Dave Ramsey, a personal finance author and radio host, met with former President Donald Trump to talk about high prices and what can be done to bring them down. This is something that a lot of Ramsey’s fans are thinking about.
Ramsey began an interview that came out on Tuesday by saying that his show is not about politics but about money. He told his viewers, “What happens in your house is more important for your success than what happens in the White House.” But Ramsey said that because this election was so contentious, he asked the presidential candidates to “talk about ideas; talk about what’s going to happen.”
A famously conservative talk show host named Ramsey recently said about Harris and Trump, “neither one of these people are going to be your savior” and “neither one of [them] are fiscally responsible human beings.” President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris were both asked to do interviews by his team. Harris’s team was still looking over the request, he said on his show Monday.
Ramsey told Trump in the interview that his audience is “not worried about a lot of things, but they are worried about $8 eggs, $5 gas, 7% interest rates, and a house they can’t afford…because wages aren’t going up as fast as house prices.” It’s important to pay attention to this rising thing.
Here are some of the most important parts of the interview, which was about personal economic issues like energy prices, Social Security, and more:
Costs of energy and inflation
When Ramsey asked about high prices, like those for food and housing, Trump said that people were mostly worried about energy prices, which are strongly linked to how people feel about inflation. Trump said that if he were elected, the first thing he would do to help lower family costs is to lower energy prices by making more oil in the United States. It was going to be a lot of drilling, he told Ramsey. He said that lower oil prices would help interest rates go down because they “lift that weight off the shoulders of the economy and off the shoulders of inflation itself.”
After the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gas costs in the U.S. went up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of a gallon of gas rose more than 30% from August of last year to the same month five years before.
During last month’s presidential debate, Harris talked about energy prices and said that the Biden administration had increased domestic oil production. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any other country for the past six years. She also said that she would not ban fracking and that “we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”
Keeping Social Security safe
A center-left think tank called the Urban Institute says that the Social Security trust fund will run out of money in eight years because “growth in the workforce slows and more boomers collect benefits.” Increasing taxes or the retirement age are two options that could work.
“We need to save Social Security and make sure it stays strong.” Trump told Ramsey, “I don’t want to raise ages or anything.” Again, Trump accused “migrants” who get government aid, which is a claim that has been debunked many times. PoliFact says that immigrants who are legally allowed to work can’t get Social Security retirement benefits until they’ve worked and paid Social Security taxes for 10 years. On the other hand, immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally can’t get Social Security retirement benefits.
Harris wants to improve Social Security and Medicare by calling for “millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes.”
Charges and taxes
Trump said again that he wants to lower taxes on businesses and raise prices. Trump told Ramsey, “You have to make your product here, and then you have to pay 15% in corporate taxes. After that, I’m going to put tariffs on countries so they can’t come in and steal our business, so our businesses can now be competitive.”
The Brookings Institution says that Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will add almost $2 trillion to the debt by 2028.
The Tax Foundation, an independent group, says that Trump’s planned tariffs would cut the long-term gross domestic product by 0.8%, the capital stock by 0.7%, and the hours worked by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Researchers think that tariffs will eventually make prices go up for consumers. According to PolitiFact, the Harris campaign often talks about a $4,000-a-year price hike for middle-class families, which is the high end of the range of estimates.
In a new study, researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that Trump’s plans to raise tariffs and deport migrant workers would both make prices go up for consumers, which would make inflation worries worse.
How to “make great kids”
Ramsey asked Trump, “How do you raise great kids?” but the topic of child care costs, which have gone up sharply and are becoming a bigger worry for many American families, was never brought up.
“The one thing I always told my kids: don’t do drugs, drink alcohol, or smoke cigarettes,” he said. Trump talked about his alcoholic late brother Fred Trump Jr. “If you can believe it, I’ve never had a drink. I think it’s mostly because of my brother,” he said.
When asked how to teach kids to work hard, Trump said, “They have to like what they do.” It won’t work if you don’t love what you do.
