics, but the following should be said about attempts outside of mainstream economics to look at the knowledge people have of the economy. Michael Piore has, for example, for several decades worked with open-ended questions in studying how people think about the economy (e.g., Piore 1979, 2006). Economists working in central banks, including the Federal Reserve, have also recently become interested in a more anthropological approach to the economy (e.g., Holmes 2013, 2016). There is also Robert Shiller’s recent presidential address at the American Economic Association on narrative economics (Shiller 2017).

  8. There also exist some studies that contain information on how economic matters are seen in the household (e.g., Stack 1974; Zelizer 1994, 2005; Treas and Drobnič 2010). For some other relevant studies, see, e.g., Abolafia 1996; MacKenzie 2006; Harrington 2008. See also note 9.

  9. In the cases where this has been done, the primary emphasis has not been on how people look at the economy and how it works, but on specific groups of professionals and how its members carry out their tasks (e.g., Aspers 2001; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002; Lamont 2010; Beckert and Zafirovski 2006, pp. 511–513, 612–616). It can be added that when sociologists discuss ignorance, they usually focus on “lack of knowledge” as opposed to the structures that make up “the ignorance” (e.g., Moore and Tumin 1949; Gross 2007; Abbott 2010). A more subtle phenomenon is the phenomenon of so-called pluralistic ignorance, defined as the situation in which someone privately rejects a norm but follows it publicly since he or she erroneously believes that others believe in the norm (Katz and Allport 1931). In a recent edited volume on agnatology (defined as “the cultural production of ignorance and its study”), no contribution by a sociologist was included (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008, p. 1; see however Smithson’s essay on “Social Theories of Ignorance”, pp. 209–229).

  10. Charles Taylor’s notion of social imaginary comes close: “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (Taylor 2004, p. 23). See in this context also Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics by Jens Beckert (2016).

  11. The term “discourse community” is primarily used in discussions of English literature (e.g., Borg 2003; Swales 2016). It is rarely used in sociology where the notion of field is more popular (but see, e.g., Wuthnow 1993).

  12. Here, as elsewhere in this article, by the standard view of economics is roughly meant the opinion of academic economists. Appendix 1 contains two statements by a large number of US economists who on point after point outline how Trump’s economic program differs from standard economic analyses. Appendix 2 contains some general statements by a large number of economists supporting Trump.

  13. To cite from an article based on an interview with Trump’s ghostwriter Tony Schwartz: “Schwartz believes that Trump’s short attention span has left him with ‘a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance. He [that is, Tony Schwartz] said, ‘That’s why he [Trump] so prefers TV as his first news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.’ He added, I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life. During the 18 months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment” (Mayer 2016).

  14. From the very beginning of his campaign Trump made clear that he did not have a high opinion of economists. In the speech in which he announced his decision to run for President he made an explicit reference to “the economists … who I’m not big believers in” (Trump 2015).

  15. Stiglitz and Krugman are Democrats, but also a well-known Republican economist such as Gregory Mankiw at Harvard is of the opinion that Trump is in need of some basic lessons in economics (Mankiw 2017). He also noted in March 2017 that “judging by those with whom Mr. Trump chooses to surround himself, it seems that the new president is averse to talking with professional economists” (Mankiw 2017). According to Barry Eichengreen (2017), “For US President Donald Trump, the measure of a country’s economic strength is its current-account balance –its exports of goods and services minus its imports. This idea is of course the worst kind of economic nonsense. It underpins the doctrine known as mercantilism, which comprises a hoary set of beliefs discredited more than two centuries ago.” For the texts of some letters signed by economists who are in favor of Trump as well as by some who are against him, see Appendices 1 and 2. According to one of the letters signed by economists against Trump, “He promotes magical thinking and conspiracy theories.” According to the text of economists in favor of Trump, “What America needs, and what Americans deserve, is an agenda of economic freedom.”

  16. Trump has a tarnished reputation as a businessman. According to Michael Lewis, “his willingness to borrow money he does not repay has led many Wall Street banks to refuse to do business with him” (Lewis 2016). In the view of Michael Bloomberg, Trump is a “con,” and according to George Soros, “an imposter and con man and a would-be dictator” (Hicks 2016; Crowe 2017). It has also been noted that “Trump does not have any experience as a CEO—at least in the sense that most of corporate America would recognize” (Micklethwait 2017).

  17. See note 12.

  18. In an interview with The Economist, from May 2017, Trump was asked “What is Trumponomics and how does it differ from standard Republican economics?” His answer was as follows: “Well it’s an interesting question. I don’t think it’s ever been asked quite that way. But it really has to do with self-respect as a nation. It has to do with trade deals that have to be fair, and somewhat reciprocal, if not fully reciprocal” (Economist 2017).

  19. Some people use the term “Trumponomics,” to summarize Trump’s economic views. Neil Fligstein prefers “Trumpism,” which he describes as a reaction against the liberal world order that the United States has tried to construct since WWII (Fligstein 2017). Bannon’s view of economic nationalism was described by him in the following way in an interview that was aired on television in September 2017: “Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system. Right? We go back to that. We look after our own. We look after our citizens, we look after our manufacturing base, and guess what? This country’s gonna be greater, more united, more powerful than it’s ever been. And it’s not—this is not astrophysics. OK? And by the way, that’s every nationality, every race, every religion, every sexual preference. As long as you’re a citizen of our country. As long as you’re an American citizen, you’re part of this populist, economic nationalist movement” (Rose 2017). For economic nationalism from a social science perspective, see, e.g., Baughn and Yaprak 1996. According to these authors, economic nationalism is explained as follows: “The readiness to support nationalist economic policy is a function of the perceived economic threat posed by foreign competition. Economic nationalism is linked with personal job insecurity, authoritarianism, and intolerance of ambiguity. Economic nationalism is also found to be negatively related to individual cosmopolitanism” (Baughn and Yaprak 1996, p. 759).

  20. Trump’s press releases, statements, and remarks at rallies can all be found at the website of The American Presidency Project. Some of his speeches at rallies are also available on YouTube, and these add information that a reading of the transcripts cannot communicate. By the time of the November election Trump had around 13 million followers on Twitter. For some information on Trump’s use of Twitter, see, e.g., Keegan 2016; Golbeck 2017. For the tweets themselves, see the Twitter Archive at http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/

  21. The texts to the debates are available at The American Presidency Project on the web. Trump refused to take part in the debate on January 28, 2016, which means that he participated in ten out of the eleven debates.

  22. The difference was 10% or more.

  23. The figures for “[being] harmed by free trade agreements” were 60% (Trump) versus 36% (Cruz) and 42% (Kasich); and for free trade agreements being “bad for U.S.”, 67% (Trump) versus 40% (Cruz) and 46% (Kasich). As to the other differences: for “U.S. economic system unfairly favors powerful” (61% Trump versus 45% Cruz and 51% Kasich); and for “less satisfied with personal finances” (50% Trump versus 38% Cruz and 24% Kasich; Pew Research 2016).

  24. “The dominant literature [in economics] on the topic of people’s views on free trade starts from the assumption that individuals are well-informed and that they choose one or another policy based on cost-benefit analysis” (Medrano and Braun 2012, p. 449). The article from which this quotation comes presents evidence that protectionism is strongly related to economic vulnerability.

  25. No figures were given for how many Democrats versus Republicans supported protectionism. According to a poll conducted in March 2016 by the Pew Research Center, however, many more Republicans (53%) than Democrats (34%) considered free trade agreements to be a “bad thing” (Stokes 2016).

  26. The Gallup question: “What do you think foreign trade means for America? Do you see foreign trade more as—an opportunity for economic growth through increased US exports or a threat to the economy from foreign imports” (Newport 2016). The Bloomberg question: “Turning now to trade, generally speaking, do you think US trade policy should have more restrictions on imported foreign goods to protect American jobs, or have fewer restrictions to enable American consumers to have the most choices and the lowest prices?” (Newport 2016). The comment of Gallup’s editor-in-chief was as follows: “The [Bloomberg] question includes the highly potent concept of “jobs.” If there is one thing I’ve learned about public opinion and the economy, it is that Americans react positively to the idea of creating more jobs. It’s the No. 1 thing Americans talk about when we ask them how to improve the economy, and a number of proposals made by the presidential candidates that include the idea of creating more jobs test extremely well. Thus, when this question includes the option to “protect American jobs,” it is not surprising that it receives a majority response” (Newport 2016).

  27. See the end of note 35 for the argument that while people say they are willing to pay more for products made in the United States, in reality they may not do so.

  28. According to Sue Halpern (2017), Parscale rather than Kushner was in charge. She also notes that the Trump campaign spent much money on advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. “In the course of the 2016 election, the Trump campaign ended up relying on three voter databases: the one supplied by Cambridge Analytica, with its 5000 data points on 220 million Americans including, according to its website, personality profiles on all of them; the RNC’s enhanced Voter Vault, which claims to have more than 300 terabytes of data, including 7,700,545,385 microtargeting data points on nearly 200 million voters; and its own custom-designed one, called Project Alamo, culled in part from the millions of small donors to the campaign and e-mail addresses gathered at rallies, from sales of campaign merchandise, and even from text messages sent to the campaign. Eventually, Project Alamo also came to include data from the other two databases.”

  29. According to Nielsen, the number of viewers of the three debates was 84, 66.5 and 71.6 million. To this should be added the number of people who streamed the debates as well as those who saw it in bars, restaurants, and the like. The number of people who streamed the first debate is estimated to have been 22, 800,000; and it includes YouTube, Facebook, CBS, CNN, Yahoo, and Twitter (Wikipedia 2017).

  30. During the presidential debates Trump referred to his experiences during the earlier part of his campaign of visiting communities all over the United States and seeing firsthand the effects of bad trade deals, the regulations of federal agencies like EPA, and the like: “I’ve visited so many communities. This has been such an incredible education for me … boy, did they suffer as NAFTA kicked in.… Boy, did they suffer. That was one of the worst things that’s ever been signed by our country (Trump 2016i, p. 11). The EPA is so restrictive that they are putting our energy companies out of business. And all you have to do is go to a great place like West Virginia or places like Ohio, which is phenomenal, or places like Pennsylvania and you see what they’re doing to the people, miners and others in the energy business. It’s a disgrace” (Trump 2016h, p. 20).

  31. In their study of the Tea Party, Skocpol and Williamson similarly noted that Tea Party supporters resented illegal immigrants more for using government resources and funds than for taking jobs away from them: “Tea Partiers regularly invoke illegal immigrants as prime examples of freeloaders who are draining public coffers. For social scientists and survey researchers, the usual way to get at economic worries about immigrants has long been to ask whether they take jobs from citizens. In the February 2011 poll of South Dakota Tea Party supporters, for example, 64% percent agreed that ‘illegal aliens are taking jobs away from South Dakotans.’ But in our interviews, Tea Partiers placed little emphasis on the threat of immigrants taking American jobs. Instead, the major concern was the illegitimate and costly use of government funds and services by illegal immigrants. Tea Party members base their moral condemnation on the fact that these are ‘lawbreakers’ who crossed the border without permission and thus are using American resources unfairly” (Skocpol and Williamson 2012, p. 71).

  32. See CNN Politics (2016). For the general election exit poll, which is carried out by Edison Research for the National Election Pool (a consortium of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and the Associated Press), see, e.g., Desilver 2016.

  33. One of the studies just cited (Carnes and Lupu 2017) is based on ANES data. The ANES has information on the condition of the nations’ economy and the respondent’s financial situation. The Current Population Study has some questions relating to working and being part of the labor force. Neither has the kind of data that would make it possible to carry out analyses along the lines of folk economics. In fact, both contain few questions on the economy.

  34. While ordinary election studies focus on the vote and what characterizes those who picked a certain candidate or party, the studies that could supply information suited to folk economics would have to proceed differently. In the latter case, you ideally want first to establish the discourse, and then what characterizes those who support this way of looking at how the economy works.

  35. For an enumeration of Trump’s broken economic promises, see, e.g., “Mr. Trump’s 10-Second Convictions” (New York Times 2017). During the campaign Trump said, for example, that he would wipe out the national debt, replace the low-interest policy of the Fed, and release his tax returns once he was President—all issues that he has later changed opinion on. “Mr. Trump said last year that he would close ‘special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but unfair to American workers.’ He then picked Stephen Schwarzman, a financier who has compared closing those loopholes to Hitler’s invasion of Poland” (New York Times 2017; see also, e.g., Rappeport 2017). According to another observer, “he [Trump] has stocked his administration with billionaires and lobbyists while turning over his economic program to a Wall Street banker” (Baker 2017). In all fairness it can be added that Trump’s voters may not hold on to their opinions neither, once it comes to testing them in reality. In the Buy American movement in the early 1990s, it was soon discovered by pollsters that while people said that they preferred to buy American products when asked in surveys, their behavior when they went shopping was different. The conclusion of a study of this movement—entitled Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism—concludes that “people wanted to Buy American if the price and quality were the same as imports” (Frank 2000, p. 241).

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Acknowledgments

For help with the general argument, I thank Michela Betta; and for help with Aristotle and Plato, Lambros Roumbanis. I am also very grateful to Karen Lucas, two reviewers for Theory and Society, Megan Doherty Bea, Alicia Eads, Meaghan Mingo, Trevor Pinch, and Kate Watkins.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 323 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Richard Swedberg

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Correspondence to Richard Swedberg.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Texts of economists against Trump

The first text, signed by 19 Nobel Laureates in economics, was published on line on October 31, 2016. The second letter, which published in Wall Street Journal on November 1, 2016, was signed by 370 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners and economists such as Francine Blau, Esther Duflo, and Eswar Prasad. Open letters against Trump’s economic policies have continued to come into existence also after he started his Presidency. For a letter on immigration, signed by 1, 470 economists, see Holtz-Eakin et al. 2017.

Text # 1

Open letter to the American People from recipients of the Sveriges Riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel

October 31, 2016

We are Nobel Laureates in Economics who strongly endorse and support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for President of the United States.

We have diverse views about many policy issues, such as how big a safety net the government should provide, how best to promote growth and innovation, and what tax rates and entitlement spending levels should be. But we have decided to sign this letter jointly to express our shared judgments that Hillary Clinton is eminently qualified to serve as President, and Donald Trump is unfit for this office.

Secretary Clinton has a long distinguished record of public service. When she puts forward serious proposals to invest in infrastructure, education, and innovation, and when she supports comprehensive immigration reform, she knows what she is talking about. She has shown that she believes in evidence-based policy-making, and she understands that we need to strengthen economic growth and to ensure that it produces broad-based prosperity. And she has the experience and temperament to manage the American economy in times of both strength and volatility.

By contrast, Donald Trump has no record of public service and offers an incoherent economic agenda. His reckless threats to start trade wars with several of our largest trading partners, his plan to deport millions of immigrants, his trillions of dollars of unfunded tax cuts, his casual suggestion that the United States could threaten default on its debt in order to renegotiate with our creditors as if Treasuries were a junk bond each of these proposals could jeopardize the foundations of American prosperity and the global economy. His other rash statements about many subjects outside economics have also raised very serious concerns.

We do not all agree with every one of Secretary Clinton’s proposals, but in this election, the choice is clear: Hillary Clinton is by far the superior presidential candidate for our economy and our country.

(Signatories)

Kenneth Arrow (1972)

Angus Deaton (2015)

Peter Diamond (2010)

Oliver Hart (2016)

Daniel Kahneman (2002)

Robert Lucas (1995)

Eric Maskin (2007)

Daniel McFadden (2000)

Robert Merton (1997)

Roger Myerson (2007)

Edmund Phelps (2006)

Alvin Roth (2012)

Thomas Sargent (2011)

Thomas Schelling (2005)

William Sharpe (1990)

Robert Shiller (2013)

Christopher Sims (2011)

Robert Solow (1987)

Joseph Stiglitz (2001)

Text # 2

We, the undersigned economists, represent a broad variety of areas of expertise and united in our opposition to Donald Trump. We recommend that voters choose a different candidate on the following grounds:

  • ♣

  • He degrades trust in vital public institutions that collect and disseminate information about the economy, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by spreading disinformation about the integrity of their work.

  • ♣

  • He has misled voters in states like Ohio and Michigan by asserting that the renegotiation of NAFTA or the imposition of tariffs on China would substantially increase employment in manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing’s share of employment has been declining since the 1970s and is mostly related to automation, not trade.

  • ♣

  • He claims to champion former manufacturing workers, but has no plan to assist their transition to well-compensated service sector positions. Instead, he has diverted the policy discussion to options that ignore both the reality of technological progress and the benefits of international trade.

  • ♣

  • He has misled the public by asserting that U.S. manufacturing has declined. The location and product composition of manufacturing has changed, but the level of output has more than doubled in the U.S. since the 1980s.

  • ♣

  • He has falsely suggested that trade is zero-sum and that the “toughness” of negotiators primarily drives trade deficits.

  • ♣

  • He has misled the public with false statements about trade agreements eroding national income and wealth. Although the gains have not been equally distributed, and this is an important discussion in itself — both mean income and mean wealth have risen substantially in the U.S. since the 1980s.

  • ♣

  • He has lowered the seriousness of the national dialogue by suggesting that the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Education would significantly reduce the fiscal deficit. A credible solution will require an increase in tax revenue and/or a reduction in spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Defense.

  • ♣

  • He claims he will eliminate the fiscal deficit, but has proposed a plan that would decrease tax revenue by $2.6 to $5.9 trillion over the next decade according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation.

  • ♣

  • He claims that he will reduce the trade deficit, but has proposed a reduction in public saving that is likely to increase it.

  • ♣

  • He uses immigration as a red herring to mislead voters about issues of economic importance, such as the stagnation of wages for households with low levels of education. Several forces are responsible for this, but immigration appears to play only a modest role. Focusing the dialogue on this channel, rather than more substantive channels, such as automation, diverts the public debate to unproductive policy options.

  • ♣

  • He has misled the electorate by asserting that the U.S.is one of the most heavily taxed countries. While the U.S. has a high top statutory corporate tax rate, the average effective rate is much lower, and taxes on income and consumption are relatively low. Overall, the U.S. has one of the lowest ratios of tax revenue to GDP in the OECD.

  • ♣

  • His statements reveal a deep ignorance of economics and an inability to listen to credible experts. He repeats fake and misleading economic statistics, and pushes fallacies about the VAT and trade competitiveness.

  • ♣

  • He promotes magical thinking and conspiracy theories over sober assessments of feasible economic policy options. Donald Trump is a dangerous, destructive choice for the country. He misinforms the electorate, degrades trust in public institutions with conspiracy theories, and promotes willful delusion over engagement with reality. If elected, he poses a unique danger to the functioning of democratic and economic institutions, and to the prosperity of the country. For these reasons, we strongly recommend that you do not vote for Donald Trump.

Appendix 2. Text of economists in favor of Trump

The following letter, published in The Hill on October 26, 2016, was signed by 306 economists including Eugene Fama, Arthur Laffer, and Paul Rubin.

Statement by economists concerned by Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda

The outcome of this year’s presidential election will influence the US economy for years to come. Should Hillary Clinton win that election, her outdated policy prescriptions won’t return our economy to the faster growth rates it once enjoyed. And without more economic growth, her agenda won’t result in more jobs or a higher national standard of living. Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda is wrong for America.

The U.S. economy is underperforming. Misguided federal policies have produced one of the slowest recoveries on record. Since early 2009, the economy has grown at an average annual rate of 2%. It could and should be growing 3 to 4%.

Hillary Clinton promises to repeat almost all of Obama’s policy mistakes. She wants yet another massive debt-financed public works program; she wants to raise tax rates on investment and incomes to nearly 50%; she wants to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $12 an hour and supports state and local efforts to hike theirs; she wants to stall America’s development of fossil fuels; she wants to continue the Obama administration’s regulatory assault on business and entrepreneurship; and she wants to double down on ObamaCare.

What America needs, and what Americans deserve, is an agenda of economic freedom: limited but effective government, policies that rely on and strengthen markets, pro-growth tax reform, sensible federal spending restraint, regulatory relief, sound money, and freedom to trade. These things are necessary if we are to revive American prosperity.

For these reasons and more, the undersigned urge everyone concerned about threats to American prosperity to reject Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised economic agenda.

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Swedberg, R. Folk economics and its role in Trump’s presidential campaign: an exploratory study. Theor Soc 47, 1–36 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9308-8

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