Photo by uba-foto, iStockphoto
Photo by uba-foto, iStockphoto
Inclusion versus exclusion is the make-break point of this country. Inclusion made it as great as it is. Trump's criminally addled mind has him thinking that excluding people is what needs to happen—millions of them.
Joe Biden had a strategy for the economy. It was working. Using talents and knowledge of over four decades in public service he managed to get laws passed that injected massive sums into our society. Don’t take my word for it. Go check yourself and look at the numbers.
These funds were not some giveaway of sending checks to everyone to get them to spend more. But investments in infrastructure projects and strategic industries which resulted in the generation of more jobs, income, prosperity and an on-fire growing economic environment.
Comparing Biden’s strategy to the the last three months with Trump shows a stark difference in views. Starting with the abject stupidity of Trump’s tariffs ideas, things only go downhill from there. It should be obvious to everyone by now, except Trump of course, that tariffs are not paid for by foreign exporters but by the American importers of their products. And those costs will end up coming from our personal pockets. So his tariffs are actually an unlegislated tax on each of us.
Trump and his billionaire buddies have this idea that helping ordinary people somehow screws them. Not surprising when you think about it. Criminally minded people feel they have to take from others because they cannot actually produce anything on their own. Criminals have problems visualizing sequences of action and especially consequences.
This makes them see ever expanding bank accounts as some sort of static ideal rather than a consequence of having worked and produced and gotten paid for it like regular people. So Trump’s twisted logic makes sense to anyone in this mindset.
But if you simply trace it out, the reality is the opposite of what is being touted. Let’s take Trump and Musk’s whole DOGE strategy. These guys and their fanboys have branded almost every expenditure from the government as “fraud and waste” and have been spouting a false narrative of how much money they are “saving.”
The reality is that they are simply undoing decades of investment into the government’s functions—investments that support normal everyday Americans. Of course there is the fact that Musk targeted every agency that ever tried to regulate his businesses for staff reductions and destruction—no conflict of interest there. But this is simply sucking money back out of society. It is designed to exclude people from the economy, just like the mass deportation strategy is doing.
I am not an economist yet it is obvious to me that you cannot expand an economy by excluding millions of people from it. Plainly stated, doing this can’t help but create a recession at the very least and there will be other longer-term problems. For example, deporting all the “illegals” will also eliminate an estimated $25 billion per year of Social Security contributions that these folks pay INTO the system. The stress this places on the Social Security system plays right into the hands of Trump’s supporters that want to privatize that system when it “fails” so they can profit from “managing” it.
It is the overall strategy of exclusion that Trump and his Project 2025 people are practicing that we really need to confront. This is the stark difference between what Biden did accomplish and what Trump is trying to undo. No matter his flaws, Biden was relentlessly practicing inclusion. From the get-go he worked to include everyone in the economy and increase their prosperity—especially those in the middle class. In case anyone missed the memo, this strategy worked like gangbusters with a roaring economic and employment stats.
Trump’s billionaire buddies pushed back against Biden’s strategy with rampant price gouging and then turned around and blamed him for the resulting “inflation.” All the blame laid on Biden and Harris during the campaign last year was never properly seen as, “Sure we caused the inflation but it was Biden’s fault because he didn’t stop us.” Democrats never got anywhere near utilizing that kind of messaging despite tons of documentation of corporate boards bragging about their pricing hikes and resulting windfall profits.
Meanwhile back at Congress, MAGA Republicans are at loggerheads about how much more money to shift away from normal Americans and hand over to Trump’s wannabe trillionaires. The fact that the American public at large already withstands the highest medical costs of any industrialized country in the world, these guys are perfectly willing to throw millions more under the medical debt bus by gutting Medicaid. But the hardest core fanatics in Congress didn’t think those cuts are deep enough and held out for more—and not got them. Exclusion.
Inclusion versus exclusion is the make-break point of this country. Inclusion made it as great as it is. Trump’s criminally addled mind has him thinking that excluding people is what needs to happen—millions of them. But in the end that will only worsen things. Then rest assured, “only he” will be able to fix the situation—by excluding millions more. Don’t be surprised if some of those end up being any of us.
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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