How the War Is Sharpening Inequality in Both the US and Iran
By Tyler Hicks
Excerpt:
Kaelin Rapport, a policy analyst for racial equity at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), calls this a “sharpening of the edges of inequality.” His colleague Isha Weerasinghe, director of CLASP’s Public Benefits Justice team, points out that higher prices are just one of many variables — including the loss of Medicaid benefits and food assistance cuts from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — deeply impacting Americans’ wallets right now.
“People who are living in poverty or who don’t have high wages or are unable to work are being hit from all sides,” she says. “They already have less purchasing power because of inflation caused by economic circumstances, and then on top of that, they do not have the safety net to be able to support them.”
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Rapport and Weerasinghe, the colleagues at CLASP, share similar concerns about people in the US. Just as the fighting over the Strait of Hormuz contributed to price increases in various goods all over the world, so, too, could the shockwaves of this war affect Americans’ long-term financial and mental well-being.
A recent piece the pair wrote for CLASP points out that, according to the American Psychiatric Association, financial stability is a key determinant of mental health. They also note that HR 1 — the legislation commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — will ultimately lead to more than $1 trillion in cuts to healthcare funding over the next decade, as well as $186 billion in cuts to food assistance programs.
“There’s billions of dollars being put into rounding up people instead of being put into the social safety net,” says Rapport. “The average person who lives in the United States, who makes less than $100,000 a year, isn’t going to be able to eat more ICE jails or a prolonged conflict in Iran, but they’re going to feel that in their checkbooks.”
