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Trump's Social Security assault and the Great Wall of Tariffs [1]
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Date: 2025-05-04
Trump’s two most significant efforts to turn the clock back on America are rarely considered together, but should be. They will work synergisticly. His attack on Social Security dovetails with his tariffs to isolate and diminish Americans economically in a return to feudalism. His vision is an America controlled by a few ultra wealthy lords served by the masses competing with each other for low wage jobs. We are almost there now, but the worst is still to come.
He is aiming for a society of workers who have no option but to buy goods and services from few extremely wealthy Americans. There will be factories where workers labor under sweatshop conditions at low wages, with no chance of advancement. And, their wages are spent at the company store.
Don’t believe it? Just ask Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been busy trying to walk back and reinterpret Lutnick’s comments on the subject, the administration’s true intent is just what Lutnick said, generation after generation working at the same factory for the same wages.
Bessent wants you to believe that the dream is actually high tech manufacturing returning to the US, not textile mills. The problem with that is that Trump’s shotgun tariffs on everything from everybody is indiscriminate. They affect high tech and low tech too. Either he is totally inept or is not saying what his true intentions are. His actions put the lie to his words.
By taking over Social Security Trump seeks to control a significant portion of the income for 70 million Americans who have mostly left the workforce due to their age. By controlling the flow of Social Security money into the economy he can turn the nation’s prosperity on and off at will.
Social Security money going into the economy drives the spending of about one third of American consumers. By squeezing Social Security income, he can force people back to work at will, crowding the labor market.
Declining Social Security cash flowing into communities will further diminish income for those producing consumer goods or services. Those 120 million still working in the US will face even lower wages than they currently receive as more people in the US compete for fewer jobs.
His tariffs, if successful, will cut off consumer savings on low priced good from outside the United States and effectively put in place a regressive national sales tax aimed at the lower 90% of Americans. And they will choke off small US businesses which can no longer import from or export to the rest of the world. Result? More, and poorer workers into the labor pool.
With more US citizens seeking a dwindling number of jobs, earned income in the US will steadily decline. US workers will essentially become serfs trapped where they live, much like those in pre-revolutionary Russia ruled by the Czars or the US before the New Deal. Think about miners paying rent for homes owned by the mine, buying from a single store owned by the mine, for example.
Aside from attacking the retired and those still working directly to force their incomes down US citizens will effectively be cut off opportunities abroad as nations once our allies are put on our enemies list.
Trump’s ill informed vision of a golden age resembles the conditions that existed in America when Robber Barons ruled, workers organizing for better wages and conditions were attacked by the National Guard, and World War One pensioners were driven out of Washington DC at bayonet point for demanding their revoked pensions.
Considering Russia before 1917, where the nobility ruled, workers toiled in factories and fields at slave wages, and anyone who spoke out was subject to punishment without rule of law. The Russian revolution did not result in any real improvement for Russian citizens, until it was abandoned finally in the time of Ronald Reagan. Brief hopes of a turn toward western style democracy were dashed when Vladimir Putin gained power.
And now, Putin, DJ Trump’s idol, is steadily leading Russia back to the times before Reagan. Indeed, he wants to return to the time the Russian Empire, which was characterized as encompassing a sixth of the planet and inhabited by poor, backward, and illiterate serfs who while they were bound to the land on which they lived, could literally be sold like cattle. He imagines an empire in which sheer quantity out values quality. That is Putin’s ideal.
Likewise Trump wants to return America to a time of the many controlled absolutely by a very few ultra wealthy to the bane of the entire country. His attack on the Social Security System and his Great Wall of Tariffs may likely get us there.
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