I hope it's not a great shock to discover all the incentives in our status quo are perverse: those who rig the financial system while creating zero real value, jobs, goods or services reap all the big profits; those who take near-zero responsibility for their own health are subsidized by those who take responsibility for their own health; those who try to start enterprises and hire workers are saddled with endless regulations, junk fees and taxes while those who game the system to get welfare (household or corporate) skim the cream for doing nothing for their community or for the nation.

Systems in which all the incentives are perverse implode under their own weight. Those who struggle to pay the mounting costs of Imperial Over-Reach, crony-capitalism and all the skimmers and scammers eventually go bankrupt or quit in disgust, while the army of state dependents and cronies explodes higher.

It has taken decades for the incentives to become so perverse, so we no longer notice the perversity or the pathological consequences.

High-frequency traders and financiers with the ready ear of well-paid political lackeys, stooges, toadies and sycophants run never-lose skimming operations and pay lower tax rates than self-employed and small business owners.