Beneath the flickering glow of a discount store’s fluorescent lights, MAGA Mike scans price tags on canned beans, now 30% pricier than last month. His cart holds half what it did two years ago, though his paycheck hasn’t budged. This is life in 2031, where unilateral tariffs bleed households dry while corporate titans hoard the spoils. The cycle is unbreakable, a predictable carousel of political theater and economic decay.
The Illusion of Protection
Governments still peddle tariffs as patriotic shields, but decades of data expose the lie. Each new levy, whether on steel, semiconductors, or solar panels, ignites immediate price surges. Retailers pass costs to consumers, while domestic producers, freed from foreign competition, inflate prices further. MAGA Mike’s $8 laundry detergent now costs $12. His wife’s diabetes medication, once $50, demands $78. Retaliatory strikes from trading partners compound the damage. Mexico slaps 40% tariffs on U.S. grains, Canada taxes Midwest machinery, and China strangles rare earth mineral exports. The average family’s annual costs balloon by $5,200, a silent tax levied not by law, but by market collapse.
Indoctrinated MAGA workers cling to propaganda about “re-shored jobs,” but reality mocks them. A 2028 Department of Labor study found that for every manufacturing job “saved” by tariffs, 14 vanish in downstream industries. MAGA Mike’s brother lost his auto parts warehouse job when retaliatory EU tariffs killed exports. His severance paid for six weeks of groceries.
Wage Stagnation in the Shadow of Gilded Towers
While MAGA Mike skips meals, C-suite elites thrive. Executive pay has ballooned 1,200% since 2000, with CEOs now earning 344 times their median employee. Stock buybacks, fueled by tariff-inflated profits, pad shareholder portfolios as worker wages crawl. The Federal Reserve’s 2030 report confirmed it, real wages for the bottom 90% grew just 0.3% annually since 1980, while inflation-adjusted CEO compensation surged 9% yearly (real talk).
The system is self-perpetuating. Tariffs protect monopolies, monopolies suppress wages, and stagnant wages force reliance on cheap imports, until the next tariff kills those too. MAGA Mike’s daughter stitches shoes at a factory shielded by 2027 footwear tariffs. Her wage? $14.50/hour, $2 less than her mother earned adjusting claims for an insurance firm outsourced to Manila.
The Feedback Loop of Despair
Politicians rotate through office, each administration layering fresh tariffs to appease populist rage, masked as conservatism. The 2032 “American Tech Sovereignty Act” slaps 50% duties on foreign microchips, spiking laptop prices beyond most households’ reach. Schools ration shared tablets, telemedicine collapses in rural clinics.
Retaliation follows like clockwork. Brazil taxes U.S. pharmaceuticals, India blocks agricultural imports, and Vietnam embargoes rare earth metals. Inflation hits 9%, but the Fed dares not hike rates, corporate debt towers at $55 trillion, and a single quarter-point increase could trigger defaults. MAGA Mike’s rent eats 60% of his income. His landlord, a private equity shell company, raised rates 22% this year.
No Exit
There’s no rebellion here, no collective awakening. The government controlled media blames “global market forces” or “lazy workers.” Unions, gutted by decades of offshoring, lack leverage to strike. Young adults migrate to “tariff-free zones”, slums where black-market goods trade for crypto, dodging surveillance drones. MAGA Mike’s son peddles bootleg antibiotics from Canada. Last month, ICE raided his stash and fined him $10,000.
Demographers warn of a “negative hope index.” Birth rates plummet as families reject parenthood in a world where infants cost $3,000 annually in tariff-driven healthcare hikes. The Census Bureau projects population decline by 2040, a first since 1918.
The New Feudalism
Tariffs aren’t policy failures, they’re features of a system engineered to funnel wealth upward. Every price hike, every shuttered factory, every eroded paycheck tightens the vise. MAGA Mike’s grandchildren will inherit this, a nation of serfs toggling between gig apps, paying premiums for rationed basics, while distant billionaires mine their data and lobby for newer, crueler protections.
The tariffs never end. They can’t. They’re the lifeblood of an Project 2025-inspired oligarchy that thrives on scarcity. MAGA Mike dies at 68, his body worn from rationed care, his final thought a bitter punchline: “At least we Made America Great Again”
Be careful what you wish for, when those wishes are based upon 15 second, demagoguery laden, sound bites. Sometimes they come true.
