2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (kos)
After spending the last four years whining about President Joe Biden’s envy-of-the-world economy , billionaire Elon Musk is promising to crater it if Donald Trump wins in November. A MAGA account on X posted the following: Musk, the world’s richest man , responded , “Sounds about right.” To be clear, Musk is confirming that his and Trump’s plan would “tumble” the markets and there would be an economic “storm.
” But hey, once people grokked the vibe and “realize[d]” that things were better in that economic hellscape, there would be rainbows, unicorns, and ponies. Of course, that’s nothing more than an economic fantasy. As of 2022, there were around 8 million undocumented workers in the U.
S., or about 5% of the total workforce —to say nothing of the people with temporary protected status, which Trump has promised to revoke . “The jump in jobs, along with immigrants’ consumption of goods and services in the United States, also bolsters GDP growth,” a July report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found.
“[H]igher immigration has contributed about 0.1 percentage points to GDP growth annually in 2022 and 2023 and is projected to do so again in 2024.” In fact, the Dallas Fed says that the U.
S. needs more immigration in the coming years to support continued economic growth: In other words, undocumented workers also subsidize our own entitlement programs. Or, as the Center for Immigration Studies recently put it, “Undocumented immigrants also paid $25.
7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance in 2022, programs for which they are ineligible.
” Then there is the deficit-reduction part of the post that Musk endorsed. And that basically means cutting every program that helps the poor and middle class. In a virtual town hall last Friday, Musk said , “We have to reduce spending to live within our means, and that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.
” Worse, Trump has said he would give Musk the power to take a chainsaw to the federal budget. And indeed, Musk claimed at Trump’s racist rally in New York City that he could cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. Since October of last year, the federal government has spent $6.
7 trillion . Cutting roughly a third of that would be cataclysmic—and even more so since the cuts would be felt disproportionately in domestic spending. You just know defense won’t be touched, though veterans programs would almost surely take a hit.
It would be funny (in an ironic way) seeing the nearly $100 billion spent on American farmers every year evaporate overnight, given rural America’s strong support for Republicans. ..
. Musk doesn’t give a damn. He’ll be fine no matter what, even if he casts himself as some sort of hero, saying that he would "balance the budget immediately.
” “Obviously, a lot of people who are taking advantage of government are going to be upset about that,” he said in the town hall. “I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done.” Musk’s model is Argentine President Javier Milei, who literally campaigned with a chainsaw to symbolize his plans to eviscerate his nation’s budget if elected.
And how’s that going for Argentina? “Argentina recession deepens as economy shrinks more than expected,” read a recent Reuters headline . Yet the reality is that Argentina was an economic basket case, caught in a lose-lose situation that could very well call for desperate measures. That’s not the case in the United States, yet Musk and his cognitively addled puppet Trump seem hellbent on delivering the same kind of painful austerity for the world’s largest economy, by far, and one that is currently the world’s envy .
And the thing is, Musk and Trump aren’t hiding their agenda. People are just too captivated by the Republican campaign’s racism and misogyny to care. People are being promised that they will lose their jobs and prosperity, and this election is still close.
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