Painting a picture of the average US person under the BB Bill

I almost didn't move this over from Medium – it doesn't really meet the umbrella concept of this blog. But I've been reaching for it more lately. Sorry for the blip. 😄

Caveat: this is based on the first half the the “Big Beautiful Bill”, and just the stuff that I reacted with 🤯 and a closer reading. So much of the replacement text is provided out of context that I’ll need to dig into after I finish my data passes.

Until I make my way through the whole thing and have data at my fingertips, this is just a facet. This is my current take until I can see the big picture, at which point (if it hasn’t already made it through Senate approval) I’ll think about refining it to a diagram. But it’s also insight: information architecture doesn’t stop because the information pool is big. Anything worth making that big of a pool about, is worth understanding and contextualizing, especially the parts some of us may want to avoid seeing.

There will be no more upward mobility, for the simple reason that there won’t be education available.

Higher education will be predicated on who can already pay. Why?

Stafford Loans and PLUS Loans will be a thing of the past, Pell Grants will be severely pulled back, and they will be replaced with PROMISE. Which is a nice word for making it really easy to make excuses and point to arbitrary ‘demographics’ for why you, specifically, will fail; so there’s no point investing. Any college fees that do not result in someone finishing at the pace expected, Federal loans will be clawed back from the institution that accepted your application. So the colleges and universities will be policing their applicants even before federal agencies do an assessment.

I get there are some shady educational institutions out there. It’s the combination that will stall higher education as a path for upward mobility.

Meanwhile, lifetime student loans are capped at $200,000. Which, yeah, that’s alot — but it’s not enough to become a doctor from any but the cheapest universities. The highest educations will only be accessible to those who already have money.

Oh, and those student loans that already exist: forbearance and deferment will be gone.

Education is attempted to be dismantled, on purpose.

Jobs are going to change drastically

Most of the money for new jobs is going to Homeland Security, and there is a specific block to any position that would help to care for people. Thousands will be employed, and every single one of them will be used to control population — with $858,000,000 set aside for bonuses. Based on current behavior, they will likely reward aggression and dark triad behavior (as in lying, siloing, gaslighting, etc.).

Meanwhile, immigrants will be dwindling. Policed out, penned up, fear-mongered into self deporting, thousands of dollars in yearly fees just to be in our borders and able to work.

The jobs we’ve let stay in have a stagnant minimum wage ($7.25/hour — $15,080 per year IF it’s full time and you never get sick), and will need to be filled. Think along the lines of meat packers, crop pickers, cleaners, construction, supply chain — the things we absolutely need to keep going for society (we lived through COVID, we know how quickly it can get stressed). There will be a severely reduced population already doing it, and a pattern in our society that people won’t hire except for what you’ve already proven you can do as a job.

Tell me again how keeping minimum wage below the poverty line wasn’t financial thumb screws. Tell me again how it doesn’t impact you. The goal and testing is to nix workers’ unions. What-is is what-will-be.

But it’s ok: tips and overtime will no longer be taxed. You can now work 80 hour weeks and like it because that time and half will be worth about $20k per year, and $35k per year is way easier to pay rent, food, and utilities than $15k.

Which also means that people who have jobs will want overtime. Hiring managers might cringe at the potential money-lost, but choosing between a known good worker who doesn’t require training (and inevitable mistakes), and $5k per year can get very easy, very fast if their profit margins are robust. There will be even fewer jobs available, and higher unemployment. Don’t forget that AI is being hyped as a job replacer, that Trump thinks there will be “so many” factory jobs. Add educational scarcity, and the only plans are for menial work.

So, what will happen to all the infrastructure and jobs built up to ‘eradicate’ immigration and non-US-citizens within our borders, once that population is reduced? Do you think it will quietly go away?

All the fees that are going to be applied to immigrants are under the control of the Secretary of Homeland Security, and they are intended to contribute to our national Treasury. Only 25–50% (depending on the fee) is intended to stay within Homeland Security. So whenever Homeland Security needs more money, they can increase the fees, or find more to fee.

Environment

Heavy duty vehicles emissions, port air pollution, greenhouse gas reduction, diesel emissions reductions, air pollution in general and in schools, low emission electricity, blending renewable fuels into petroleum gas, green innovation and manufacturing, EPA compliance monitoring, ESG reporting on greenhouse gases, helping to document and declare greener manufacturing, methane and waste reduction, funding for EPA reviews, labeling low-carbon construction materials, climate justice, multi-pollutant emissions standards for light and medium vehicles.

All of it has been repealed and the allocated funding clawed back. Those rescissions — all the ‘unobligated’ funds, so all the funding that DOGE blocked from sending out — are being transferred back to the Treasury. Other parts of the bill are re-allocating them. So all the furor Democrats were doing, trying to hold the likes of Noem, Patel, and Kennedy to account for their spending (or lack), is being retroactively fixed, legislatively, by this bill. There will be more on that in the next few days.

Meanwhile, environmental studies for extraction businesses are being set to opt-in. Yay, they didn’t make it against the law to do environmental studies. They’ve just made it against stakeholder value: it will add time, fees, study personnel, and labs to do them…and they don’t have to, and have to work harder to say they will instead of just let it stay at ‘no’. That’s time and money lost when it doesn’t have to be, with effort at every step of the way.

Since oil and gas can now pay a $10M nonrefundable fee to expedited certain extraction permitting to a year (with Presidential approval…think what’s he’s done with tariffs), and there’s new legislation to cover their expenses if future/derailing legislation gets put into place, the goal is speed.

The legislation isn’t just opening up federal lands for oil, gas, coal, and mining extraction: it’s mandatory. They have a price set, but if no one takes it at that price (or higher! bidding wars welcome!), the land can be leased at bid, plus a $75 fee and 12.5% of the material/value being extracted. There’s one that’s set to start within 5 day — DAYS — of legislation enactment.

Belching gases, processing run off, and expedited timelines while key legislation has been repealed with rescission. We should expect something like our 1970’s, at least. With no environmental reporting or testing, it will become harder to trace the bad actors and make them pay for cleanup in the future, if we happen to change our minds about liking this.

Trump is telling you to like this.

Feeling healthy

Seriously, you don’t have to worry about health with those hours and the pollution. You won’t have it. There is no point in worrying about what you don’t have and can’t attain.

Healthcare is defunded. It’s your responsibility to wend your way through to some understanding — in fact, by current rhetoric, it’s your Patriotic Duty. And, yeah, I chose that link on purpose. Remember: AI hallucinates, including to the point of potential poisoning.

As your surrounding environment is made more toxic, it’s your fault if your body can’t manage it. If you can’t afford food, it’s your fault for not finding the few jobs available and accepting them at the below-poverty-line wages. Anything they’re doing, if it doesn’t work for you: it’s your fault.