Trump only simulates madness - Robert Reich

[justaprogressive]

Trump and Musk just gutted the IRS at the height of tax season by firing thousands of employees — and are planning to downsize the agency even more.

Recent estimates show that the richest 1 percent of Americans already underpay their taxes by as much as $205 billion each year. And for each $1 the IRS invests in auditing the tax returns of the richest 1 percent, it collects $13 in additional tax revenue.

So the tax revenue our government loses every year is way higher than the amount of taxpayer dollars DOGE claims to have “saved” by canceling contracts and grants for vital government programs — of which only a small portion can actually be verified.

The truth is: Gutting the IRS has everything to do with making it easier for billionaires like Musk and Trump to evade taxes.

It all feels like chaos until you look more closely.

[sop]

1. Trump's madness always redounds to his own financial benefit.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Yes there is a method to Trump's madness.

Everything he is doing benefits specific groups and harms other groups.
All quite consistent.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. META Insanity

Crazy about being insane is not crazy, but insane, but who cares as long as Mr. Harlan Crow and his oligarchical kleptocratic fascist friends get to keep all of what they uh made.

[tonkatoy8888]

4. Everything

Mr. Reich says about the IRS, its understaffing, its planned inability to collect taxes owed by the very wealthy is true. The GOP have purposely underfunded the IRS for years expressly for this reason.

However, I don't think this is part of some grand plan by Trump and Musk, it's just a continuation of the Right's decades long insistence that the IRS is "robbing" them and, by God, they're going to fix it so they never have to pay their fair share of taxes. They've spent decades having their lobbyists write tax laws that uniquely benefits them, this is just a full-frontal assault on an agency they have always detested.

That said, Trump is mad. Unquestionably as mad as the March Hare.

[Javaman]

5. this time next year, if things continue as they are, our government will have ground to a halt. nt

[Kid Berwyn]

7. Yep.

And the concentration camps everyone laughed at when Oliver North brought them up in regards to REX-84 will be filled.

[stopdiggin]

6. nah. he truly is a madman

and people have been trying to sell the 'method to' rubbish for years.
But anyone that has ever worked around him ... Tells the same story. The guy really is a 3 year old - and incredibly dumb and ill informed.

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[NNadir]

8. I'm not sure I agree. The motive as stated seems reasonable but...

...I am fairly confident that a description I heard from a former staffer whose name I don't recall comes to mind.

"People think Trump is playing chess. His staff knows that they are just trying to prevent him from eating the pieces."