It's safe to say that during the Trump era, propaganda has come of age. I have been reflecting on the way the Heritage Foundation and its hard-right partners have used Trump as a delivery mechanism for the most effective psychological warfare campaign in modern history. They knew America was fertile ground for propaganda based on the literacy rate of the population. With 54% of the population having a literacy rate of grade 6 or below and a 21% illiteracy rate, the US is fertile ground for mind experiments.
It is no secret that they see education as the enemy of their vision for America. They must crush critical thinking as they nurture a compliant population. They have no interest in educating the poor because they will form the foundation of an expendable pool of cheap labour. The national campaign to remove the homeless from the streets, in my opinion, represents another step towards creating a captive workforce that will work for a dollar a day in exchange for necessities like a bed to sleep in and a hot meal. I would not be surprised to see further deregulation of child labour laws and the introduction of work camps to deliver labour to replace deported undocumented workers, all coordinated through private detention centres.
Their new vision for employment in America is white, male, and able-bodied. Women’s primary role will be to bear children or fill what men believe to be domestic roles in society, in service-related jobs. Their role in the workplace will be redefined. The reality is that the administration is currently in the process of removing 4% of the US workforce in the form of undocumented workers, who currently generate $97 billion in federal and state taxes. Aside from that, many work back-breaking jobs for low wages that do not attract American workers. This is already leading to crops rotting in the ground and reduced profits for farmers. It’s also having an impact on property construction and meat packing.
Once you remove these workers, the only way to fill these vacancies will be with forced labour and possibly child labour. Republicans are trying to claim that work requirements for Medicaid, etc, will fill this worker gap, which we all know is ludicrous. For those who claim that automation will sort out the problem, firstly, some crop picking is not suitable for automation. Secondly, the cost of investment in automation at a time when farmers are on their knees is simply not viable.
A study published in July by the Penn Wharton University, headed Mass Deportation of Unauthorised Immigrants: Fiscal and Economic Effects, notes:
It is well known that mass deportation reduces aggregate economic variables like GDP due to scale effects. We project that deportation also reduces wages of high-skill workers, compromising 63% of workers. Still, authorized low-skilled workers can see their wages increase but only if the deportation policy is permanently sustained after 4 years. Even with new funds provided in the 2025 OBBBA, we estimate that permanent deportation would cost an additional $900 billion over the first 10 years.
So if the estimated cost of deportations is $900 billion over the cycle, the government is going to have to replace the labour drain, which would have generated a further $9 trillion over the cycle. Consider this: if the labour force is replaced by forced labour, there will be no tax revenue raised, and there will be the additional cost of housing the slave labour. If by some miracle the workforce can be replaced by American labour, wages would need to be significantly increased, but productivity would decrease. This would reduce economic output and deliver lower profits in sectors currently reliant on undocumented workers.
You can dice and slice it how you want, but the whole mass deportation is a costly exercise in race-baiting. It delivers no economic benefit, just made for TV dopamine hits for the racist base. You can’t pay the bills with dopamine. The only winners in this act of economic self-harm are the private detention corporations sucking up billions of taxpayer dollars to add to the cost of an act of gross economic stupidity. In reality, the centrepiece of the Trump agenda is a financial black hole that may well take a generation to recover from. It makes absolutely no sense. I would also like to note that the report from Wharton does not include the cost of multiple National Guard Deployments.
Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project estimates the cost to be a million dollars a day for the Washington, DC deployment. As reported in the Independent on 22nd August 2025, Homestead stated:
“It’s unconscionable that the Trump administration would hand the military a blank check of over a million dollars a day to occupy D.C. while stripping access to health care and food aid from millions of families across the country,” [She] told The Intercept. “The daily cost of the D.C. troop deployment is more than four times what it would cost to operate affordable housing for D.C.’s entire unhoused population. The government’s priorities could not be more clear.”
The Pentagon estimates the LA deployment to cost $134 million in the last 60 days. With the expansion of these performative deployments in other cities, the costs will rise exponentially. This has, without question, been the most expensive solution in search of a problem. There is no evidence in statistics on crime, etc, from either DC or LA that these deployments provide a fiscal return on investment. All they serve to do is to deliver a mode for TV propaganda clips to further the Trump fantasy narrative.
At a time when the US is carrying $37 trillion of debt and is struggling to refinance that debt, such profligate spending is economic insanity being financed by the removal of healthcare for 17 million Americans and food stamps for food-insecure families. This government claims it can pay down the deficit through economic growth, while reducing the workforce and losing control of government spending. The federal deficit jumped by $291 billion in July, which is a 19% increase from the July 2024 number. There is nothing about this that makes any economic sense whatsoever.
There is little wonder Trump wants control of the inflation and jobs numbers. He has moved beyond the point where he can report the actual state of the economy, instead being forced to create a fantasy that does not stand up to scrutiny. We are now expected to live in Trump’s golden mind palace, where everything that Trump says is so. The problem is that grocery prices, along with wider consumer prices, are now starting to reflect the actual state of the economy, and we are only at the start of these price corrections.
The stock market is desperately deluding itself that an interest rate cut will save the day. Aside from the fact that it may not happen, given the data that will be available before the Fed makes a decision. I believe that the markets are headed towards a correction that may be as high as 10%. If that comes to pass, confidence in US bonds will tank at the very time when the US needs to refinance $9.2 trillion of that debt.
My friends, you need to buckle up because things are about to get bumpy. This administration is on the verge of having to take out payday loans to pay the bills, and the fallout from its catastrophic economic policies is potentially devastating. When you build your financial and political agenda on a lie, you are constantly having to tell more lies to support the last lie you said, and it spirals out of control. We as humans are inherently selfish; we have no problem with others suffering if it means we benefit, and that is the whole premise of the Trump agenda. In a bizarre twist, we now find MAGA loyalists prepared to suffer if it feels like their suffering hurts Democrats. That’s how good Trump has got at this game.
We are in a stock market economy where stock buybacks are the norm instead of paying decent wages, and profit to the shareholders must increase year over year at all costs (to the detrement of the average person but to the benefit of "shareholders". At one point this will become unsustainable and that day can't come too soon. Unfettered capitalism is the scourge of modern society.
Thank you for this excellent string of mostly dismal facts that we really need to hear and that should be distributed everywhere repeatedly!
Excerpt;
“There is little wonder Trump wants control of the inflation and jobs numbers.
He has moved beyond the point where he can report the actual state of the economy, instead being forced to create a fantasy that does not stand up to scrutiny.”