The US Government Shutdown: "Let Them Eat Cheese"

The stock market is up. Politicians beam on cable news about “economic resilience.” But on the ground, the picture looks very different. Jobs are scarce or unstable, rents keep rising, and food insecurity is back to 1980s levels. The government shutdown has hit federal workers, SNAP recipients, and service programs for the poor and disabled. And what does Washington offer the hungry? Cheese—literally and metaphorically.

Government cheese once symbolized a broken welfare system—a processed product handed out to the desperate while politicians preached self-reliance. Today’s version is digital and disembodied: food banks filled with castoffs, online portals for benefits that don’t come, “relief” programs that require a master’s degree to navigate. People are told to be grateful while they wait in line for what little is left.

Meanwhile, the headlines celebrate record-breaking stock prices and defense contracts. Billions flow abroad to Argentina, Ukraine, and Israel—especially Israel, where U.S. aid underwrites weapons used in what many describe as genocide in Palestine. Corporate media downplay it, politicians justify it, and dissenters are told they’re unpatriotic.

In the U.S., the old cry of “personal responsibility” masks the reality of neoliberal economics—a system that privatizes profit and socializes pain. When the government shuts down, it’s the poor who feel it first. The “educated underclass”—graduates burdened by debt, adjuncts working without benefits, laid-off professionals—are just a few missed paychecks away from standing in the same line for government cheese.

Yet many Americans don’t see who the real enemy is. They turn on one another—Democrats versus Republicans, urban versus rural, native-born versus immigrant—while the architects of austerity watch from gated communities. The spectacle distracts from the structural theft: trillions transferred upward, democracy traded for debt, justice sold to the highest bidder.

“Let them eat cheese” is no longer a historical joke. It’s the bipartisan message of a political class that rewards Wall Street while abandoning Main Street. And as long as the public stays divided, hungry, and distracted, the pantry of power remains locked.

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Sources

• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Household Food Insecurity in the United States in 2024.”

• Gary Roth. "The Educated Underclass." 

• Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Economic Effects of a Government Shutdown.”

• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Wealth Inequality and Stock Market Concentration.”

• The Intercept. “How U.S. Weapons and Aid Fuel the Assault on Gaza.”

• Associated Press. “Food Banks Report Record Demand Amid Inflation.”

• Jacobin Magazine. “Neoliberalism and the Return of American Austerity.”

• Reuters. “U.S. Sends Billions in Loans and Aid to Argentina.”

• Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “Wage Stagnation and the Cost of Living Crisis.”