Long ago the philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell taught his students that if you build your argument about almost anything on a false premise, anything you can conclude from it must also be false. Here is a quick presentation of his logical mind at work.

One of his students is reported to have stood up and said to him, "Starting from 0=1, prove to me that you are the pope."

Russell replied, "If 0=1, then, adding 1 to both sides, we have that 1=2. I am one person, and therefore, since 1=2, I am two people, I and the pope are two people. Since 1=2, by the symmetry of the equivalence relation between natural numbers, we have that 2=1. Then, I and the pope are one person, and, therefore, I am the pope." (reported in Quorum).

And that simple illustration also sums up the logic behind Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, plus Elon Musk’s and the Trump Administration-elect's primary governing principles. All three are so far from reality that there is no intellectual reason why they deserve to be out and about making lives miserable for us. It also explains why Trump won his hardcore group of brain-washed ideologues by 19 percentage points over Kamala Harris. They admitted they did not listen to one political speech during the campaign.

Let’s apply some of this knowledge to the US economy. Trump wants to put a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all US imports; he wants to round up and deport all undocumented immigrants; and he has charged Musk with finding another $2 trillion to cut from the federal budget. Musk is looking long and hard at cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care.

The State of our Economy: At present, the US economy (during Biden and Harris’ tenure) is at its highest level in history, with GDP equal to $29.376 trillion thru the 3rd quarter. Our unemployment rate is 2.1 percent; wages are at an average of $63,795 per worker; 5-year interest rates are 4.5 percent; corporate profits are $3.802 trillion, or 11.58 percent of sales, up 4.4 percent from 2023. Our public debt is $26.1 trillion; and our total national debt is $36.12 trillion. The interest on the government debt is 2.4 percent of GDP. Given our scale of operations, those numbers are the envy of the world. It’s how the fruits of our labor are divvied up that pushes us into a gigantic rabbit hole.

The Promise of the 2024 Election Campaign: The trio of Trump, Musk, and the Heritage Foundation want to find $2 trillion dollars in new cuts to the US budget to make up for the expected $2 trillion they intend to transfer to themselves and to the upper 10 percent of our population who now hold $152 trillion of our $169 trillion of wealth.

The Problem: Logically, when investigators go about looking for big bucks, they look for waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs. There is very little of that going on (comparatively) when discussing the current $152 trillion of wealth held by the top 10 percent. And so, the “big money first” rule applies, aka the Willy Sutton rule. Their wealth is unearned and untaxed via the tax laws which are paybacks for the $15.7 billion in political campaign money. We could in fact pay off our national debt ($36 trillion) by recalling that amount of money from the same top 10 percent who want more free wealth. Afterward, the ultra-wealthy would still hold $116 trillion. Nobody---including the wealthy—would be hurt by such an action. That $152 trillion is also on track to double its present value every 10 years via the 7.2 percent CAGR from stock dividends, bond interest payments, rents on real estate, plus capital gains on all three. That wealth is projected to grow from $152 trillion to $4.916 quadrillion (32.34 times) in 50 years with no detours or barriers in the way to stop it. How’s that for the biggest heist ever conceived in the history of the universe? All other money issues pale into insignificance by comparison. (Basic data are from the Federal Reserve. All calculations are mine).

          Note: Since I pointed out this huge and growing diversion of unearned and untaxed wealth starting 2 decades ago, the normal thing to do when illuminating such a find is to pay the finder a “finder’s fee” of 10 percent of the total. That would come to $15.2 trillion. But, no thanks. Just send a bonus check to the 156 million residents who are currently receiving government assistance in some form. Send another assistance check to all those youngsters and others who need tuition assistance; send a third check to our major research centers and their scientists who use their brain power to keep us alive and healthy; pay an assistance check to first-time home buyers. The balance could go to upgrade more infrastructure not yet upgraded from the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure bill. And get rid of those tax-exempt inheritance laws and their subsequent tax-free wealth growth.

The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least.
--author unknown