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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
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Author: PucksFool ✧✺  😊 😞
Number: of 86269 
Subject: The Hunger Games begin ahead of schedule.
Date: 11/01/25 4:28 PM
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paulkrugman.substack.com - Too cruel too soon
or here if it is paywalled
https://archive.is/LUlJE

Federal funding for SNAP, the nutritional aid program still often referred to as food stamps, ends tonight. This will have catastrophic impacts on 42 million Americans, the great majority of them children, elderly or disabled.

Millions more Americans are about to discover that health insurance has become vastly more expensive, in many cases unaffordable.

Why are these terrible things happening? At a basic level they’re happening because Republicans want them to happen. Drastic cuts in food stamps and health care programs were central planks in Project 2025, which is indeed the Trump administration’s policy platform, and were written into legislation in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last summer.

But the consequences of these cruel intentions weren’t supposed to be this obvious, this early. The harshest provisions of the OBBBA were backloaded, set to kick in after the midterm elections. For example, draconian work requirements for Medicaid — which would effectively throw millions off the program, largely by imposing paperwork burdens low-wage workers can’t overcome — weren’t scheduled to take effect until the end of 2026.

Why the backloading? Presumably Republicans believed that by the time Americans woke up to what was happening, the G.O.P. would have effectively consolidated one-party rule, making future elections irrelevant.

Instead, however, the mask is being ripped off right now, well ahead of schedule.

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This community has written 86,214 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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