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We asked several Mises Institute scholars and writers to come together to discuss the themes running through the 2020 election race and the most important policy issues for the American presidency. Here’s what they had to say.

In many years of lecturing at Mises University, Judge Napolitano has given the same—terrifying—ending to his introductory speech. Not until the horrors of this year did it dawn on me that perhaps his point has its basis in reality.

A belief still commonly held today by not just Marxists and socialists, but progressives of many stripes, is the insistence that employers are “stealing” part of their workers’ labor because the wage workers receive from their employer are less than the contribution of their labor to the final value (i.e., selling price) of the finished good.

Profit to the employer, the argument goes, is akin to theft from the workers. Profit is “surplus value” created by the worker but taken by the capitalist, they say.

President Trump has said often that he had “created the greatest economy the world has ever seen, until the China virus came.” Maybe some people believe that, but if the economy was so great why did the Fed keep interest rates at zero and its balance sheet at $4 trillion? 

The president is bragging about the third quarter GDP bump; however, as David Rosenberg tweeted, “Even with the Q3 GDP snapback, a snapback that is now stalling, 2020 likely goes down with a –4% print, by far the worst year for the economy in the post-WWII era.”

The United States election campaign is focused primarily on how much the next president will spend and the measures to combat coronavirus. Both issues should point to one conclusion: unlike what candidate Biden wants to do, the next United States president should not copy the European Union.

As we face a second wave of coronavirus outbreak in Europe, we know that the March measures and aggressive lockdowns were a grave mistake.