Winning On Growth With
Middle Out Economics

National elections are decided on economic issues, and polls have long found that voters trust Republicans more on the economy — regardless of the policies they're advancing or the reality of their economic performance. The reason is that unlike Democrats, Republicans have consistently advanced an overarching narrative about how the economy grows and how jobs are created. In the Republican story, the heroes are the job creators—the CEO or entrepreneur who creates jobs for tens of thousands of people. And the villain is the government that gets in their way, with high taxes and onerous regulations.

By contrast, Democrats have long promoted a wide range of popular policies but provided no clear and consistent counternarrative of how to grow the economy and create prosperity. Instead, Democrats have talked most about fairness.

Here’s the good news: we now have an alternative narrative about economic growth. This story beats their story. It wins on the economics. And it wins with the public.

That narrative is middle-out economics. And this website is all about giving you the tools you need to tell this story, change policy, move voters, and win elections.

The Problem

A mountain of empirical evidence proves that for decades, Democratic presidents have performed far better on the economy than Republican presidents. Why? Because even though Democrats have only recently begun to refer to our economic agenda in the language of middle-out economics, the basic principles have always been the same. Democrats have long advanced inclusive policies that center middle-class Americans, and what drives economic growth is including more people in the economy as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs.

This isn’t just opinion. It’s fact. Whatever figure you look at — whether it’s wage growth, GDP growth, unemployment rates, patents, the federal deficit or anything else — the country does better when Democrats are in charge than Republicans. Working people see their wages increase faster, the middle class grows, the stock market booms, and rich people do well too.

Better results, but no credit

As David Leonhardt explained in the New York Times, Democrats outperform Republicans by a huge margin on economic growth, progress, and virtually any other reasonable economic measure. And yet:

  • Traditional (and many progressive) economists are baffled by this disparity and cannot explain it.

  • Despite all the evidence to the contrary, most voters believe that Republicans are “better for the economy.”

How can this be? Are the views of economists and voters related? The answer is unequivocally yes. As the result of a successful long-term effort by the right wing to establish neoliberalism as the default way policymakers understand economic cause and effect, we have been living for decades in a world which has been totally dominated by neoliberal economic views and the trickle-down economic narrative. And when the views of academic economists further reinforce the dominant trickle-down narrative, the public has no tools to understand, recognize, or appreciate progressive economic accomplishments. Voters may like these progressive policies, but can’t fit them into their understanding of how the economy works.

The middle out narrative

Middle-out economics is a narrative created specifically to counter, and beat, trickle-down. Its heroes are ordinary working people, not rich capitalists. Its villains are those who cheat and exploit. The middle-out economic narrative embraces modern economic theory and empirical evidence.

The core of this narrative: A thriving middle class causes economic growth. The economy isn’t money or GDP or the stock market. It is people. And the more people we include in the economy robustly—as consumers, innovators, entrepreneurs, workers and citizens—the better the economy will perform. Inclusion causes economic progress.

The three pillars of middle out economic policy are:

1) INVEST IN AMERICA:

Invest in our country and our people to create good-paying jobs, high-quality schools and infrastructure, and a prosperous future for our nation.

2) PROMOTE COMPETITION:

Rein in monopolies and enable smaller businesses to compete, which spurs innovation, lowers prices, raises wages, and expands consumer choice.

3) EMPOWER WORKERS:

Raise wages, lower costs, and increase economic security to ensure hardworking Americans have the foundation they need to build a good life.

Democrats can win on growth

Republicans talk a big game about being the party of economic growth — but the trickle-down agenda of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the powerful, and wage suppression for everyone else is a scam. Republicans don’t create jobs by lowering wages and cutting taxes. And they don’t grow the economy. Just about the only thing they’ve grown is the bank accounts of their wealthy donors.

The plain fact is that the economy grows fastest when we build it from the middle out, because including people in a thriving middle class is actually the source of economic growth. After all, when more people have more money, that means more customers for more businesses.

Decades of trickle-down neoliberalism has obscured this basic reality. Until recently, Democratic and Republican policymakers alike have tended to believe that neoliberal policies are what grows the economy; the only real difference is that Democrats have tended to also favor policies that improve fairness. Democrats have still seen those “fairness” policies as slowing growth — they’ve just believed the trade-off was worthwhile.

But this understanding gets cause and effect exactly backwards. Today we are in the midst of a generational paradigm shift, led by President Biden, that intentionally focuses economic policy on growing and strengthening the middle class as the way to grow the economy. And it’s working. Wages are up, unemployment is down, investment is booming, and our country is better equipped for a successful future than in generations.

A transformative economic story

For the first time since Reagan, we have a President who understands that story is more powerful than policy. Literally almost every day, President Biden is telling a different, transformative economic story.

This paradigm shift from trickle-down to middle-out economics — both as a narrative and as a suite of policy choices — is the most profound revolution in economic policymaking since Reagan. It represents an opportunity to radically improve the lives of most Americans and secure our democracy for a generation. It also opens the door to Democratic political dominance that approaches FDR’s legacy.

Now it’s up to us to help make that case. It’s good politics, it’s good economics, and it’s exactly what we need to focus on to win elections, transform our economy, secure our democracy, and drive Democratic political dominance for the next generation.