- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 76,719
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- Political Leaning
- Progressive
"As the war between Donald Trump and Elon Musk worsens, what’s truly odd about this whole spectacle is that the actual substantive disagreement between them seems to be of little interest to media observers. And when you strip away the trolling and shitposting, here’s what becomes clear: This is really a battle over how comprehensively to screw over poor and working people, largely to the benefit of the wealthy.
...Musk is angry about the $2.4 trillion those changes would add to the debt. But, crucially, he’s said little—if anything—about the role that those tax cuts for the rich would have in that outcome. He is primarily obsessed with the bill’s “pork,” meaning that he wants the bill to cut more spending—much, much more. Where would that money come from? Musk’s cuts via his Department of Government Efficiency have already decimated foreign aid and other programs, producing more starvation, disease, and death among the global poor. Given that DOGE searched for “waste, fraud, and abuse” and found very little, if Musk wants massive additional cuts, by definition they would fall more heavily on important government programs, almost certainly ones that low-income Americans rely upon.
...Trump, who’s mindful of the MAGA-GOP’s image as a “working-class party,” has insisted the GOP won’t cut Medicaid and will target only fraud. That’s a lie—even some MAGA Republicans warn that the bill’s deep Medicaid cuts will hammer Trump’s working-class base and, in so doing, expose how Trump is betraying MAGA’s “populist” aura. Indeed, Trump is actively deceiving his base by pretending those cuts only target fraud. Musk, similarly, would use the “waste, fraud, and abuse” canard to absolutely annihilate the state if he could.
For Trump and Musk alike, the U.S. state provides opportunities for seemingly endless grasping and taking. It’s something to manipulate for megalomaniacal ends—though Musk imagines he’s saving human “consciousness” in doing so, while Trump is largely using it to line his family’s pockets and build chintzy gold-plated playgrounds abroad for the pleasure of the global superrich. In the end, Musk would use deficit fears to gut the state more thoroughly than Trump would, while Trump seems more focused on dramatically reducing the tax burden of the wealthy and slashing the safety net to pay for it. They are at odds, but mainly because they merely fall at different places on the same spectrum of impulses. And those impulses all tilt toward the same place—toward making our society a less egalitarian, more unequal, meaner, crueler, and much more savage place."
Link
What the MSM doesn't tell us.
...Musk is angry about the $2.4 trillion those changes would add to the debt. But, crucially, he’s said little—if anything—about the role that those tax cuts for the rich would have in that outcome. He is primarily obsessed with the bill’s “pork,” meaning that he wants the bill to cut more spending—much, much more. Where would that money come from? Musk’s cuts via his Department of Government Efficiency have already decimated foreign aid and other programs, producing more starvation, disease, and death among the global poor. Given that DOGE searched for “waste, fraud, and abuse” and found very little, if Musk wants massive additional cuts, by definition they would fall more heavily on important government programs, almost certainly ones that low-income Americans rely upon.
...Trump, who’s mindful of the MAGA-GOP’s image as a “working-class party,” has insisted the GOP won’t cut Medicaid and will target only fraud. That’s a lie—even some MAGA Republicans warn that the bill’s deep Medicaid cuts will hammer Trump’s working-class base and, in so doing, expose how Trump is betraying MAGA’s “populist” aura. Indeed, Trump is actively deceiving his base by pretending those cuts only target fraud. Musk, similarly, would use the “waste, fraud, and abuse” canard to absolutely annihilate the state if he could.
For Trump and Musk alike, the U.S. state provides opportunities for seemingly endless grasping and taking. It’s something to manipulate for megalomaniacal ends—though Musk imagines he’s saving human “consciousness” in doing so, while Trump is largely using it to line his family’s pockets and build chintzy gold-plated playgrounds abroad for the pleasure of the global superrich. In the end, Musk would use deficit fears to gut the state more thoroughly than Trump would, while Trump seems more focused on dramatically reducing the tax burden of the wealthy and slashing the safety net to pay for it. They are at odds, but mainly because they merely fall at different places on the same spectrum of impulses. And those impulses all tilt toward the same place—toward making our society a less egalitarian, more unequal, meaner, crueler, and much more savage place."
Link
What the MSM doesn't tell us.
