Trump, Intending Harm, Doing Harm

IT IS THE EVIDENT INTENT of Donald Trump, with the apparent full support of not only the incoming Republican majority Congress, but the Republican party generally, to make cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicade, probably not for current recipients, but for future ones, people are are currently workng and paying into the fund, but not yet eligible to receive benefits. It is difficult to imagine the American electorate, especially that portion of it currently under the age of sixty five, having anything other than an unfavorable response to this. People currently between the ages of eighteen and sixty five are well aware that the Social Security trust fund is predicted to run out of funds within the next fifteen years, and are expressing doubts as to whether they, after having paid into into it their entire working lives, will ever reap any benefits of their hard work and sacrifice. A few simple solutions would remedy the problem, solutions such as raising the minimum retirement age. Delaying the start of Social Security and Medicare are not likely to inspire much support from current workers who see the number of years of their own retirement dwindling away, while their parents and grand parents enjoy relatively longer "golden years" of post career leisure. Trump's threat to slash the size of the federal government by ridding the bureauracy of hundreds of thousands of emplyees and slashing government services will prove to be unpopular among the people in general, not only among those losing their jobs and careers, but among those losing the services they provide. Over the previous decades, as the population of the United States has grown, so has the size of the federal government, so have the variety of services provided to a population in need of them, and paying taxes to receive them. Trump's stated objective to replace thousands of federal workers, among those remaining, with new people, based not on their qualifications for the positions they inherit but based only on their sworn loyalty to Donald Trump, seems destined to fruther reduce the competance and efficiency with whith those government services are produced and delivered. It has been said that the conservative aproach is to reduce or eliminate services to a hundred recipients in the fear that among them there might be one who does not deserve or qualify for them, while the progressive approach is to be willing to provide such services to a hundred people who do not qualify for them, to guard against the possiblity that by so doing one person might be prevented from "falling through the cracks", falling into poverty or going hungry. The number of people paying taxes to support the social welfare system is much greater than the number of recipients of the services provided, but the number of recipients is still quite large, and Trump's plans will affect them all. Taxes for middle and workng class Americans will not be cut; only the wealthy, according to Trump's plan, will get tax breaks, tax breaks they arguably simply do not need. The wealthy are greatlly outnumbered in the U.S. by people of modest means. As of now, numbers of voters and voting blocks and demographics still matter. It is not difficult to see that the number of people who will benefit by Trump's domestic agenda, which basically includes only the very wealthy, is far exceeded by the number of people who will by harmed by it. Despite the current euphoria and smug optimism of Trump's newly empowered MAGA minions, and despite the palpable despairing attitude current among those who oppose Trump, the numbers add up to an inevitable growing national discontent with the second Trump administration, a discontent of such proportions that it will be reflected in the opinion polls, and, ultimately, in the behavior of the electorate, and above all else, of elected politicians.