You're not in the club, and that includes you too, MAGA

[ck4829]

From today's 'how are the "richest Americans" doing and how are the "poorest Americans" doing':

Richest Americans:

The three richest Americans sat together at the Trump inauguration. Is that a problem?

The three wealthiest Americans, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, sat together Monday in a VIP section at the second inauguration of President Donald Trump.

It was a historic moment: a literal concentration of wealth, the core of a group of billionaire guests with a collective worth of more than $1 trillion. Images of the Billionaires’ Row circled the globe, inspiring the same fascination that greeted pictures of five current and former presidents assembled at Jimmy Carter’s funeral earlier in the month.

The sight of five presidents at Carter’s funeral, by most accounts, was stirring. The sight of three tech billionaires at the Trump inauguration, for some observers, left an altogether different impression.

“Watching the wealthiest men in America, and even the world, flank our new president, it felt undemocratic and, honestly, it felt ominous,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/23/musk-bezos-zuckerberg-inauguration-oligarchy/77852313007/

And Poorest Americans:

To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class

One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was a promise of sweeping tax cuts, for the rich, for working people and for companies alike.

Now congressional Republicans have the job of figuring out which of those cuts to propose into law. In order to pay for the cuts, they have started to eye some targets to raise money. Among them: cutting benefits for single mothers and poor people who rely on government health care.

The proposals are included in a menu of tax and spending cut options circulated this month by House Republicans. Whether or not Republicans enact any of the ideas remains to be seen. Some of the potential targets are popular tax breaks and cuts could be politically treacherous. And cutting taxes for the wealthy could risk damaging the populist image that Trump has cultivated.

For the ultrawealthy, the document floats eliminating the federal estate tax, at an estimated cost of $370 billion in revenue for the government over a decade. The tax, which charges a percentage of the value of a person’s fortune after they die, kicks in only for estates worth more than around $14 million.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-tax-cuts-congress-republicans-plan-slash-benefits