The Pain Is the Plan
MAGA is actively seeking to immiserate the country in order to cement their power over the rest of us.
Economic policy under Donald Trump has been an attack on most of the articles of faith that guided the post-World War Two consensus. Trump’s tariffs, a policy he had long promised, were prior to their implementation treated as a kind of high-stakes bluff by many pundits because it seemed implausible that any U.S. president would do something so disastrous for global trade. At the same time, Trump and the rest of the GOP have been able to do something they’ve promised for more than a decade: aggressively slash what remains of the social safety net in the United States. Both moves are massive blows to impoverished, working-class, and even middle-class Americans.
Taken together, this is all a recipe for economic disaster. MAGA Republicans gutting the social safety net isn’t a surprise if you were paying attention in the 2010s, but attacking the global trade system is transparently self-defeating. It’s a net loss for the country, but that might be the point. The economic consequences aren’t a side effect of making the rich richer, or the result of ignorance on Republicans’ part. For some of them, it increasingly feels like the pain is the plan: they’re actively seeking to immiserate the country in order to cement their power over the rest of us. …
Continue reading this article by Zeb Larson, “The Pain Is the Plan,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-pain-is-the-plan/