The Trump-Biden Stakes: Your Life Savings

On stage, Joe Biden had nothing to say to this point. But in a Pennsylvania town hall this month, he pooh-poohed the stock market as a concern only of the distant rich. “All that Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market, and telling them, ‘We’re going to do all right, everybody owns stock.’ How many of you all own stock in Scranton? In my neighborhood in Scranton, not a whole hell of a lot of people own stock.”

Mr. Biden’s critique might have made sense when he began his political career. But today, more than 100 million Americans save in 401(k)s, up from 19 million in 1990, along with many others using individual retirement accounts, 403(b)s and 529 college savings plans. And this growing “investor class” is increasingly aware. They receive frequent reports and can check their statements online anytime to see how their savings have grown, fallen or rebounded. They watched the Trump presidency drive up the value of their life savings.

“Wealth” is a slur to the left. Yet if you ask ordinary Americans not about their “wealth” but about their savings in a 401(k) or IRA, many can tell you its value to the penny. Skeptics argue that the market’s performance matters only to investors with the biggest stakes, but that argument gets things backward. Younger Americans, just beginning to save in an IRA or 401(k), have an even greater interest in pro-growth economic policies. They have more years to reap the benefits.

President Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation, energy policies, and appointment of self-restrained judges have put Americans on a faster course toward savings growth. On Election Day 2016, the last day when many Americans and Wall Street believed that we would be living under Obama-style economic policies, the S&P 500 stood at 2140. By this February, after three years of President Trump’s policies, the S&P peaked at 3385 right before the Covid shutdown—an increase of 56% since Mr. Trump was elected.

If your retirement savings were simply invested in the S&P during that period, they would have grown by 56%. Then they would have fallen during the Covid shutdown, but never far enough to drop to the Obama-Biden-era high of Nov. 8, 2016. Covid was not as damaging to your life savings as are Democratic policies.

Today the market has rebounded and is almost at its previous height. In contrast, nearly every single policy proposed by Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris would decrease the value of your life savings. Taxes on businesses. Taxes on workers. Regulations on industry. Strictly limiting independent-contractor status nationwide, as California did this year. Empowering unions to make labor less flexible, mobile and productive. And perhaps gravest, increasing the tax you’ll pay when you cash your stock out.

There is no idea proposed by the Democratic Party that will increase the value of your savings.

If Mr. Trump’s campaign can communicate this message to a fraction of the Americans whose life savings are at stake on Election Day, he will win. And the policies that brought increased wealth to tens of millions of people will be sustained for the youngest workers now beginning to build their own savings.

The president gets it. Two weeks before the debate, in his own Pennsylvania town hall, he said: “Look, we’re having a tremendous thing in the stock market, and that’s good for everybody. But people that aren’t rich own stock, and they have 401(k)s.”

The moderator tried to cut him off when he brought up the stock market. The president replied, “I’ve set records on the stock market even during the pandemic. And that doesn’t happen by accident.”

With barely a month before Election Day, President Trump should pose a few questions of his own to American voters: “Are your life savings better off than they were four years ago? Who do you trust to keep your 401(k) growing?

Mr. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.