Workers must be dismayed when, arguably, the two most powerful people in the world, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, engage in a public, tit for tat argument, over a budget bill which enriches their own–Trump and Musk, economic class, while further impoverishing a large mass of the Nation’s population: the latter to be achieved through funding cuts to Medicaid, health-care more broadly, food assistance, education, Job Corps training, and so forth. I don’t believe the dispute to be an intentional diversionary tactic, but it certainly serves that purpose.
In just one example of the potential hardship the “Big Beautiful Bill” would impose on a section of the struggling masses would be the loss of the Job Corps program. This program provides job training, career assistance, and housing to 16 to 24 year olds from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. The loss of this program will literally put some of these young people on the streets, without housing, and with few meaningful job prospects.
Deficit spending resides in the midst of this debate. The continuation of tax reductions for the well-off, so the narrative goes, will unleash domestic economic activity so that the rest of us can get trickled-down upon, while generating deficit reducing tax revenue for the federal government. On the spending side, cutbacks in services to those who already take very little out of the system will do the trick.
There is a simple way to end deficit spending: Rather than borrow from wealthy individuals and other investment entities, these individuals and entities should be taxed at levels which prevent the need for deficit spending borrowing.
Higher tax rates aimed at the oligarchic class would solve two problems. It would reduce wealth and income disparity which undermines the democratic process, and if sufficient, would eliminate deficit spending. The solution is not that difficult, but the people need to demand change to current funding practices.
The U.S. could also lower its military budget, which will expand beyond $1 trillion under the current bill, while ending its policy of military Keynesianism in preparation for a self-induced war with China. This would be achievable through international negotiations which aim to reduce across-the-board global military expenditures, rather than the current U.S. policy which encourages allied nations to increase military budgets to 5% of GDP. Military budgets of 5% of GDP, for most nations, is 2 to 3 times the size of their current military budgets.
It appears, the strategy, knowingly or as a result of the natural processes of the capitalist model, is to move the surplus labor pool–itself a structural component of the capitalist model–into the military, which can then aggressively expand the Nation’s geographical presence–a presence necessary to feed the expansionist needs of the current economic model.
The world does not need to spend $2.7 trillion, $1 trillion of which the U.S. spends, annually, on global military related expenses. A reduction in military spending would shrink federal spending, or enable investment in productive capacity, rather than the current practice of investment in destructive capacity, the continuation of which can only end one way.
It appears that Washington favors the Central and South American economic model of broad wealth and income inequality which concentrates immense wealth among an oligarchic class at the top, while the broad masses struggle for daily existence. The power of the oligarchy has been on blatant display in the U.S. as Musk, who contributed more than $250 million to Trump’s re-election effort, early-on, exerted massive influence on government operations. He currently complains, in light of his campaign contributions, about not getting his way on the current budget bill.
It is beyond reason that Americans prefer to borrow from wealthy individuals and investment entities rather than tax these individuals and entities at levels which eliminate the need for deficit borrowing. The current unreasonable state of affairs is the result of a corporate press, owned by the same oligarchic forces, which spin supply-side, trickle down theories of economic progress. We have been living with this fairy tale for over 40 years and it is leading us towards global war, increased wealth and income disparity, and the loss of any semblance to a democratic nation.
None of this is to imply the oligarchy is evil, ill-intended, greedy, manipulative, or anything like that. Many may well hold authentic beliefs in their supply side ways and merely wish to enlighten the rest of the world as to its enlightened ways. Authentic, or inauthentic, matters little, for now. The point is the working people are getting crushed by oligarchic actions through cutbacks in the social safety net: a safety net essential to the capitalist model, due to the model’s inability to generate consistent, and adequately paid, full employment.
Workers, Democrat and Republican alike, need, through the vote, to assert and maintain what little democracy remains. This, in the short term, can only be achieved through the dismantlement of the oligarchic structure through higher tax rates on this layer of society. Elsewise, the workers will become mere uneducated, and consequently unwitting pawns in global war, immiserised through crushing debt, with little say in either matter, due to the loss of their democratic strength.