Trump and Musk’s Attack on Government Is an Attack on Equity and Stability

U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s shared goal of fully privatizing public services from the postal service to Social Security and Medicare will destabilize society, broadening the wide chasm of socioeconomic inequalities already haunting the nation’s politics.

Until the election of Trump and his appointment of Musk, the U.S. government, unlike giant corporations, did not summarily terminate large numbers of workers to achieve “efficiencies” to augment a “bottom line.” Indeed, the present elimination of legions of government workers is wholly arbitrary, having immediate destructive impacts on American society.

Now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.

Governments are not businesses nor should they be run as businesses. Historically, the role of government is to regulate those forces in society that would, if left to their own devices, advance their own interests at the expense of society. By moderating the social and environmental impact of these private entities and their direction, and by addressing the social inequities created by disparities in socioeconomic power, the government ensures the stability and security of society. Citizens are protected from the negative consequences of concentrated wealth and the political machinations employed to maintain and to increase the wealthy and corporate class’ power and privileges. Thus breaking down the legitimate power of government facilitates economic and political concentration, denying equal opportunity to resources and wealth. This is not only an assault on individual political rights; it leads to conflict and anarchy.

Not surprisingly, billionaires are leading the charge to undermine government’s vital roles. This is tantamount to letting the fox inside the hen house. While deregulating and privatizing public services—a movement that has gradually gained momentum with the rise of economic and political conservatism from 1980 to the present—is the general plan of Trump, Musk, and their conservative collaborators, it is these two billionaires who are already profiting from the enterprise. They are each positioned to accumulate multiple tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of greater wealth by promoting market products through their access to mass media, government contracts, and deregulation. And now the administration wants to enhance even further the economic and political positions of the wealthy through tax reductions disproportionately benefiting the wealthy class.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host of other public-supported services and investments—from providing funding to enable the University of Maine to improve industry and environment to veterans’ assistance—must be insulated against the vicissitudes of market forces. Government, with its broad taxing capacity, distributes the economic risk across these programs much more securely than publicly traded stocks. Social Security checks should not be directly and irrevocably tied to the market.

At the same time, those who prosper most from the publicly funded infrastructure (i.e. educated workforce, highways, ports, etc.) must pay substantially more taxes than ordinary citizens. With fully-levied progressive taxation the government will be able to transfer wealth to less wealthy Americans in the form of programs improving peoples’ livelihoods and welfare, ensuring greater economic, social, and political stability.