What The Right Does With Power

Canada dodged a bullet, as we are once again reminded by our neighbours to the south. Last Wednesday, the American Rules Committee held a meeting starting at 1 AM to discuss a bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” an allusion to the President’s favourite adjective. The beauty? A $389,280 tax cut for the richest and a $1,035 tax increase for the poorest Americans, the removal of 22.3 million Americans from the ACA and Medicaid, and at least $715,000,000,000 in direct health care cuts, while doubling the deficit. And that’s just a taste of the financial side.

If you think this is a purely Trumpian exercise, let me make it abundantly clear that this is what Conservatives stand for today and have since the advent of neoconservative policies under Reagan, Thatcher, and, just in case you thought he was somehow progressive, Mulroney. Only two Republican members of Congress had the courage to vote against the bill.

In their worldview, the government has no role in the economic well-being of the average person. Free enterprise can and should meet everyone’s needs; if something cannot be made profitable, it is not worth doing. Any social programs that do need to exist are, in their view, the responsibility of the Church, not the State, and come with the strings attached of religious conformity and obedience.

Government’s spending role in their world is limited to the protection of property through strong policing, and projected power through a strong military. Its policy role is ensuring a class system that clearly distinguishes between the working and ruling classes, using the oppressive values of Christian nationalism to enforce the social hierarchy, and the tax system to ensure the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. The working class has been rebranded the “middle class” but the effect has not changed.

But the right also know that since the New Deal and the rise of social programs over the past century, they cannot simply gut programs like social or old age security and medicare without first convincing the population that such privileges are unaffordable to the State.

To achieve their objectives, the right need to convince the population that the government is the source of their increasing misery while they are being robbed blind by the richest members of society. Financial literacy is not taught in schools because if it was it would be clear that the massive tax cuts that are constantly announced overwhelmingly take money from the poor to give to the rich, while the rich buy up housing to rent it back to the poor at rapidly rising rates, jack up prices on necessities, and keep wages stagnant while productivity — and profit — increases.

With a population angry at the government rather than at those actually causing their misery, and uninformed about the effect of their policies, those tax cuts are easy to sell. Nobody wants to pay more taxes, so tax cuts sound good and feel justified, but deprives the government of the very resources needed to redistribute what should be our collective wealth, invest in core infrastructure, and ensure the basic rights to housing, food, and healthcare that citizens expect, further angering the population at the flailing government.

The tax cuts starve the government of resources, leading to borrowing against the future to pay for today’s programs, driving ever-increasing deficits.

The resulting massive deficits and stratospheric national debt are no accident. They serve three purposes:

1. the enrichment of those ruling class members who can afford to be the holders of that debt at the expense of the working class who must pay them interest;

2. the apparent bankruptcy of the nation to justify the gutting and privatisation of social programs; and

3. the removal of the financial capacity of any subsequent progressive government to reinvest.

A bankrupt country cannot afford social programs. A population that believes government is the source of their problems, not the solution to them, will not accept the increased taxes required to provide the services they expect, and their lack of financial literacy will prevent them from understanding that those tax increases would not affect them, but rather would go after those who are depriving them of a living wage in the first place.

When a progressive government takes power and invests in expanded social programs and infrastructure within the confines of the existing tax system, they are pilloried for adding to the deficit and the debt. Tax cuts are a socially acceptable reason to borrow; longer term investment in the emancipation of the working class is not.

When the right wing has total power over all branches of government, as we see in the United States today, they waste no time in putting this all together.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, among numerous attacks on the rights of the working class cuts taxes on the rich, increases them on the poor, increases the deficit, cuts the future viability of the government, and ensures that the population must turn to private, for-profit solutions for all their needs.

It is the logical conclusion of the right, and the envy of Canada’s Conservatives.