Summary

Low-income voters who supported Donald Trump are expressing concerns over potential cuts to government benefits as his administration pushes for aggressive spending reductions.

Trump’s newly announced “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is tasked with cutting programs, raising fears about impacts on social safety nets.

Trump also plans to shut down the Education Department, impose tariffs on imports from China, Mexico, and Canada, and has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health Secretary, signaling a focus on controversial health policies.

Voter anxieties about these shifts are growing.

Non-paywall link

  • nifty@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Low income voters should demand taxing the wealthy, like multimillionaires and billionaires, more rather than just hoping for benefits

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      39 minutes ago

      I think it’s okay for them to learn what they voted for. Learning from their mistakes is the only way to prevent them from happening in the future.

      • DrFistington@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        I mean, this. The only way any average American is going to benefit from the Trump admin is if they are very active in the stock market and know what to look for. Most of the people that voted for Trump are barely making ends meet, and they’re going to be in for a rude awakening when the housing market crashes in 1-2 years, tariffs have driven up the prices of everything, and social safety nets have been eliminated.

        I voted for the competent adult, who would have done things to benefit 99% of Americans, but others wanted the tantrum baby. The market is going to go up, because taxes and regulations will be more lax, and also, that’s what it tends to do, and I’ll personally benefit profusely from it.

        I’m not a Trump supporter. He’s a fraud, idiot, and a national disgrace. But I have extensive savings, retirement accounts, stocks holdings, etc, so I’m going to benefit. That’s all that Trump ever does, is give more to the people that already have it, because those are the only people he interacts with.

        His struggles are with getting lenders and ideal interest rates on multi million dollar loans, and on trying to shield his assets from taxes, because good forbid he pay his fair share on the obscene amount of wealth he receives from a trust fund, and never actually earned.

        If those aren’t problems that you have, and you voted for Trump then you’re going to have a rude awakening in store. Unfortunately you dragged the rest of us into this mess with you.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Voter anxieties about these shifts are growing.

    Oh, NOW they’re concerned? Not when we were all beating the drum telling these morons that Trump was going to fuck the country again?

    God.

    • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 hours ago

      Yes but what about the trans people? Surely it will be worth losing their food stamps and Healthcare to ensure that trans people suffer, for some reason.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Some people are more concerned about punishing the people they don’t think deserve things that they’ll let themselves get caught up in the same bullshit.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours ago

    “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”

    Oh. My. God.

      • JTskulk@lemmy.world
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        50 minutes ago

        For real, the guy that just learned the word “groceries” is the hero of the common man.

      • WastingCommentSpace@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        Ive been saying in the distant past on both reddit and lemmy that most people are fundamentally stupid on a frightening level. Maybe i expressed it poorly. I take a george carlin perspective “think about the average person and how stupid they are and realize most of them are dumber than that”. I see soo much potential and it seems to often be squandered on things that make me very disappointed in humanity.

        I am of the opinion this is a nearly unsolvable issue now much like climate change. Id love to be proven wrong. But ive come to a personal conclusion we are reaching the start of a very slow extinction. Im not even trying to be doomer about this stuff or w.e. the reasoning i have is that i dont think you can solve the low intelligence problem easily at least without better education and education that incentivizes curiousity.

        But i think you cant fix the system without people being intelligent or aware enough to understand what they are voting for. So i think the only real path out is the populace at large gaining an interest in curiousity and learning. And always countering their own beliefs or something to such an effect.

        If one could influence the overall humand hivemind to make learning and curiousity cool again that might help too. Probably more than some government program or some such (id guess its “more natural” for people to accept)

        But i dont think such things are likely to happen. But it would be nice if i am wrong.

        For me i just need to take a long several years break. For everyone else. I leave it to them. Its a weird time to be alive. I dont know how best to process it. I guess “anyway you can”.

  • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    I wish I could offer them some solace, but I can’t. They are absolutely fucked. We are all fucked. This is going to take decades to recover from, and that’s assuming we even can.

  • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 hours ago

    “He’s not going to hurt the poor. He’s too smart for that.

    Oh, you infuriating fucking summer child. It’d be hilarious if I wasn’t stuck in this hellbound handbasket with the rest of you fucking mongoloids.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      18 hours ago

      That’s their logic … they weren’t thinking “He’s not going to hurt the poor” …

      They were thinking “He’s not going to hurt ME! He’s going to hurt other people I don’t like.”

      • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        I’ve actually heard Maga people admit they’ll get hurt by these policies, but immigrants and homos will get hurt MOAR!, y’know, like Jesus taught, so it’s cool.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 hours ago

          Yep. The GOP has worked tirelessly for decades to convince people that we are not capable of helping everyone. That it’s a zero-sum game, and someone else receiving something means that another more deserving person (AKA straight/white/cis/etc.) must be deprived of the thing.

          Therefore, since our government is incapable of providing for all, in their minds (because the Republicans have made sure of it), then the next best thing is making sure nobody gets the thing. Especially someone who doesn’t “deserve” it.

          Good ol American rugged individualism.

    • bitwise@lemmy.ca
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      18 hours ago

      A friendly reminder that “mongoloid” is a racist pejorative, and that the government of Mongolia literally ran a campaign decades ago to get people to stop doing it.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      See…I don’t look at it that way. It’s not funny to me, even if I weren’t affected.

      It’s like watching a blind kitten running into a house that’s on fire. I don’t laugh at the soon to be burning kitten. I cry for the suffering that’s about to take place.

      Yes, the kitten chose to run into a burning house. Yes the kitten SHOULD HAVE known that’s a bad idea.

      …but they didn’t. They didn’t know what they were truely doing. And now it’s time to suffer from the obvious bad situation you just ran into.

      Only difference is, the kitten fire is now affecting the whole country.

      • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        That’s a bad analogy. In this situation, the kittens voted to set the house in fire because there’s a puppy in a different room that they don’t like and it will get burned too. It’s hateful, willful ignorance and a desire to hurt others.

      • WatDabney@fedia.io
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        18 hours ago

        Yeeeeaah… but see, your analogy not coincidentally fails, since the kitten is just ignorant.

        It would be more accurate if the kitten ran into the burning house because some fat, smelly old tom told it that if it did, the tom and his buddies would destroy the lives of everyone the kitten hates.

        So yeah - there’s a lot of ignorance there, but the foundation that makes that ignorance relevant and effective is bigotry and hatred and an utter and complete lack of empathy or integrity. If the kitten wasn’t so blinded by its hatred and cruelty, “run into this burning house to destroy someone else’s life” wouldn’t have been an effective appeal.

        • WastingCommentSpace@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          I have so many questions. Does the kitten understand what fire is? Does the kitten understand human language? Also because the kitten is blind are we sure it knowlingly went into the fire? If it doesnt understand what a fire is and cant see it. It only can smell and hear the fire and taste or touch (which would be bad, im fairly certain but im not an expert) did it have an experience with fire before and thats why its blind and knowlingly went in the fire?

    • jeansburger@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      I hate how this is always on fucking point. These people don’t have empathy until it affects them in a personal way, then all of a sudden it’s “who let this happen?!”

      It was you, you fucking dipshits, by not having the emotional intelligence to be able to think for one second in another person’s shoes or think out the end conclusion to a piece of rhetoric.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      21 hours ago

      Also, killing Mexicans and Palestinians is still fine. They’re just worried about their benefits.

      I don’t fully blame them. Our systems of news in this country are so bad that you can’t hold them responsible, because they’re in no way fully aware of what a nightmare Trump is going to be. But if their benefits is what wakes them up, with no other change happening in the news landscape, them fuck them and they deserve it.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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        19 hours ago

        you can’t hold them responsible, because they’re in no way fully aware of what a nightmare Trump is going to be

        if people choose to ignore what’s right in front of their face, that’s a choice they made, and are 100% responsible for. i hold them entirely responsible for being so willfully ignorant and motivated by pure hate. i wouldn’t give a shit if their kindergarten-tier irresponsibility didn’t affect everyone and not just them

        • WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          I can’t count how many times I saw posts on my Facebook feed that said things like “If you or a loved one relies on Social Security be careful who you vote for”. Knowing the people who posted I know they are Trump supporters. I guarantee that when benefits get cut they’ll find some way to blame it on Biden/Harris/Pelosi, etc. They either don’t see it or refuse to see it. Likewise the number of people in my life who expect an economic miracle by the end of February is unbelievable.

        • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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          19 hours ago

          I think it’s best to only assign responsibility where it’s due. People can’t just flip a switch and have the education system and their peers no longer be a part of the problem. We’re not going to address systemic issues by only acknowledging individual’s responsibility, especially when they’re part of a system that promotes ignorance.

          That said, individuals still do have agency, so they’re certainly not blameless either. But to hold them fully responsible seems counterproductive.