Do we have any reliable sources for keeping track of what Musk is actually doing with his Treasury access? I have a vested interest in having some kind of heads up if certain grants are frozen.
I don't think people are understanding how quickly things can collapse if federal payments are stopped. Even if SSA benefit payments, FAFSA, and SNAP payments continue, halting funding to state governments, non profits, and research would effectively make millions of people unemployed overnight and halt many social services. The job market is already bad, and thousands or millions of federal, state, and private nonprofit employees will be added to those looking for work. At that point, we have more issues than high unemployment; social services, already insufficient, either cease to exist or are effectively buried. Millions of people lose their jobs, homes, and assets.
The only macabre silver lining in this potentiality is that, as in 2020 when a large reduction in the workforce meant a lot of people suddenly had a lot of time on their hands and we saw the largest continuous protests in American history, that a similar thing might happen now. Of course, 2020 ended up being largely materially ineffective at changing systemic police brutality, and I think people learned from that too -- protests as we know them do not meaningfully change anything. Alternative tactics must be explored.
So really, I don't think any of us know what will happen. There are so many what-ifs and threats and unprecedented action that it's difficult to predict what we will need to face, or respond to.
I don't think people are understanding how quickly things can collapse if federal payments are stopped. Even if SSA benefit payments, FAFSA, and SNAP payments continue, halting funding to state governments, non profits, and research would effectively make millions of people unemployed overnight and halt many social services. The job market is already bad, and thousands or millions of federal, state, and private nonprofit employees will be added to those looking for work. At that point, we have more issues than high unemployment; social services, already insufficient, either cease to exist or are effectively buried. Millions of people lose their jobs, homes, and assets.
The only macabre silver lining in this potentiality is that, as in 2020 when a large reduction in the workforce meant a lot of people suddenly had a lot of time on their hands and we saw the largest continuous protests in American history, that a similar thing might happen now. Of course, 2020 ended up being largely materially ineffective at changing systemic police brutality, and I think people learned from that too -- protests as we know them do not meaningfully change anything. Alternative tactics must be explored.
So really, I don't think any of us know what will happen. There are so many what-ifs and threats and unprecedented action that it's difficult to predict what we will need to face, or respond to.
More like crapitalism, am I right ladies? - Karl Marx