Trump Just Triggered the Collapse of the IRS – No One’s Ready for What’s Next

IRS enforcement staffing has fallen by 34% even as the tax code ballooned to more than 4 million words. Over 25,000 IRS employees have been eliminated in the last few years. It's the largest collapse of US tax enforcement in modern history. The IRS now audits less than 0.2% of taxpayers, the lowest audit rate in a century. Audits for millionaires have dropped by over 70% and audits for billion-dollar corporations have dropped by more than half. It's all actually happening. Trump's long-promised plan to collapse the IRS is no longer just talk. With IRS layoffs, the one big beautiful bill tax reform, and record-breaking tariff revenue, we are witnessing the most radical shift in American taxation in 100 years. The question is why? What's Trump's vision? Replace the IRS with a streamlined system funded by foreign tariffs instead of punishing hardworking Americans? Maybe, but here's the problem. The government is still spending $7 trillion a year while collecting only 5 trillion. And that gap will sink us. This isn't just about taxes. It's about power, control, and whether you get crushed or come out ahead. When I started my research, I actually wasn't sure why things were headed this direction because a tax system doesn't just quietly dismantle itself. Not while the national debt is exploding faster than at any other point in our history. Someone wants this, but why now? Why gut the only institution responsible for collecting the revenue that keeps the country running? Why disarm your tax enforcers right when you need tax dollars the most? Today, we're going to explore why the IRS had to die, who killed it, and most importantly, what exactly is changing and how to use the new system to your advantage. Fail to understand that and you will be part of the 90 plus percent that end up left holding the bag. Now, parts one and two are about getting beyond the PR of what's happening right now so you can actually see the true nature of the problem. And part three is the path forward. So, welcome to part one. Why the IRS had to die. Between 1980 and today, the US national debt has grown by 3,000% while tax enforcement capacity has gone in the exact opposite direction. In 2023 alone, interest payments grew by 38% outpacing every major government program, including social security. Federal spending is now so lopsided that 70 cents of every tax dollar goes to just three things: social security, Medicare, and interest on the national debt. In the last 50 years, Congress has passed a balanced budget exactly four times, and none of those times happened in the last two decades. Since 2001, Washington has increased annual spending by nearly 90% while median household income has only risen by 18%. The US Treasury has to issue billions of dollars in new debt instruments every day to cover its shortfalls, a pace never seen in American history. We're in that moment in the movie Titanic where the ship seems fine, but it is a mathematical certainty that it is going to sink. Everyone's still calm, but it's just a question of how many people are going to drown and freeze to death. Many countries have been here before us, and all of them have fallen. How did we all end up in this same exact position time and again throughout history? Well, every empire that has ever existed learns the self-destructive power of debt and money printing the same way. Debt allows you to grow because business is the act of creating a system that outputs something more valuable than its inputs. Take some protein powder, liquid fiber, mix it together with some other stuff, and you've got a protein bar. Do it right, and people will pay more for the finished bar than what the ingredients and labor cost you. That's business. But, getting started is often very expensive, and that's why debt, borrowing money, comes in so handy. And governments do it on an industrial scale. The problem is, and the reason it brings down empires, is they get addicted to borrowing money. And every empire that has ever existed has ended up borrowing more money than they could ever possibly pay back unless they counterfeit their own money. This is known as money printing, quantitative easing, debasing the currency, whatever euphemism you want to use, but it is legalized counterfeiting. And regardless of being legalized, it's still counterfeiting. And counterfeiting money has the counterintuitive effect of making each dollar less valuable. Now, if you owe a lot of money, that's actually a good thing. That's what you want. You want the dollars to be worth less over time, so they become easier to pay off. The catch is that some people understand how this game works and they know there's a way to hide from the government-sanctioned fraud of legalized counterfeiting and that's to own assets. Things like houses, gold, stocks, bonds, and crypto. The bad news is that the vast majority of people in any given country don't understand how assets protect you from the ravages of legalized counterfeiting, which is often referred to as inflation, and that's why 10% of Americans own 93% of all the assets. The other 90% of Americans are made poorer by the day, literally, by this counterfeiting, by debasing the currency. And so this small number of people races away in wealth from everybody else. In the short run, this makes the wealthy happy because they get even wealthier compared to everyone else. But, they become so convinced that they're clever for escaping the effects of inflation that they lose sight of the age-old truth. Too much wealth inequality as these two groups race away from each other causes revolution and the collapse of a once-wealthy nation. It's happened over and over throughout history. Before the revolution happens, the wealth inequality manifests as what's known as populism, which is what you're living through right now. Populism is where people's economic economic insecurity is turned into anger. That anger then manifests as tribal thinking and a desire to secure more government money for one's own side. No one wants to compromise. No one wants to cut spending. People, in fact, want more spending and they want that money to go to them and their team. This causes politicians to promise a bunch of free stuff because it's in a populist moment and that's what people need to hear to be motivated to vote for a politician. And politicians will literally say and do whatever they need to to get elected. And one of those things that they say to get elected is that they'll cut the IRS and reduce taxes. Another is that they'll make healthcare more affordable. Another is we'll fund this war effort and that war effort. No one is thinking about where the money is actually going to come from. They just know they themselves don't want to pay for it and they want as much of the benefit to go to them as humanly possible. Hence, we're dismantling the IRS and giving tax breaks all while we radically increase government spending during a time when we are running historic deficits and racking up more crippling debt. It is not at all hyperbole to say that America is racing towards bankruptcy and that within roughly a decade, if nothing changes, America is going to default on its debt or inflate its own currency to a breaking point beyond which it will not be able to recover. Ray Dalio, the legendary investor who made his insane fortune by understanding how something he calls the big debt cycle drives the rise and fall of empires. He's documented how debt and money printing cause empires to follow a tragically predictable cycle. First, they bring on sensible debt, then outrageous debt, then they print money to keep up with the rising interest payments, then they collapse under the weight of their debt and have to debase the currency to try and keep up with the ever-increasing interest payments. In the end, debt is undefeated against empires and we're in the middle of that cycle. The big debt cycle has six official stages. Stage six is total collapse. Phase five is the internal conflict phase. It's when societies fracture into warring tribes, when trust in institutions collapses, governments, desperate to avoid short-term pain, resort to the same three tactics over and over again. Borrow more, print more, and push the pain into the future. We will get right back to the show in a moment, but first, let's talk about the difference between making content and producing content at scale. Impact Theory is a media company with over a billion views. I'm telling you that for one reason. We know what slows down production. And my team tells me one huge time sync is hunting for assets, stock footage, music, sound effects, licensing confusion, paying per download like you're being nickel and dimed. It adds up fast and it compounds with every video you make. That's why my editors love Storyblocks. Unlimited downloads, one price, no caps, no overages, no surprise fees. Video, music, sound effects, templates, all of it. Download as much as you need. Everything is pre-licensed and royalty-free. You download it and use it, you're protected. To get started with unlimited stock media downloads at one set price, head to storyblocks.com/impact or just click the link below. And now, let's get back to the show. Dalio's framework is brutally simple. Empires rise when they borrow to invest in productive things. They peak when debt grows faster than productivity. They decline when money printing becomes the only way to delay the economic crisis, and they collapse when interest payments spiral so far out of control that the government can no longer meaningfully function. According to Dalio, America is now in late stage five of this process. Remember, stage six is total collapse. The deficit is just too large, the political system is too divided, and the debt burden is compounding too fast for the old tools, namely interest rate cuts or interest rate increases, tax hikes, and spending cuts to work without destroying the economy in one direction or the other. And that's why the IRS is being sacrificed. The system is past the point where traditional tax enforcement would solve the problem anyway. The math is just too gnarly. Plus, the political incentives are too warped, and no one is going to vote for more taxes, unless of course it's just on the rich. More on that later. And so, here we are. Despite Thomas Massie's heroic debt clock lapel pin, America is in stage five. We are buried under so much debt, we're stuck in a debt loop known as fiscal dominance. I did a whole video about that, which you can watch here. For now, suffice it to say that we've burdened ourselves with massive deficits by voting for government to spend way more than we make every year in tax revenue. Those deficits have become so massive that the Fed, the organization created to guide the economy by adjusting interest rates and printing money, can no longer do either of those things without creating massive problems. If you raise interest rates, you force the government to hyperinflate the currency to make its interest payments, thus destroying the dollar and making everyone poor. If you lower interest rates, you flood the economy with cheap money, which creates 2000-style dot-com bubbles and 2008-style housing bubbles, but everywhere and much worse. There are no good paths left. Well, except a balanced budget, but no one's going to vote for that. And for anyone who thinks that we can simply tax our way out of this, the rich or otherwise, know this, for every dollar of new tax revenue since 2019, our beloved government has added $1.58 in new spending. That is the populist doom loop. Tax more, we'll spend more. Tax less, still spend more. Technically, as the richest country on planet Earth though, we don't have a revenue problem. Technically, we have a spending problem. But when you have to promise tax breaks to get elected, you make the whole problem much worse. And even if politicians wanted to fix this the old-fashioned way, by beefing up the IRS and cracking down on enforcement, the sad truth is, as I said, the IRS model itself is no longer compatible with the world we live in. For starters, voters don't want the Nordic-style high across-the-board taxes that would be necessary to balance the budget without spending cuts. And even if you confiscated every single dollar in every billionaire's bank account, you'd only buy yourself roughly 2 years of extra runway. That's what happens when your national debt is $38 trillion and growing by a trillion more dollars every 100 days. Additionally, the US tax code has become hyper-complex by design. It's not a revenue system anymore. It's a 4-million-word labyrinth of carve-outs, incentives, political favors, industry protections, and decades-old patches stacked on top of patches. You don't enforce a tax code like that, you just try to survive it. Add to that the reality of globalized capital. 40 years ago, income was earned locally. Today, it flows across borders at the speed of light. A sophisticated individual or corporation can move money, assets, ownership structures, and tax liability across jurisdictions with a single keystroke. The old audit model, built for a paper-based economy, simply can't keep up. On top of that, you've got congressional loophole making, which never seems to end. Every session adds new exceptions, new credits, new deductions, new industry favors, and new layers of complexity. The IRS does not just have to enforce one tax code, it's essentially got to enforce dozens of tax codes that have been stitched together into a giant Frankenstein's monster. And to top it all off, that enforcement has become customer level, not corporate level, not structural level. Millions of individuals filing millions of increasingly complicated returns, all of which must be checked, verified, cross-referenced, and reconciled with other agencies. That would be hard enough, but when you add human overwhelm, the data complexity alone now exceeds what a human enforcement system could physically handle. Massive data sets, multi-layered financial reporting, endless forms, hybrid digital and paper trails, even a fully funded, fully staffed IRS would struggle to keep up. It gets hard to argue for a department and it gets hard to argue for a department nobody wants to do an overwhelming job when, despite however many additional billions it manages to collect, it won't even make a dent in the trillions of dollars we add to the deficit every year. It's not an ideological problem, it's an architectural one. The enforcement model that worked in the 1950s simply cannot survive in a world where the financial system has been gerrymandered to allow politicians to make any promise they need to to get elected. Once you see that, you see the game that's actually being played. In a world where voters want big spending and low taxes, any politician who stands up and says, "I'm going to raise taxes and beef up the IRS audits." is committing career suicide. So, what's a girl to do? Well, if you're a Democrat, you promise free things, print money, and you tax the rich to please the base, even though it won't help in reality. If you're a Republican, you've got the IRS and offer tax breaks to please the base, even though in reality it won't help. But, on the surface, it does three crucial things. First, it's invisible to most voters. Nobody gets a bill saying, "We just let your neighbor underpay by $50,000." The lost revenue just doesn't show up as a line item. It just silently widens the deficit. Second, it's emotionally popular. The IRS is consistently one of the least-liked federal agencies. Roughly half of Americans view it unfavorably. "Cut the IRS." and "Abolish the IRS." are reliable applause lines on the campaign trail. Third, and this one is big. It not only pleases the base, it pleases big donors. And we've got so much money in politics. Remember when I said the politicians will do and say anything they need to to get elected? Well, when audit rates for millionaires and large corporations fall 50 to 70%, that makes campaign donations a little easier to secure. But, then so do promises of free buses, free daycare, and freezing rent. That also buys votes. Rational politicians do what politicians do. They focus on gaining and retaining power. So, Republicans starve the IRS and Democrats expand social services and both of them race us towards catastrophe. But optically, their choices check all of the boxes for getting elected. Voters love it. Donors love it. And the inflation and/or loss revenue is simply invisible to virtually everyone. Sure, the actual budget math is a bloodbath, but in everyone's back pocket is a plan, however precarious, to grow revenues. For the Democrats, it was boosting GDP through new government jobs and for the Republicans, it's replacing the Internal Revenue Service with tariffs and the External Revenue Service. The question is, part two, what are tariffs and can they actually save us? From 1790 through the Civil War, over 90% of all federal revenue came from tariffs. During that period, the US government raised more money from tariffs than from all other taxes combined. By 1820, 87 cents of every dollar the government spent was earned from tariffs. One of the first acts of Congress was to ensure that the federal government was funded almost entirely through import duties, aka tariffs. Before the Civil War, the federal government spent less than 2% of GDP and almost all of that was funded by taxes on foreign goods, not citizens' wages. The federal income tax didn't even exist for the first 124 years of American history. Once again, tariff revenues are on the rise. In fiscal year 2025, tariff revenues hit nearly 200 billion dollars in a single year, an all-time high. The question is, is that enough to save us? As always, the answer is to look at history for clues. And as you just heard, tariffs are not new. In fact, they're as old as the country itself. But what is new is the way Trump has resurrected tariffs, not as a simple line item in the federal budget, but as a political weapon. If you understand anything about Trump, understand this. He likes tools that let him negotiate from a position of dominance. He likes leverage. He likes pressure. He likes yanking people in with that weird-ass handshake and saying, "Do XYZ thing that I don't like, and I'm going to hit you where it hurts." Tariffs give him that kind of leverage. But do they generate a meaningful amount of revenue? They let him posture on the world stage, I'll give him that. They let him reward allies and punish adversaries, I'll give him that. But do they generate a meaningful amount of revenue? And if not, why not? Because for the first half of the country's existence, they were effectively our only source of income. Now, the short answer, of course, is no. They no longer generate a meaningful amount of revenue. When you add a trillion dollars to your deficit every 100 days, and interest is compounding far faster than revenues are growing, 200 billy a year just ain't going to get you there. This is part of the Kabuki theater of government that we're living in right now. They've got to message that they're going to tax someone somewhere. Tax the rich. Tax the foreigner selling us stuff. Secretly tax everyone through inflation. Tax someone somewhere. Just not me. And that's tariffs' real superpower in this hyper-dysfunctional political moment. They're a tax with a great cover story. But the harsh reality of tariffs is that they are a consumption tax. It's a tax that is typically shared between the exporter, the other guy, and the importer, the US company. And because this tax is typically shared by both parties via renegotiated terms, politicians can beat their chest and say that the other guy is paying. It's a simple slogan. It's very memorable, it's great for getting reelected. It even feels patriotic. Finally, someone is going to pay their fair share. There's just one problem. It's not economically viable given the size and scale of our government, and most importantly, the fact that we have globalized the economy. We've got essential goods that we need that are manufactured outside of the country. Now, you can try and get clever and make carve-outs, but the reality is that revenue streams aren't just about how much you make, it's about how much you need to make. For the first half of America's life, the government was small. The government didn't carry so many people on its back. The government today is massive. It picks up everybody's tab everywhere, making the idea of funding an entire quasi-socialist empire through a consumption tax on non-essential goods ludicrous. You either won't generate enough revenue to reduce your deficits meaningfully, or you end up causing prices on essential goods to rise. And given we're in the middle of an affordability crisis, that's a non-starter if you want to get reelected. So, while tariffs give Trump the perfect cover story, the actual mechanics are such that we'll make some money, raise prices at least a little here and there, and ultimately still be left hunting for a solution that actually resolves the fiscal crisis. So, the big question becomes, can tariffs at least fill the hole left by a gutted IRS? Are they equivalent? The short answer is yes, but does it really matter? When the Biden admin decided to hyper-fund the IRS by giving it 80 billion new dollars, it was estimated to bring in roughly 200 billion dollars over 10 years. Given tariffs have already done 200 billion in a single year, it's safe to say that tariffs are better than a hyper funded IRS. But, we're still staring down a two trillion dollar annual deficit. That's a 10x difference. Neither tariffs nor the IRS can supplement revenue enough to reverse our fortunes. Sure, they let politicians raise taxes without admitting they're raising taxes, but it's just not going to be enough. And for anyone who thinks that Trump just doesn't understand tariffs, it it doesn't matter. Even if Trump doesn't fully understand the macro mechanics of anything he says, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent does. Bessent is one of the most brilliant economic minds on planet Earth. He understands full well how tariffs work, and he's advising the president. But even still, tariffs and a hyper funded IRS are nothing more than Band-Aids of varying size on a severed artery. They buy a little time, but they don't heal the wound. These are both the tricks of a late-stage empire clutching its straws. When you can't raise taxes, won't cut spending, and are forced to print money to avoid defaulting on your debt, you turn to the only tools you have left. Financial repression, inflation, capital controls, and stealth taxation. Tariffs are all of that rolled into one. They are the perfect late-stage tool. They look patriotic while acting as a hidden tax. They look like punishment for China while quietly raising revenue at home. They look like strength while functioning as a pressure release valve for a collapsing fiscal system. But what they can't do is solve the real problem. The compounding interest on the ever-growing debt. Once the interest payments on your debt exceed your revenue, it's game over. And tariffs, despite their popularity and political utility, at least for Republicans, They cannot stop the math of what's coming. So, that brings us to the only question that actually matters. If the IRS is dead and tariffs can't save us and the big debt cycle is accelerating, what the hell are we supposed to do? Stay with me because what I'm about to tell you affects every single person listening right now. There is a billion-dollar industry profiting off of your personal data and you're the only one that isn't getting paid. 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By 1960, Venezuela was richer than Spain, Greece, and Israel and wealthier per capita than half of Western Europe. In the late '70s, the Venezuelan currency was considered one of the strongest currencies on Earth. In 1980, it was worth more than the dollar. Then, in 1976, Venezuela nationalized its entire oil industry. Between 1999 and 2017, Venezuela passed more than 1,000 price control laws. Like what you're seeing in New York. Regulating everything from food to medicine and household goods. Inflation exploded after the government printed money to cover spending gaps, increasing the money supply by over 10,000% between 2010 and 2020. Between 2014 and 2021, Venezuela's economy shrank by nearly 75%, erasing 3/4 of its GDP in just 7 years. That's what collapse looks like. And as always, it's triggered by political lunacy brought on by a populace that votes for free without understanding how the economy actually works. If you want to fix your society, you must fix what people vote for. Since politicians will do and say whatever they need to do to gain and maintain power, voters are what matters. So, the first step in navigating well a country that's going broke is to never vote for free buses, rent freezes, and expanded social programs. Money printing is how these things are always paid for. By nature, these things economic growth, which means you'll never be able to tax your way to cover the costs. Taxes can only support a massive government when the economy is growing rapidly. And ironically, over-taxation and nationalizing your most lucrative industries is exactly how you slow the economy down. But despite that PSA, I don't expect the voting populace to master economic rationality. I really hate to be cynical. It does not suit my personality, but in reality, I just don't see it any other way. So, here is the wisest path forward given the reality we're in. Everyone would have to accept that the reality is that to collectively get out of the current problem, we would have to execute what Ray Dalio calls a beautiful deleveraging. And that's where you dramatically cut government spending, strategically print money to juice the economy to offset the reduction in spending, and restructure some debt. All while increasing taxes a bit and spreading the wealth around to reduce wealth inequality and avoid a revolution. In my most optimistic moments, I think if enough of us bang that drum that maybe we could actually pull it off, but in my more sober moments, I accept that's the ideal, but the odds of us getting there as a collective are effectively zero. So, it's better to have a plan that only requires us as individuals to act rationally. So, strap in, that's what I'm going to walk us through. The first step in navigating this well is to stop arguing with reality. We are in fiscal dominance, and therefore, our corrective measures are very limited. We can't just print money. We can't just lower rates. We can't just raise rates. Taxation alone will not get us there. A hyper-funded IRS isn't the answer. Tariffs are also insufficient. We must dramatically reduce spending, but no one gets elected with that campaign promise, so that option is out as well. Interest costs are exploding, and they will tank the economy. That is a given. We have no realistic brakes left on this runaway train. Based on the rate that we're accumulating debt, we're headed to default somewhere in roughly the next 10 years. I wish it wasn't true, but that's the math. Openly defaulting on our national debt would be brutal, but honest, but it's way too painful, so we're not going to do it. It's kind of like the difference between jumping off a cliff versus being pushed off. Odds are we're going to wait to be pushed. Getting pushed is the equivalent in this case of what's known as a soft default. This is where we'll print money until the dollar no longer has any meaningful value, like Venezuela did. Now, I'm not qualified to give anyone financial advice, but I'm going to walk you through how I think about this moment for myself. Please keep in mind this is for entertainment and educational purposes only. You really do need to understand the stuff yourself. Do not take anyone's word for it, not mine, not anybody's. Think through the problem. Any intelligent, forward-looking financial strategy will take massive money printing into consideration. Consider diversifying away from just the US. Though currently it's still a very potent market, so think diversification, not extrication. Keep cash on hand to deal with any major disruption in the markets without the need to panic sell. Expect volatility, avoid binary, all-or-nothing bets, and tilt your life towards robustness in the face of unpredictability. So, get into uncorrelated asset classes. Assume you cannot see the future clearly and plan for surprise nested inside of predictable historical loops. Odds are we are right now in an everything bubble, but you don't have to predict the exact week or month that the bubble's going to burst. You just have to be in a position where when it does happen, you're not the one getting margin called, you're the one going shopping for opportunities. Time in the markets really does beat timing the markets. Despite the fact that it's a major cliché, it's true. The goal isn't to try and thread the needle with one perfect move. The goal is to create a portfolio, and a life, quite frankly, that can take several hits and allow you to keep standing. Put some money where you think it will grow, some money in cash and cash equivalents so you can fund your lifestyle even in times of major disruption and take advantage of opportunities, and put some money in an inflation resistant asset you trust like gold, energy, or Bitcoin. And avoid the following mistakes. Do not try to short the market because it has to go down. Yes, the everything bubble will eventually correct. Yes, valuations are likely to compress, but trying to time that perfectly with leverage is a game that has wiped out many who have come before you. Avoid debt. I most certainly understand the power of debt, but for the average person, it should be used only sparingly. Debt is how empires die, and it's exactly how individuals die financially. In a repricing event, leverage turns a paper loss into a permanent loss. Don't go for hero shorts. Don't use leverage. No bets on precision timing. Those are the moves that might feel smart in this moment, but often end up being suicidal. We all need to recalibrate what winning even looks like. Most people think winning is about outsmarting everyone else, beating the market, getting the highest percentage return, calling the top, or calling the bottom, being the genius who saw what nobody else did. In times as unstable as this, that's not the game. Read the book 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin to step inside the anatomy of a collapse so you can feel how it feels, see what the signs are to look out for, and how exactly they play out. In times of profound instability like this one, the people who win are not the ones who get the flashiest returns. They're the ones who don't get wiped out when everything changes. The biggest risk right now is not missing the upside. The biggest risk is sitting in cash when inflation quietly steals your purchasing power. Living entirely off of W-2 income in a world where taxation, inflation, and job security are all moving targets at best. And the most dangerous of all, having no real assets when money printing is the only tool left in the government's arsenal. So, the mindset shift is this. You're not trying to be the smartest macro trader in the room. You're trying not to be the guy holding only cash and a paycheck when the music stops. That's the real game. So, let me make this simple. I'm going to speed run what I just walked you through. These are the seven things you should do. First, own productive assets. Second, avoid leverage. Third, build liquidity. Fourth, diversify your income streams. Fifth, position for structural inflation. That doesn't mean hyperinflation. It means a persistent bias towards prices drifting higher as the money supply grows. Own things that generally benefit from that drift. Sixth, expect volatility. And seventh, think globally. I am very pro-American, but the forces at work right now are a loop that is almost impossible to pull people out of. And as I have said many times, every country except Japan has ended in internal conflict or outright revolution if they spent any meaningful time over 130% debt to GDP. We're nearing 123% right now, and that number's climbing fast. Again, this is all my advice to myself. It's not meant to be a get-rich-quick plan. It's a don't-get-destroyed plan. It's a be-prepared-for-whatever-happens Now, to bring this full circle back to the IRS, the IRS did not get gutted because of some grand ideological victory. It was reduced because the American fiscal model has entered the part of the big debt cycle where the math just stops working, and the system starts cannibalizing its own institutions just to survive one more election cycle. Tariffs also are not salvation. They're a symptom. Sure, they're clever, maybe politically convenient, and it allows you to raise money without admitting that you're raising taxes, but they're never going to fill the gap. They're just a stealth tax with an American flag wrapped around them. This moment will absolutely destroy anyone who insists on believing that the old rules still apply, that you can sit in cash, live paycheck to paycheck, and trust that the system is going to make it all work out for you. It is not. The goal is to be one of the few people who understands the economy right now is unstable, and instead of leveraging up and thinking you can get rich timing the market, you face this moment with humility and build out an all-weather strategy. That, my friends, is the wise man's path forward when living in a country that's going broke. All right. If you want to see me explore topics like this in real time, be sure to join me live Wednesdays and Fridays at 6:00 a.m. Pacific on YouTube, X, Twitch, or Kick. You can join the debate or just chill in the community. I'll have to see you there. All right. Till next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. In fiscal year 2023, federal agencies reported 236 billion dollars in improper payments. And that's not a one-off. In fiscal year 2024, after massive post-COVID reductions,