OK. In that case lets not use "bloat", and instead just call it the biggest subsidy for the middle and upper classes, coming from the backs of the unemployed, lower class
Guess who's uninsured? Its not the META employee with fertility benefits.
Satire is whomever cannot see why Trump would be voted by the working class: whomever thinks the status quo was to the benefit of the lower, blue collar class... while the middle and upper class ride their (untouchable) govt benefits (SSN) to a secure retirement because the elite class has a secure bureaucratic job (while the lower classes struggle to find 1 part time job).
Meanwhile, the chinese eat the lunch of the working class who see their jobs being exported abroad, because no employer wants to pay for subsidies/retirement/salaries of an elite bureaucratic deadweight class (that makes the rules for themselves, and forgets the neediest).
The chinese eat the lunch of the working and neediest americans, who see their jobs being exported abroad, because of a huge, elite bureaucratic deadweight DC class that was paid to allow regulatory capture, while enjoying sucking US treasure that funded their benefits and retirement.
That same deadweight class in power right now, pushing this narrative that the meager benefits we have are still too high for what we're worth. As they begin the next phase of destroying and looting our country - Make America Poor Again.
Your narrative completely missed all of the monetary inflation that was created to keep prices from going down due to cheaper manufacturing. That was the wealth received from offshoring, having been centralized as monetary creation. But rather than this wealth being spent on deliberate goals to mitigate the economic damage of that offshoring (individual and industrial), a rallying cry of fake "fiscal responsibility" prevented most such public spending. So the new money was instead simply given away to banks to bid up to the asset bubble, ultimately putting that centralized wealth into private hands of asset holders while pricing wage earners out of the asset markets.
That was the political con of the past thirty+ years. Now that it has run its course, the game shifts to the next con - which seems to be turning America into some kind of impoverished authoritarian work camp where we appreciate being able to do unskilled factory work that China no longer wants to do. Acknowledging the last con gets the rubes to buy right into it. Finally some validation, what a breath of fresh air! Oh, and don't you know the real problem right now is actually them "illegals" ? Definitely not these elites, nope. This current bunch is totally different than that last bunch. See how they don't even respect those laws or norms the previous elites respected? So refreshingly different!
An elite that actively wants to let go of his own government sinecure, power and status (from reduction in team size, the ever-important status power signal at bigcorps) , is very different from an elite that wants to grow his team and status
That's a weird framing making for a very odd conclusion, given that he is expanding the powers of the government, claiming those powers vest directly in him, and increasing the number of enforcers of that power. It's like the CEO of a company eliminating the R&D department, cutting everyone else's pay, and bulking up on security guards to perform random searches looking for pretexts to fire more people. From my perspective, the bureaucracy was an ever growing amount of administrative overhead, but it was at least moderating authoritarian power and keeping the worst impulses of autocracy at bay.
I do agree they are not the same - reverting to autocracy is throwing the towel in on the American experiment. Previous elites in power at least had the decency to view their looting as a symbiotic parasitic relationship. What is the same is the dynamic of distracting the rubes with feel-good populist outrage while shamelessly robbing them blind.
The Netherlands has a social welfare system and it's economy is not collapsing.
However the Dutch government doesn't have an ideological fascination with factories. It has a more rational approach to make money with things that the Netherlands is actually good at.
I think what compounds it is that in the US dead weight States still have political power- when realistically all the bets should be on California,Texas and New York and the rest of the country should be grateful.
