> JD Vance has approximately as much policy control in a Trump administration as Kamala Harris would.
VPs don’t have “policy control” but they do have access to the President and the opportunity to influence them. If Trump wins, Vance will be meeting with Trump regularly, and have the opportunity to try to talk Trump into things - I doubt Vance will always succeed, but he probably will sometimes. Whereas a defeated Harris won’t be meeting Trump regularly and so will lack the same opportunity.
This varies from administration to administration. On the economic portfolio, there is zero indication Vance has remit. (From what I can tell, zero involvement in cabinet decisions, for example.)
> From what I can tell, zero involvement in cabinet decisions, for example.
The VP is ex officio a member of the Cabinet of the United States, as as such is involved in "cabinet decisions". (Strictly speaking the US Cabinet, unlike the Cabinet in Commonwealth countries, doesn't actually make decisions, it just recommends decisions to the President, who can either accept the Cabinet's recommendation or choose to overrule it.)
While originally the US Cabinet did not include the VP – George Washington was under the belief the VP was a member of the legislative rather than executive branch, due to the VP's role as President of the Senate, and as such did not belong in the Cabinet, hence he excluded John Adams – by the 20th century it became standard practice for VPs to be included in the Cabinet. Every Cabinet in recent decades has included the VP. Pence as VP was part of Trump's Cabinet, just as Harris as VP is a member of Biden's.
Now, the Cabinet is just a tradition, it is not established or required by law or the Constitution – so any President could at any time abolish it, or alter its membership. If Trump wins, there would be nothing legally stopping him from breaking with tradition and excluding Vance from his Cabinet. But I'm not aware of any concrete evidence suggesting Trump will actually do that.
The VP has a high level of access to the President, independently from being the most senior member of Cabinet (the President is not technically a member). Of course, the VP doesn't have the legal right to meet with the President, so if a President comes to dislike a VP, they have the right to freeze the VP out and refuse to meet with them. But again, no reason at present to suspect Trump would do that to Vance if Trump wins. On the contrary, Trump (not without reason) views Vance as a "mini-me", and as such may be more likely to listen to him than to other potential advisors. Many critics accuse Vance of sycophancy, but for Trump that's less a criticism and more of a positive.
> VP is ex officio a member of the Cabinet of the United States, as as such is involved in "cabinet decisions"
Sorry, I meant agency appointments. Not cabinet decisions. That game is in its last inning right now with both campaigns. From what I know, Vance has not been consulted on economic considerations outside crypto.
I am going to argue slightly on your wording although I fully acknowledge the numbers do line up with your timeline.
RE the budget surplus, the dotcom boom led to a large increase in taxes collected which collapsed from 2000 to 2003. Similarly countries naturally spend more when their population is either skewing old or skewing young. The US hit peak working-age demographics during the period you are describing. The outcome doesn't seem to be "engineered" so much as accidental. In fact taxes on balance were cut during this timeframe while significant contributors to the long term debt / future crisis were unleashed (glass steagall repeal which arguably led to the great financial crisis & federal loans for eduction were dramatically expanded without oversight to ensure the money was being well spent).
Similarly, the covid response caused an explosion in the budget deficit which I wouldn't blame squarely on "a candidate's economic policy". The 2023 deficit in real dollars and as a % of GDP the largest (by a fair amount!) outside of a war, economic crisis, or the covid response. This doesn't even count the ~400? billion in student loan forgiveness that was attempted and failed.
"Generally, looking at the last 30 years or so, it is evident that voters do not care about this issue very much" <- 100% agree.
My bias is that I don't give mulligans or asterisks to presidents[1]. Every administration faces a unique set of challenges, and some of those will be financial. Most of the others will involve large-scale finances. So I don't grant escapes to administrations that are hit by recession, war, or plague. That's literally part of the job.
How that relates to the (relevant!) factors you raise is that firstly, most of them were knowable at the time. Bush knew that tax revenue was falling when he proposed his tax cuts. He also planned two foreign wars without planning to pay for them. These were choices that were quite obviously, without the benefit of hindsight, going to lead to increased deficits.
Covid was unpredictable, but the administration had choices on how to handle the deficit spending. Notably, they did not choose to increase revenue in any meaningful way. And the administration was not blocked by Congress in this, raising revenue was simply not a concern mooted by the Executive. (They did not even add spring-loaded revenue increase that would trigger when the economy recovered.)
These choices to increase the deficit were made will roughly all the information we have now. Both choices were contemporaneously derided by deficit hawks; it is not a surprise that they raised the deficit.
But again, Dick Cheney was correct that deficits do not matter (to voters).
* 7 days per week although Sunday would only work 3 hr - this was because my boss could provide much more compensation because we were paid 1.5x hourly above 40 hours. He would illegally manually adjust my hours downwards in the computer system to ensure it didn't get too much out of hand :)
* Was promoted to "shift manager" after 6 months (meaningless title)
I agree with nearly all of your points:
* no breaks
* boss monitors waste, quality (customer complaints), service time per order
* regional competitions
* cleaning in downtime
* constant churn training new recruits who would suddenly quit
Your conclusion fast food is difficult seems off to me. The work is repetitive so each individual step requires little thought. To make a sandwhich you put the bread in oven 1 and click button 2 then you put the patty in oven 2 and click button 7. When it comes out you wrap, bag, add napkins, and hand it to the customer. Crucially when your shift is done you go home and don't care. There are no objectives that line employees care about at a quarterly level. You were able to move around the entire day and interact with people rather than being sedentary behind a screen. You didn't have to have any education or work experience beyond completing ~9 grade (compared to CS where the most common path in the US is 3 years of highschool, 4 years of college). Most employees at my location were young, more social, less attached, and better looking than my colleagues in big tech (ok myself included).
I would trade my new line of work for my old in a heartbeat if the compensation and career prospects were comparable.
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