Why is someone's highest priority of focus and most influential factor in an election economic? I'd argue that social issues should always be the top priority. From there, everything else trickles down. That's the real trickle-down economics. When economics are the highest priority, they're saying I want to be financially secure. I want to ensure that I'll have food on the table and a place to live and a family to sustainably support. I think this comes from a place of fear. A fear of survival. Hmm. The fear of survival in our ancestors in the world fighting animals has translated to fear of survival of financial adequacy. We've traded in the currency of food for the currency of money. It's also from a place of zero-sum game belief and fear. Oh! That makes sense then if it's that fear that's just been transposed across the millennia. It was a zero-sum game when humans would fight animals. There would be a winner and a loser, definitively. One side's victory invariably meant once side's defeat. As we've gone past that stage as a species, that general fear of survival has remained. But it's still wired in the same way as a winner-loser framework. If someone acquires money, then I won't have money. Which means I die. But the way money works, and the world in general, is with energy. What you appreciate, appreciates. By taking this fearful approach to money the way we did with hunting, we've limited ourselves to believing that only some can have money. And that it's at the expense of me not having money. This is the core of the scarcity mindset. That's why an abundance mindset is talked about everything if you want to increase wealth in the form of health, finance, emotion, spirituality, etc.
The other aspect here is why social issues should be number 1 for decision making. If we apply the scarcity mindset, based from fear, to social issues, then someone also wins or loses. People getting rights, equality, equity, etc. means you are losing something. But from an abundance mindset, them winning ALSO means you win. Progress towards lifting others up is in a way lifting yourself up. When people are enabled to do more, have more and be more (other than yourself), they can contribute to the world to be their best and highest self. Isn't that what we should all aim for? They might create something that improves your life financially, emotionally, comfort-wise, etc. That's a win-win.
The metaphor of soft and hard skills in the workplace can also be applied here. We put such an emphasis on the hard skills of coding, financial literacy, marketing, medicine, etc., but all that can be learned. What many successful people will say though is that the soft skills are the most invaluable to your growth and success. But how often do we work on those? We think we can focus on the soft skills later 'after' we've learned the hard skills. But really the soft skills, placed with higher priority but, combined with hard skills yield the best results. The soft skills actually enhance your ability to learn and inculcate the hard skills. So the same thing with economic and social issues. If we focus on social issues first, the economic stuff that were looking for will inevitably happen. It'll happen naturally. And not only naturally, but with even more impact!
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