Keeping the Silent Majority ... Well, Silent
MAGA wants America’s stretched-thin middle class to think it’s ducking Trump’s worst punches. But Trump’s budget hits the bottom half hard, and rising costs elsewhere are hitting us all.
There’s no help coming for middle-class America these days. Get used to it, folks, we’re on our own. The rich will be fine, of course, Trump and his Project 2025 enablers are taking care of them. And the poor will get screwed, once again.
The middle class? We’re not the silent majority, we’re the exploited majority.
Roughly half of the country is considered middle class, according to a long-running model by the Pew Research Center. Their analysis defines middle-income households as those earning between two-thirds and double the national median income, roughly $52,000 to $156,000 for a family of three. That’s a broad range, but many of the pressures within that group are the same.
We’re the ones holding it all together: keeping up with mortgage payments, electric bills, car insurance, and child care. We worry about slipping, not rising. And frankly, many of us don’t have the time or energy to obsess over politics, at least not until the fallout lands directly on our doorstep.
And that, of course, is the opening chapter in the MAGA playbook: Keep the sleeping-giant middle class heavily sedated with worries about trans kids, made-up crime waves, and bloodthirsty immigrants.
But are they really leaving the middle class untouched? Let’s look at Pew’s numbers a bit more closely.
At $52,000 a year, a three-person household falls well within the income range for Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, one of the only things keeping health insurance even remotely affordable for millions of lower-middle-class families.
Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill guts those subsidies. It rolls back premium tax credits, ends enhanced cost-sharing, and strips out protections that helped keep deductibles and out-of-pocket costs manageable. The result? Families like this could see their monthly premiums double or more, forcing many to drop coverage altogether.
What happens then? When an uninsured person gets sick enough to land in the emergency room, public hospitals are required by law to treat them. The cost doesn’t vanish. It’s absorbed by the system and ultimately passed on to the rest of us through higher insurance premiums and hospital fees. Meanwhile, the financial shock can push thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—out of the middle class entirely.
The share of U.S. adults living in middle-income households, as designated by the Pew Center, is already declining, dropping to just 50% in 2021 from 61% in 1971.
Buying Anxiety
Now, let’s jump to the middle of our middle-class range, those making roughly $100,000. That sounds comfortable, right? But in much of the country, that level of income doesn’t necessarily buy stability anymore. For many in this category, it buys anxiety.
People who make $100,000 or more may be able to duck MAGA’s attack on the ACA. But their costs for housing and groceries, transit, tuition, home insurance, and even electricity, are steadily rising, and Trump’s tariffs promise to raise the cost of pretty much everything else as well.
In states like Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas — red states all — electricity costs might climb by as much as 18% by 2035 if the Trump budget does, indeed, repeal existing clean‑energy tax credits, and his new tariffs are imposed.
Meanwhile, if one middle-class parent gets laid off, or a child needs braces or therapy, that household could go from stable to stressed in a matter of weeks. Layoffs are surging nationwide, with employers announcing almost 700,000 job cuts in the first five months of 2025, an 80% jump over the same period in 2024.
Yes, the Trump budget, so far anyway, offers a modest rise in the child tax credit, cuts taxes on tips for a small percentage of those who get them, and boosts the standard deduction slightly. But the tax relief for the middle class is largely symbolic, giving MAGA Republicans at least something they can boast about at home as the mid-terms roll in.
Rich folk, meanwhile, get permanent breaks on capital gains, estate transfers, and high-end income. That’s real money, real power, and fewer rules standing in their way. And poor folks? Yup, they get screwed once again. We’re one nation, with three economies: one’s broken, one’s burdened, one’s booming.
Millions in the Bank
Let’s face it, the only Americans not hurt by the Trump administration are those with millions of dollars in the bank, and even some of them aren’t so happy. Just ask Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. He called Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ “utterly insane and destructive,” warning it could drive up prices, hurt growth, and even “destroy millions of jobs,” and said the legislation is “political suicide” for the Republican Party.
Musk doesn’t care about ACA subsidies or union layoffs, but when a billionaire starts panicking about inflation, it’s worth asking: if even the rich aren’t particularly happy, what’s coming for the rest of us?
The MAGA con is that the middle class will be just fine, that what’s being done only hurts other folks, nasty, undeserving folks who are gaming the system, living off handouts, breaking the rules, or crossing the border.
But it ain’t so.
The American middle class is being squeezed, misled, and used, while the real damage is done behind a wall of noise. As a group, the middle class is already paying for Trump’s agenda, with every bill paid every month. And it’s being left exposed by cuts to many of the federal agencies that have long protected it.
America’s middle class isn’t the silent majority; it’s the exploited majority, whether they know it or not. What do you think?