I am presently in the 24% tax bracket. Things get tight at times, but I am able to largely live comfortably and also assist struggling family members from time to time.
Being a disabled person with a high likelihood of having my condition worsening to force early retirement and potentially a reliance on Social Security Disability, my economic calculus is a bit murky due to not being able to predict if or when that situation might arise.
Electing more right-wing people who would gut 'entitlements' to reduce taxes now would probably not save me a whole lot. Though what I do save could go into retirement and hopefully become a compounding asset. But then I also have to worry about broader market performance, which could be way up or way down when my time comes to need it.
Electing more left-wing people are likely to preserve or perhaps even strengthen the so called 'entitlements' programs at the cost of some higher taxes in the present. My benefits are going to be more certain, but assuring the stability of those payouts could mean missing a market boom or a prolonged inflationary spike.
If I am being selfish and only considering how I myself am best off personally, I am going to go with the left-wing route. My ceiling is a lot lower, but the floor is more stable. And for me, peace of mind is worth its weight in gold.
However, if I did wish to play fortune teller and try to predict how policy would move markets, I would also pick left-wing. Right wing policy is great for supercharging economies in the short term, but that often comes at the cost of long term stability. I greatly favor long term stability over short term boom and bust cycles.
Biden is actually a strong contender on that list. Which is not something I expected to say 4 years ago. Biden himself has been better than I expected in a lot of areas but still misses here and there. The administration he has chosen to surround himself with has largely been stellar. One of my bigger economic fears for the future is corporations running away with too much power, and Biden's FTC is the first one actively doing its job in challenging M&A since I've been of voting age, at least.
From an economic best situation for the long term economic stability of myself and my family, I do believe Biden is currently the best choice. I would love to go harder left with someone like West because I am far left of Biden myself. However, I understand math and momentum, and cutting direction too hard and too fast would be ugly and create a lot of pain. Biden's administration has been moving many things in a better direction. Maybe not the way I want to go, but far better than we've been going. It's going to take time to see all of those results though. And I worry about all of it being undone if he loses the next election.
