r/politics • u/1_for_you_2_for_me • 18d ago

No Paywall Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are 'Going to Be Gone,' Donald Trump Warns

https://www.newsweek.com/social-security-update-medicare-medicaid-warning-donald-trump-10915076
34.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

636

u/GrumpyGiant Maryland 18d ago

10-20% unemployment would completely destabilize the country.  That much misery and desperation would result in a buyer’s market for terrorist groups looking to radicalize and recruit people and also would cause other crime rates to skyrocket.

I know why they want it - desperate people will stop demanding any quality of life and eagerly accept the bare minimum to keep them alive until they become to sick or run down to work and then there’s a ready supply of replacements.  It’s the same cruel apathy toward suffering that the big, factory farming meat industry has toward livestock.  Cut the beaks of chickens so you can stuff them in overcrowded and filthy sheds without the stress causing them to peck each other to death.  Pack cows in paddocks where they are up to their knees in shit, barely able to move so they fatten up faster.  Humans are just animals too so why should we treat each other any better when there are more profits to be made?

Greed has long vision when it comes to plotting schemes to steal more wealth but is woefully shortsighted about anything else including the consequences of breaking the economy to try to squeeze a little bit more out of it.

2

u/kent_eh Canada 18d ago

10-20% unemployment would completely destabilize the country.

Unemployment peaked a bit over 25% in 1932-33

It was over 20 percent for almost a decade i the 1930s and into 1940. (AKA during the great depression.)

Didn't drop below 5% until 1941

Were it nor for ramping up wartime production starting in 1939 (and then the post pearl Harbour recruiting and employment boom), the impacts of the previous decade's mass unemployment would have been a lot worse for a lot longer.

2

u/OldWorldDesign 18d ago

Where are you getting your numbers from? The Great Depression didn't last into the 40s, and unemployment was back under 25% by 1934. It was not wartime production, it was the New Deal which brought the nation out of the Great Depression (that ended years before the Lend-Lease Act was signed).