Only the Poor Will Help: What Trump’s Tariffs, Lotteries, and Layoffs Are Really Hiding

From Ma Joad to MAGA, the burden of government has never been shared, it’s been shifted.

Ma Joad said it best: “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need, go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help.” In The Grapes of Wrath, this wasn’t sentiment, it was survival. John Steinbeck didn’t romanticize poverty; he revealed its moral clarity. He understood that in a country structured to protect wealth and punish hardship, solidarity among the struggling is the only kind that matters. And that truth still burns today, even as the slogans and sales pitches evolve. In Donald Trump’s America, the government isn't so much small as it is selectively cruel, and the burden of that cruelty, once again, is carried by the people Ma Joad would recognize.

Trump's 2025 tariffs are a case in point. Marketed as nationalist bravado, "We're making China pay!" they are, in reality, backdoor taxes on working Americans. Economist Richard Wolff cuts through the noise: tariffs are taxes. And they're paid not by China, but by the very people buying groceries, clothes, and hardware on tight budgets. Retailers pass the cost down the chain, and the person at the end is the one who can least afford to absorb the blow. It's regressive policy wrapped in a flag.

Just like the lottery. Sold as a fun way to "support our schools," lotteries are now a staple funding mechanism for public education in dozens of states. But who buys the tickets? Who clings to that slim chance at escape? Study after study confirms the obvious: low-income communities spend more, sometimes disproportionately more, on lotteries than wealthier ones. This isn't philanthropy; it's exploitation. It's state-sponsored false hope, peddled to the same people whose neighborhoods have underfunded schools, aging infrastructure, and fewer services. Rather than tax the rich, we nudge the poor to fund public goods through desperation.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, run in spirit (and until recently in title) by Elon Musk, is slashing federal workers en masse. The stated goal is “efficiency.” The real goal is austerity. Layoffs save on salaries and gut entire program budgets. Agencies lose capacity. The public loses services. But the effect goes deeper: stripping public sector workers of job security floods the private labor market with desperate talent, driving wages down. It’s a win for capital. It’s also a quiet war on the very idea of stable middle-class employment.

It’s not a trade war, it’s a class war in disguise. And in a system where the rich don’t want to be taxed and the poor can’t be taxed anymore, the government borrows. From whom? The rich, of course. The very ones who would have paid those taxes instead lend the money and collect interest. It's not that there's no wealth to fund public goods. It's that the people with the wealth are writing the rules to avoid doing so.

Trump doesn’t want you thinking about any of this. He wants you thinking about winning, about taking back something, anything, from someone else. The tariffs aren't hurting you, he says. The layoffs aren't your problem. And that Powerball ticket? It's a dream. A chance. A dollar for dignity. Just don’t look too closely at the odds.

But Ma Joad saw it coming. Steinbeck knew the game. And working people today, those who share meals, tools, housing, rides, labor, and burdens, they know it too. If you want help, go to the poor. They're the only ones who still believe in solidarity. The rich have left the building, and the middle class is being laid off. What remains is community, and it is, as ever, the greatest threat to authoritarian greed.

Trumpism masks cruelty as common sense. But the truth is older than MAGA: the poor fund the system, patch its holes, and get punished when it fails. All while being told they owe more. Enough.

It’s time to turn Ma Joad’s wisdom into policy. For too long, America has done the opposite: punishing those who have the least while rewarding those who hoard the most.

So what would it look like to flip the script? To make Ma Joad’s truth not just a cultural insight, but a legislative blueprint? Here's what it might mean to turn that wisdom into policy:

1. Progressive Tax Reform What Ma Would Say: “Stop making the folks with the least pay the most.” We tax the rich like we mean it. Restore higher income brackets for top earners, close loopholes, tax capital gains like income, and pass a wealth tax. End the era of corporations paying less than teachers. Stop borrowing from billionaires and start collecting what they owe.

2. End Regressive Revenue Schemes What Ma Would Say: “A schoolhouse paid for with food stamps ain’t right.” Phase out state lotteries as a primary education funder. Replace them with robust, predictable, and equitable investment in public education sourced from progressive taxes. Ban predatory lottery marketing in low-income communities.

3. Guarantee Public Sector Job Protections What Ma Would Say: “If a body does the people’s work, she oughta be able to sleep at night.” Ban Trump’s Schedule F and similar at-will job classifications. Codify civil service protections. Make public service a stable and respected career path again, with strong unions and pensions to match.

4. Deliver Public Goods Without Middlemen What Ma Would Say: “Ain’t no reason for a man to have to pay a banker just to get clean water.” Reinvest in universal public services: education, healthcare, transit, housing. Fund them through general revenue, not tolls, fees, or lotteries. End corporate capture of what should be rights.

5. Codify Economic Rights What Ma Would Say: “A body’s got the right to eat, work, and rest.” Adopt an Economic Bill of Rights: the right to a job, to housing, to healthcare, to education, and to a clean environment. Move beyond the old debate about whether people “deserve” help. If we can afford war and Wall Street bailouts, we can afford decency.

6. Build Community Wealth, Not Corporate Empires What Ma Would Say: “Better to own your plow than rent your breath.” Invest in co-ops, land trusts, public banks, and local ownership. Shift power and capital away from Wall Street and into the hands of communities that know what they need.

7. Make Democracy Work for Workers What Ma Would Say: “If we all get a say, we all get a share.” Universal voting rights. Ranked choice voting. Public campaign financing. Workplace democracy. A system where power doesn’t just follow money, but follows the people who make the country run.

We are not doomed to live in a system where the poor prop up public services with scratch tickets, where layoffs are celebrated as fiscal prudence, or where billionaires are coddled while families ration insulin. Ma Joad didn’t dream of that world. She endured it. But she also believed in something better—a world where mutual aid isn’t a last resort, but a national principle.

We’ve built New Deals before. It’s time for another. Let’s write one Ma would be proud of.