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Language: en
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% 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 [music] 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%
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, [music]
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 selfdestructive
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. [music] 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 [music]
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 [music] 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 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. [music] 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 Dallio, 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 everinccreasing
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 waring 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
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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 [music]
fast for the old tools, namely interest
rate cuts or interest rate increases,
tax hikes, [music] 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 Massiey's heroic debt clock lapel
pin, America is in stage five. We are
buried under so much debt, we're stuck
in a death loop known as fiscal [music]
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.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 $158
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
acrosstheboard 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
millionword labyrinth of carveouts,
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 paperbased 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 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 lost
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 dollar 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 them that. They let him reward
allies and punish adversaries. Well,
give them 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 dollar to your deficit every
100 days, and interest is compounding
far faster than revenues are growing,
200 billion 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 tariff's real
superpower in this hyperdysfunctional
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
carveouts, 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
hyperfund the IRS by giving it 80
billion new dollars, it was estimated to
bring in roughly $200 billion 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
hyperfunded IRS. But we're still staring
down a $2 trillion 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 Bessant does. Besson 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
hyperfunded 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 latestage 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 latestage 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?
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now, let's get back to the show. Welcome
to part three, the wise man's path
forward in a country that's going broke.
In the 1950s, Venezuela had the fourth
highest GDP per capita in the world. For
decades, Venezuela had the world's
highest growth rate, rising faster than
South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. By
1960, Venezuela was richer than Spain,
Greece, and Israel, and wealthier per
capita than half of Western Europe. In
the late '7s, 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 three quarters 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, overt 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 populist 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 Dallio 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. [music] Taxation alone will
not get us there. A hyperfunded 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 breaks 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 [music] this
moment. For myself, please keep in mind
this is for entertainment and
educational purposes only. You really do
need to understand this stuff yourself.
Do not take anyone's word for it. Not
mine, not anybody's. Think through the
problem. [music] 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 cliche, 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,
[music] 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 rericing 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 re-calibrate 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
Sorcin. 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 while
inflation quietly steals your purchasing
power. Living entirely off of W2 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 [music]
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 speedrun
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
is climbing fast. Again, this is all my
advice to myself. It's not meant to be a
get-richquick plan. [music] It's a don't
get destroyed plan. It's a be prepared
for whatever happens plan. 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 a.m. Pacific on YouTube X, Twitch,
or Kick. You can join the debate or just
chill in the community. I hope 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 in improper payments. And that's
not a one-off. In fiscal year 2024 after
massive postcoid reduction,