Wordy

I believe in creating a country where anyone can do anything and achieve their own American dream.
Nikki Haley

Given that Ambassador Haley is a Republican, I would expect her to frame things this way. But I did notice that she spoke of "creating" such a country. One can take this as a de-facto admission that it does not exist in the present. I'm curious as to what she thinks is missing.

Of course, there is also the small matter of just what "a country where anyone can do anything" looks like in practice. Part of the reason why this is such a popular platitude is that it's easy for people to simply layer what they want to understand the world to be like over it, and call it good. But the real world, as it were, has a habit of not conforming itself to what people might want it to look like. In my conversations with conservatives, I've noticed a belief in what could be called Infinite Demand. One can think of this as what allows Supply-Side economics to work; government policies lower the cost of production, and businesses respond by increasing Aggregate Supply (basically, the sum total of the goods and services available for people to purchase in the economy). As Aggregate Supply expands, prices come down, which, in turn, increases demand, presumably to the degree that company revenues increase, even though unit prices are lower. (Did you follow all of that?) In any event, this where the concept of Infinite Demand comes into play, because the idea that "anyone can do anything" and be successful at it presupposes that the increased supply of whatever good or service that "anyone" creates will be absorbed by the market at a price point that allows it to be profitable. And therein tends to lie the rub. Because for anyone to be able to do anything on the way to achieving their own understanding of the American Dream, the demand for goods and services has to track with the supply; otherwise, it's likely that some number of people are going to pursue careers for which there won't be enough demand to allow them to sustain themselves.

Of course, it's possible to read Ambassador Haley's statement in a way that presumes that training in skills will always be available, so that people can quickly transfer to jobs where labor is scarce, and fund their American Dream in that way. But it's doubtful that even as President, that Ambassador Haley would have enough pull with Congressional Republicans to be able to fund that sort of initiative.

I'm aware that paying very much attention to platitudes is always a fools errand. But people do form opinions of candidates around them. And even though Ambassador Haley has pretty much no chance of securing the Republican nomination this time around, it's a safe bet that she'll make an attempt in 2028.