It is more than a bit ironic that President Trump’s coterie of fellow billionaires is just now letting us ordinary citizens know that making America great again will require us to put up with some pain before this imagined state of greatness is achieved.
I can well imagine the sorts of pain we might be expected to endure: shrinking IRAs and 401(k)s, increased prices for groceries, medicine, cars, computers and almost all consumer goods, loss of access to government supported services on which we have come to rely like medical care, food inspection, unemployment insurance, higher education, protection from consumer and financial fraud, etc.
The irony is that billionaires certainly will not experience any pain, insulated as they are from the economy and even from the world in which the rest of us live. No, we can be pretty sure that this predicted pain will be felt disproportionately by those of us foolish enough to not be billionaires and will fall even more heavily on the most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the politically unconnected.
It’s a shame we were not told about this before the election. We might have made different decisions.
Robert (Bob) Greenberg, Moab
