The Dumbing Down of the American Voter and the Wealthy’s Big Fat Payday: How Lies and Tax Breaks are Twisting the American Dream

7 min readNov 6, 2024

Alright, folks, let’s dig into the 2024 election, where two big things were served up: a heaping helping of misinformation and a tax-cut carrot dangled by Trump that’s supposed to make everyone’s pockets feel fatter. Spoiler alert: it’s not meant for you unless you’re already rolling in dough. This lethal cocktail of propaganda and economic favoritism shows us a country that’s cracking at the seams. And the average American? They’re getting the short end of the stick — again.

Misinformation: The Magic Trick for Molding Minds

Let’s get one thing straight: misinformation isn’t some new trick in the bag — it’s as old as power and politics. But now, thanks to technology, it spreads faster than a virus on an airplane. People love hearing what they already believe, and social media’s figured out that if you want clicks, you give ’em exactly that. It’s called confirmation bias, and platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook? They know it better than your grandma knows her apple pie recipe.

You’ve got a never-ending cycle where people see the same BS over and over until it sticks like gum on a hot sidewalk. And guess what? Studies (like those by Allcott and Gentzkow) show this is how we end up with entire groups of people living in alternate realities. 2024? It just drove that point home harder than ever. Algorithms care about engagement, not truth, so the loudest, angriest stuff wins — because God forbid, we think before we click.

The Vanishing Act of Media Literacy

And here’s the kicker: we’re not exactly training people to spot the BS, either. Schools barely teach media literacy, so now we have folks believing that everything they scroll past is gospel truth. This “illusory truth effect,” where repeated lies start sounding real, thrives because everyone’s looking for a simple answer to a complicated world. And it doesn’t help that we’re all mentally exhausted, so the brain just grabs the first easy answer it finds.

Daniel Kahneman calls it thinking fast and slow, but in reality, most people skip the “slow” part entirely. So instead of asking questions, people just keep gobbling up spoon-fed stories that make them feel safe, even if it’s a bunch of baloney. Misinformation has become the comfort food of modern politics, and that’s exactly how the powerful like it.

Trump’s Tax Cuts: Not for You, But You’re Supposed to Cheer Anyway

Now, on to Trump’s tax cut promises. Spoiler alert again: they’re aimed at the already-rich. It’s not a trickle-down theory; it’s a flood-up guarantee. This tax policy isn’t for the folks scraping by; it’s for the elite who’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman put it plain and simple: these cuts let the rich stash away even more cash in ways that never make it back to the average Joe.

Imagine getting a tax cut that barely makes a dent for the working class but hands big bucks to corporations and top earners. That’s Trump’s plan in a nutshell. And here’s the insult to injury: this kind of policy won’t just not help you — it’s setting up an economic chokehold that’ll be felt for generations.

The Debt Bomb and the Squeeze on Public Services

Think those tax cuts come free? Think again. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says these cuts will add around $7.75 trillion to the national debt over a decade. And if you think that’s just some abstract number, think about this: that debt doesn’t just sit there. It’ll mean higher interest rates, making everything from buying a house to paying off loans more expensive for everyone. Not to mention, with all that debt, the government will have less to spend on little things like, oh, healthcare, education, and infrastructure.

So when you hear “tax cuts,” remember that for the average American, it probably means cuts to services they actually rely on. For the rich? They get to keep more, invest it somewhere offshore, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Income Inequality: Now With Extra Fuel on the Fire

This tax plan isn’t just a policy; it’s a sledgehammer to an already fragile system. America’s wealth gap is already wide enough to make the Grand Canyon look like a ditch, and these policies just push the divide further. The Brookings Institution found that high inequality means less economic mobility for everyone but the top. Thomas Piketty warned us years ago in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that capitalism, left unchecked, naturally funnels money up to the few.

And these tax cuts? They’re just another way to make sure the rich get richer while the average American keeps watching their wages stagnate and their costs rise. Because the more concentrated the wealth, the more concentrated the power — and guess who that benefits?

The Ripple Effects: Social Stability in the Crosshairs

A growing gap between rich and poor doesn’t just hurt people’s wallets; it’s a recipe for unrest. High inequality has been linked to everything from worse health outcomes to higher crime rates, and a stressed, struggling population isn’t exactly the base of a stable society. When people can’t climb the economic ladder, resentment festers, and history shows us where that leads.

Political scientists like Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page have already shown that American policy often caters to the wealthy, leaving the average citizen’s interests in the dust. With policies like these tax cuts, we’re looking at a future where political decisions are increasingly skewed toward those who already hold the most power, fueling a cycle of disenfranchisement that chips away at the very idea of democracy.

The Bottom Line: Rewriting the American Dream

Misinformation and tax policies that benefit only the wealthy are two sides of the same coin, creating an America where truth and opportunity are luxuries, not rights. If we don’t start investing in media literacy, if we don’t start taxing equitably, if we don’t hold platforms accountable for what they spread, then the American Dream — if it ever existed — is dead on arrival.

For the average American, Trump’s tax cuts aren’t some golden ticket; they’re a fast-track to even deeper inequality. And misinformation is the shiny distraction keeping people from realizing it. Until we address the rot at the core of both our media and our economy, the country will keep barreling down this path, with power and wealth concentrated at the top, leaving the rest of us to pick up the scraps.

Wake up, folks. The game’s rigged, and if we’re not careful, it’s going to stay that way.

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