The Dubious ‘Golden Age’ Narrative Is Fueling The Rise Of The DSA

Last Sunday, because the Internet never rests? I received an op-ed from Larry Kudlow in my inbox.

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For those of you who don’t know…

“Lawrence Alan Kudlow is an American conservative broadcast news analyst, economist, columnist, journalist, political commentator, and radio personality. He is a financial news commentator for Fox Business and served as the director of the National Economic Council during the Trump administration from 2018 to 2021,” according to Wikipedia.

I’ve met Larry. He is a very nice guy.

That said, Kudlow is a standard-issue Washington, DC center-right economy guy. He is exactly the type of Republican economist that is killing the Republican Party.

Kudlow’s economic messaging is the Republicans’ economic messaging. And it is more tone deaf than a year’s worth of nationwide karaoke contests.

Here’s Kudlow’s Sunday headline and sub-head…

“Prosperity Is Not Enough”

“The economy is booming, but voters remain unconvinced. With the Democratic left gaining ground, Republicans risk squandering an advantage they should own.” You need not read another word to get the entire gist of how wrong Kudlow is.

“Prosperity is not enough”

What prosperity? The US is almost $40 trillion in debt. $4 trillion of that has been spent since President Trump was last sworn in.

I don’t care what else you think is going on. A country running up that much debt is absolutely NOT prosperous.

If I’m making $60,000 a year — but I’m adding $30,000 per year to my credit cards? You wouldn’t call it “prosperity.”

Oh, and Social Security and Medicare are at least $175 trillion short.

The US is absolutely not a land of “prosperity.”

“The economy is booming”

No. It is not. Unless you’re already a billionaire. Because the US economy isn’t free-market capitalism.

You’ve heard the phrase “K-shaped economy,” yes? That’s where the rich get rapidly richer, the upper arm of the K. While the rest of us get rapidly poorer, the lower arm of the K.

K-ing the economy is what the US does. In fact, it is what the US has done for several decades: “After being relatively low in the 1960s and 1970s, inequality began rising sharply from the 1980s onward. By 2025, it reached its highest level in modern U.S. history….”

“According to the Federal Reserve, the net worth of America’s top 1% reached a record share of nearly 32% of total U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025. In contrast, the bottom 50% of Americans together held only about 2.5% of total net wealth,” according to Economics Insider.

Which undoubtedly means a corresponding disparity in incomes: “The Gini index — a measure of income distribution ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 100 (maximum inequality) — was 34.7 in 1980, the lowest in the 1965–2025 period economicsinsider.com. By 2025, it had climbed to 42, the highest in six decades,” according to Economics Insider.

US stock markets are hitting record highs. But the bottom half of U.S. households own just 2.5 percent of the nation’s stock market wealth, according to the Federal Reserve.

Oh, and the US population currently holds a record personal debt total of almost $19 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Moreover, 25 percent of Americans now use Buy Now Pay Later options for groceries, according to the Urban Institute.

None of this indicates a booming economy.

“Voters remain unconvinced”

Of course, they remain unconvinced. There is nothing by which to be convinced. There is no prosperity. The economy isn’t booming.

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Voters have been living all of this horrendous reality. And then some. They aren’t DC Delusional. They can’t afford to be.

“With the Democratic left gaining ground, Republicans risk squandering an advantage they should own.”

That’s Kudlow also missing the entirety of that point.

There isn’t any advantage for Republicans to own. The economy stinks on ice.

And it certainly appears he bizarrely thinks “the Democratic left is gaining ground,” totally unrelated to the economy. Because he bizarrely thinks the economy is “booming.”

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are on the rise precisely because Trump, Kudlow, and the Republicans are so delusional about the economy.

Americans are hurting economically. Badly.

Americans see the economy already shedding jobs — it is only “unexpectedly” in DC.

Americans are told Artificial Intelligence (AI) will, in the next several years, take most of their jobs. And they see “President Trump, Tech Leaders Unite to Power American AI Dominance.”

Americans see AI’s data centers destroying their neighborhoods. And thousands of new, ever-larger data centers are being planned. And they see President Trump say, “You can’t fight it. You have to go with it.”

Americans see a pointless, unwinnable, and apparently endless Iran war massively increasing prices and inflation. And they hear President Trump say, “I love the inflation.”

Americans hear President Trump repeatedly call all of this nightmare mess “A Golden Age.”

And Americans read Kudlow, wondering why this “booming” “prosperity” isn’t resonating with them.

Totally and completely out of touch is no way to win elections. Or the American people.

Democratic Socialists are advancing because they are the only ones acknowledging there is a problem.

Seton Motley is a consultant and the founder and president of Less Government, an organization dedicated to, well, less government.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

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