Cruelty, Inc.

Photo credit: PublicDomainPictures.net

A little late for the Enlightenment, and more like a scene from Dickens’ Industrial Revolution, US capitalism continues to cannibalize its most vulnerable. There is nothing out of the ordinary for capitalism to be a predatory system, just as there was nothing too extraordinary for communism to produce dictatorships.

There was always the gloss and public face of capitalism in the US, up until the movement of globalization. Once, during the first half of the 20th century and slightly beyond, some workers earned enough to keep themselves off the streets and from sleeping under bridges along with the wealthy. But now, under the intellectually challenged authoritarian, to use the kindest words I can employ, Trump has taken the gloves off his diminutive fingers and has come out swinging and stomping those at risk much as he did in a popular campaign cartoon that showed him as a wrestler. When in business, the tales about his stiffing workers and contractors were well established, but not quite this merciless degree of cruelty. The cruelty of the class he represents is out in the open and in plain sight. No more window dressing! The House will momentarily follow the Senate in slavish behavior for Trump and his billionaire class.

And the diversion… it’s impossible to know how much of his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests are for bravado and how much is part of his white supremacist playbook. Social media and mass media are full of the pursuit of people of color, usually while at work in jobs that lots of people, and those in his base, would never want. The new bill gives $170 billion to ICE.

The New York Times reports (July 1, 2025):

Americans who comprise the bottom fifth of all earners would see their annual after-tax incomes fall on average by 2.3 percent within the next decade, while those at the top would see about a 2.3 percent boost, according to the analysis, which factors in wages earned and government benefits received.” The results over time of his “big, beautiful bill.

Keep in mind that workers in the US have been getting screwed for about a half-century with wages hardly rising, even through economic downturns, while the rich, well, they’re getting richer, and the citation above shows how the rich will continue to do well under Trump and his Republican gangsters.

On average, that translates to about $560 in losses for someone who reports little to no income by 2034, and more than $118,000 in gains for someone making over $3 million, the report found. Martha Gimbel, the co-founder of the Budget Lab, described the Senate measure as “highly regressive.

Less than a decade from today, 12 million Americans could lose Medicaid. Many of those people have no or small voices and can’t effectively fight back. Few billionaires will have to depend on Medicaid if they are sick. And they will have long since come out from sleeping under those nasty bridges.

In a nation that has super-sized meals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would see federal funding “sharply curtailed.” Many poor people who have regularly eaten at Trump’s many golf course eateries would see their meals vanish into thin air. With new work requirements for Medicaid, Trump and his accomplices in crime might be able to use some of those people at the sinks of his resorts.

And Trump is merciless with kids. In February, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC, Summer 2025), Trump announced an 18% cut to programs that benefit children, including the popular Head Start early childhood program that was a cornerstone of the Great Society.

Farmers, long a bastion of support for Republicans, fear some of their products will not sell at expected prices because the feds plan to eliminate billions of dollars in federal purchases according to the SPLC.

The party of wealth doesn’t miss a beat while workers, at least some of whom could once support themselves and their families when the economy needed their labor, face a future muddied by Trump et al. Notice also that military spending continues to climb under Trump with many overt and covert wars continuing. One hundred fifty billion dollars will go to the Department of Defense, with an unknown amount going to secret wars. Genocide in Gaza is also being bankrolled by these far-right-wing fools. In that respect, support for the latter, the Democrats have been great cheerleaders!