A Roadmap for Voting in the 2024 Election
Your guide for deciding who to vote for
Ric Edelman: It's Tuesday, September 3rd, and I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. I've been getting a lot of questions from folks about the economic implications associated with the presidential election. Let me just share with you a couple of thoughts.
Don't ascribe too much impact of the election outcome on the stock market. I've done research. I talked about this in several of my books. We used to do webinars and seminars on this subject. Presidents do not have nearly as much impact on the stock market as you might think. They have a huge impact on the economy, but the economy and the stock market are two different things. So, I wouldn't get too upset either way as to what you think the outcome of the election might have for the next four years for the stock market. There is a big impact as I said, on the economy, on jobs, on inflation, on interest rates, and the value of the dollar relative to other currencies around the world. I'm not going to get too upset about that. We're worried about the stock market on a broader issue as there are, as I just said, implications economically and fiscally.
So how do you decide between Trump and Harris on this issue? Well, let me try to help you. If you're in the undecided camp, if you have not yet made a choice as to who you're going to vote for this year, let me try to help you with that dilemma because a lot of folks are just terribly conflicted over this and really struggling. So let me try to simplify it for you because of the incredible complexity associated with a decision like this. Many people become single issue voters. They try to take these complicated elements of what's happening and narrow it down to a single reason for their decision. So let me try to help you do that. First, you have to choose whether you're going to make this about personality or policy. It's entirely up to you.
This is not a right or wrong question. Each of us is going to make our decisions ourselves. You've got to decide, are you going to make a decision because you like someone or dislike someone, or are you going to make a decision because of that person's policies? In other words, you may have somebody that you dislike their personality, but you like their policies, and you've got to decide, therefore, which is more important to you? Liking them or liking their policies. If on the policy side, now you have to break that into two pieces. policies that personally benefit you or policies that benefit the country. And this can be a little bit of a difficult thing to do.
For example, Kamala Harris has offered a proposal to give all first-time home buyers $25,000 as a down payment on their home. Now, if you are one of those first-time home buyers who would qualify for this money from the government, you may say this policy personally benefits me. Therefore, I like it and I'm going to vote for Kamala. You could argue this is her way of buying votes. And this isn't a criticism of Kamala. Every politician does this. George Washington did it. He bought whiskey for people before the election. So, buying votes is a tried-and-true strategy, you know, where politicians say they're going to cut taxes or they're going to increase government services for you.
That's one illustration. Now, if you, as I said, are one of those first-time home buyers who would get $25,000 in benefits from Kamala Harris, you may say that policy personally benefits me. Or it personally benefits my kids. And that could give you an incentive to vote for Kamala, or you may reach the conclusion that, wait a minute, how much is that going to cost? Where is Kamala going to get the money from? In fact, she has offered an incredible array of tax increases that she would make to fund this and other similar proposals. She wants to increase the top marginal income tax rate to 44.6%, the highest since 1986. She wants to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28%. And there’s no such thing as a corporate tax rate. If you raise corporate taxes, corporations merely raise the price of their products to pay for the tax. We pay corporate taxes, not corporations.
She wants to increase the estate tax. She wants to create a tax on stock trades. She wants to increase the Medicare tax. So, on the one hand, you could say this could benefit me to help me buy a house, but you could also say this harms the country by virtue of higher taxes, because the more people have to pay in taxes, the less money they have for their own personal savings or their own personal spending. If they have less money for their own personal spending, that hurts the economy because they're not going to be going and buying in the shopping malls and at restaurants the way that they used to. So, it's a wonderful illustration that you've got to choose if you're going to choose policies that benefit you personally, or policies that benefit the country broadly?
So that is really how undecideds have to figure out how you're going to choose between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Are you going to emphasize their personalities? Some would argue Donald Trump is a despicable individual, incredibly unlikable. Others would argue that Kamala Harris is a lightweight who simply laughs far too often and can't be taken seriously. I'll let you decide which of those two you believe is the truth. I'll let you decide whether either of those statements matter or not. Are you a personality-based voter or are you a policy-based voter?
And let me add one more element to the policy question. Presidents are generally remembered most for policies that didn't come up during the campaign. In other words, John Kennedy didn't run on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody was expecting that to happen. Every president has experienced an unexpected event during their tenure, and it was how they handled that event that made the difference as to whether history is remembering them favorably or unfavorably.
So, as you are looking at the policy proposals by both candidates, you also have to ask yourself about the about the so-called Black Swans. The issues they may face in office that none of us are presently anticipating. How might they handle the unexpected? So, that's what's in front of you right now, and that's what we're gonna be dealing with over the next couple of months.
And I'll be in there with you as we all try to sort all of this out.
One thing we're also going to be trying to sort out is the economic implications of the change in interest rates that are coming. For the first time in years, the Federal Reserve is expected to be cutting interest rates. It's going to be imminent. It could be this week. It’s certainly going to be this month. What does this mean when we have a reduction in interest rates for the first time in years? What's the impact on your portfolio? What does it mean for the bond market?
We're going to help you figure all this out next Wednesday, September 11th, at 1:00pm EDT. I'm doing a special webinar on this topic. And to help us delve into this, I'm bringing on board Jerome Schneider from PIMCO. PIMCO is the country's largest bond fund manager. And Jerome and I are going to share with you what you need to do to make adjustments in your client’s portfolios. How much cash should you hold these days? And what are the new fixed income opportunities? It's going to be a really good webinar. It's free. And if you're a financial advisor, you get one CE credit register right now. The link is in the show notes. And I look forward to seeing you next Wednesday, September 11th.
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Links from today’s show:
Ric's Library of Best-selling Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ric-Edelman/author/B000APYJPM
Rates are Poised to Drop, Now What? (9/11 Webinar – Register Now for Free!): https://www.thetayf.com/pages/rates-are-poised-to-drop-now-what
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