I have several concerns with social policies—or the lack thereof—in our world today. My main thought concerns our approach to poverty. I have heard the age old phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” I never understood this until I got older and started consuming media. The rich are rich. Rich enough, unfortunately, to buy multi million dollar corporations without the bat of an eyelash, or persuade young teens that money is all you need and you have to do whatever you can to make as much as you can. Tossing all morals out of the window for money. Disgusting. How rich exactly are the rich? Lets look, a quick google search told me the richest man in the world currently is Elon Musk, with a net worth of approximately 421.6 billion dollars. Now let us not forget his recent display of a fascist symbol that ended the lives of around six MILLION people. But it’s okay because he’s rich. Apparently. Unfortunately.
You seem to be raising three issues. First, you’re noticing the issue that small inequalities tend to grow into larger inequalities over time. People with wealth tend to become wealthier. Second, you seem concerned with a materialistic view that replaces traditional values, where wealth and the pursuit of wealth is highly valued over more traditional values. Third, you are concerned with the tremendous power that goes along with extreme wealth, and the suspect ideologies of some of the wealthy persons. You might be interested in connections between the American Liberty League, the Du Pont family, Robert A. Taft, the National Association of Manufacturers, Ayn Rand, Robert W. Welch Jr., the John Birch Society, Charles Koch, Robert G. Grant, Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks, Murray Rothbard, William F. Buckley Jr., The America First Policy Institute, Paul Dans, the Heritage Foundation, and so forth. The fabric of American conservative political thinking includes a fair share of upper-class and wealthy enthusiasts.
Now understandably the one reason people gave me for voting for Trump this term was his promise on cheaper groceries. With his tariffs to be able to make his pockets warm, this is far from happening. They say he is a “businessman” and although this may be true, he is a businessman for himself not for you. See businessmen are the worst people to leave in charge of your country. They always say when you're buying a car that the businessmen are only focused on selling to you to ensure they leave with thick pockets, that’s all they care about. When you put a “businessman” in charge of your country alongside a fascist as his right hand man, you may as well set fire to your assets yourself.
There are many different sorts of business leaders. My own understanding of family-owned businesses is that they take on a different character compared to firms that are publicly traded where stockholders can demand ever-increasing profits and sales growth. No doubt idiots can be cruel dictators in family-owned firms, but some families seem to be more concerned with long-term sustainability, creating loyal and well-compensated workforces, and benevolently running their firms for idealistic aims in terms of serving their customers and employees while maintaining their own wealth. There are brilliant and well-rounded business executives or investors who are probably highly capable in running government agencies, and of course there are investors and business executives who are terrible and incompetent when it comes to government service or public administration. I personally like life-career civil servants who are promoted to the top because of their competence and good leadership skills, or clever academics with some practical experience, and prefer these types to business types, but I know that people with business, military, legal, artistic, and scientific careers might be good, depending upon their character and competence.
You may think well surely they are doing something to help lower the poverty rate right? The sentiment is adorable but it’s quite the opposite. Trump’s idea to cut federal funding includes but certainly isn’t limited to affordable section eight housing, LINK and EBT cards, homeless shelters, etc. Trying to use the defense that it will force people to better themselves and their lives rather than leech off the government. He only says that with a green cast and dollar signs in his sights. Less federal funding is more money staying in the government, more money in the government is more money to use to his advantage. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn't care about me, he doesn’t care about the nation's children. HE. DOESN’T. CARE.
Yes, the budget proposed by President Trump was astonishing in its sadistic torments for low-income Americans. I think Trump’s cognitive decline has brought him to a point that he is almost entirely out-of-touch with what is going on, and his budget is probably the product of some lackey or henchman such as Stephen Miller or Paul Dans.
Have I seen cases where people continue to willingly live on the government so they don’t have to go back to work? Actually no, I haven't. As a child I had friends that were on different forms of welfare. Mom was kept at home because of an injury or having to care for young children due to not being able to afford childcare, and Dad was either getting settled with a new family or missing and strung out. People don’t willingly fall on hard times. People don’t want to stay in hard times, taking tennis shoes from the street so their children can have a pair for school, selling their deceased mother’s jewelry to afford even one gift for Christmas, giving their food to their children because they’re “so full and need help finishing it all.” We need to be there for each other, damnit, we can do as much as we want from the bottom but if the top turns their back on us we ALL need to stay together. These are frightening and exhausting times to be living in. This is not how I imagined to spend my 20s. Never forget what they say, but be sure to watch what they do.
I like how you wrote this as a sort of stream-of-consciousness reaction to events. Your writing is full of emotion and it is a deeply personal reaction to current events. I use the reaction essay assignments to give students a chance to write in this style, and sometimes I'm a little saddened when students write more traditional academic essays for their reaction essays.
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