Political analyst and journalist Ezra Klein suggests that the Trump administration’s (via DOGE) roughshod of governmental agencies with the intention of dismantling parts of them is aimed at privatizing some of those services. He said, “They’re breaking the government so that they can take it over and control it and parcel it out.” An example, Klein gives, is that “they [Trump and Republicans] are gutting Social Security and there is functionally nothing in government as efficient as Social Security.” So, it’s not about efficiency, but rather to privatize it as the ultimate goal.
Attempts to privatize Social Security and Medicare are nothing new. Past Republican administrations tried but failed to privatize parts or in whole or provide a private option to Social Security and Medicare (two programs that are among the largest expenses in government). But there has been large success at privatization in Medicare.
Americans should realize what Trump is doing – so called cutting waste, streamlining – in the name of “government efficiency” is an old excuse for more privatization and less government, which has been Republicans’ philosophical approach to leadership. What’s striking and disturbing is the means by which, and the rapidity and expansiveness, of Trump’s attempts to hollow out parts of government, arguably illegally and authoritarian (which explains why the courts are involved).
Archaic models, abundance, scarcity and our hunger games It’s important to lay bare the two dueling political models. Republicans or the conservative movement are anathema to government intervention and desire free reign for private entities, specifically big corporations. They want less regulation and for the private sector to take over many government services.
Democrats or the liberal-progressive movement believe in government crafting with oversight and regulation on private services and support social programs to fill the gaps for select groups that are struggling within the current “free market and hand-of-government” structure.
This tension between the two models have paved the way to both abundance and scarcity – abundance for a few and increasing scarcity for a majority to a degree that Americans are becoming desperate to entertain even authoritarian (misguided) means to uplift their personal financial hardship.
There must be a better way than our current path. It cannot be ideal that Trump further weakens government. Government is already subordinate to the massive power that big corporations already wield. Making government feeble will not end corruption or narrow the widening income inequality. And big corporations have their own share of corruption, greed and exploitation.
Democrats, while in power, have their own shortcoming — are too afraid to do much beyond the status quo. They not only lack big ideas but do not even try to think outside the box. Their insistence on incremental change lags to meet the needs of most Americans. In some areas Democrats’ bureaucracies are too smothering and make for sluggish growth, for example in housing and healthcare to where both have become crises. Also, establishment Democrats arguably are just as pro-big corporation as Republicans that many Americans believe they do not have political representation at all. And what we really have is a “uniparty” under the control of big-monied interests, the oligarchs.
Both parties are responsible — over decades — for what could be described as today’s state of economic hunger games, employment hunger games, inflationary hunger games.
A new gilded age of robber barons? Many believe what Trump is manifesting is extremism and oligarchy. There is a symbolic reason why so many billionaires and some of the richest men on the planet attended his inauguration. Some analysts see Trump as setting the stage for a second gilded age. The first gilded age in the U.S. saw robber barons milking the masses for obscene profits and where massive inequality was rampant. Instead of the robber barons of heavy industry, this new second gilded age is seeing robber barons of high tech.
These tech lords are the same oligarchs ushering in the AI-Robotics revolution poised to replace large sectors across most industries. A recent report from Goldman Sachs estimates that around 300 million jobs could be affected by generative AI, meaning 18% of work globally could be automated—with more advanced economies heavily impacted than emerging markets.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found some educated white-collar workers earning up to $80,000 a year are the most likely to be affected by workforce automation.
Furthermore, with Trump’s tariffs and his goal to bring back manufacturing to the U.S., it’s almost counterintuitive when automation and robotics – and less people – would be doing the work. Isn’t the point of manufacturing about bringing back jobs to our country?
Greater value in people-workers Both political parties should be more attentive to valuing people-workers and their roles in shared abundance, and not this overemphasis on big corporations’ profit and bottom line over everything else.
Trump’s slashing of civil service jobs without much thought to consequence is a perfect example of devaluing workers, who are obviously “people” and not just numbers or data. Elon Musk, the billionaire heading DOGE, took this insensitivity to the next level when he said on Feb. 28, 2025, on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
In reality, we need more empathy, especially in our current sleepwalking without awareness of the dangers that AI is causing. We also need a strong government – not the weakening of government as what Trump is doing – to regulate today’s tech barons as they ramrod onto society AI-Robotics.
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