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Cedar Valley Voices: Rural residents conned into voting for Trump
by Mike Johnson · Op-Ed · December 04, 2024
Was election 2024 a case of buyer’s remorse?
One of the sadder consequences of the 2024 election is how many rural voters unwittingly voted against their own economic interests. In short, they were conned.
Rural counties tend to be older. For example, the 65 and over demographic represents over 20 percent of the population in many rural counties in northwest Iowa.
But several of Trump’s proposed policies will undercut Social Security and Medicare. Which proposed policies you might ask? Well, one is his plan to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security income. To the naive voter this sounds like a good idea; however, most of the tax falls on high-income earners. Most Iowans would get little to no benefit, but the lost revenue would accelerate the Social Security insolvency date and also result in a further 8-percent reduction in benefits beyond the baseline projection.
It gets worse. Contrary to popular internet misinformation, undocumented immigrants working here contribute payroll taxes, but in general cannot collect Social Security and Medicare benefits.
The net effect of deporting undocumented immigrants will be steep cuts in Social Security and Medicare because of the lost revenue. Those are the very programs that many older, rural Iowans depend on.
Immigrants also work in many of our meat and poultry processing plants. If you’re a livestock or poultry farmer you might have a hard time finding a processing plant that will accept your livestock at a profitable price. We saw what happened during COVID when immigrants in processing plants weren’t able to work.
Finally, Trump’s proposed tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada will hit US farmers particularly hard. US farmers should expect retaliatory tariffs that will hurt export sales.
And beyond that, Wells Fargo estimates that Trump’s tariffs will increase the price of a Ford 150 pick-up truck by $2,100.
One can only imagine how Trump’s tariffs will affect the price of John Deere equipment.
Mike Johnson lives in West Branch. The Cedar Valley Voices seeks to promote Democratic and progressive ideas of the residents who live in the Cedar County area.
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