Changes to policy seems like a dry, dull topic of interest only to the nerdiest of nerds. If you described yourself on a dating site as a “policy wonk” well . . . don’t expect a flood of interest. But government department rules, regimes and policies are the very essence of what makes government work or not to protect your life, health and wealth. That’s true for everyone, even if the oligarchs among us don’t believe it.

And they don’t.

For most of you, this isn’t news. But bear with me because as damaging as these Trumpian policy changes will be to us, they will also damage the rich, and them maybe most of all. But most of the rich don’t see it and all their many followers don’t either. It’s a peculiar blindness only cured in hindsight, after bitter experience.

The rich think money solves everything and buffers them from any serious effects suffered by the common folk. Bezos, Musk and the like believe they can wreck the government and only come off better for it. Kossacks know better, but how can MAGA zealots fall over and over for such tripe and delusional thinking?

The Rich delude themselves, and many others

Marx called it false consciousness. That means, because we are social animals, we look to alpha males and females as leaders of the pack. And in “modern” capitalist society, those leaders are almost invariably the wealthiest among us, even if by all other measures, these “leaders” are execrable humans.

I know Marx is not a popular person to talk about, but he, Auguste Comte and Adam Smith basically all but founded the social sciences. Durkheim and Weber built on their legacy. And Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Hume influenced all of these founders and their successors. Every single one recognized an association between wealth, power, influence, and the quality of governance. And they noted the wealthy always seek to exercise power and influence based on their wealth, not their character or ethics. The Epstein files and all the noteworthy persons named already among them probably makes this as clear as can be. So this isn’t a Marxian analysis. Every single thoughtful investigator of human society commented about this.

The wealthy are not like us. You’ve probably heard that observation from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Social science research backs up the novelist. “Two sets of surveys of Americans across the income spectrum found that the richer people were, the more money they assumed other people earned annually.” The Rich really aren’t like us: They think we’re as loaded as they are 

Rael Dawtry, one of the authors of one study, “found that this blind spot has real-life policy implications: Wealthier people are more likely to say the status quo of income distribution in the United States is fair, and are less likely to support redistributive policies, even though the richest Americans today hold more of the country’s wealth than they have in roughly a century and the economic recovery has contributed little to those further down the income spectrum.”

Wealth also affects sympathy and many other behaviors, as covered in a fascinating article in Rolling Stone What You’ve Suspected is True: Billionaires are not like us

Wealth makes you less generous (lower-income individuals have been shown to give a greater proportion of their income than wealthier ones), less compassionate (people with more money and status report less distress when confronted with another person’s suffering), and more narcissistic. In a hilariously pointed study that was also included in the PNAS article, people primed to think of themselves as upper-class were more likely to take candy from a jar that they had been told was meant for kids in a nearby lab. In other words, they were more likely to literally steal candy from children.

Does this sound like Musk and DOGE literally taking food from starving childen by abolishing USAID?

And for those of you who prefer to listen than read, Brookings (a Democratic leaning think tank) Darrell West, VP and director of Governance Studies there discussed his 2014 book on the topic here: Billionaires are not like You and Me

How this matters to You

I could write all day about this, but the point of all the above is that the wealthy and their mindless imitators (the false consciousness poor MAGA voters) are squarely behind a move by Trump that will not only wreck government; it will lobotomize it in ways all but guaranteed to throw the US economy into a tailspin, and with it, your 401k, your retirement, and your life. And since all that affects your stress and ability to survive, your health.

Brace yourself, this report on a Trump policy change is in the Huffington Post. I could give you other sources, but this is a solid, readable summary.

Tens of thousands of highly skilled government employees will be stripped of job protections — and become fireable based on their supposed infidelity to the president’s agenda — under the final version of a rule that conservative operatives in President Donald Trump’s orbit have been gunning for for years.

The rule creates a new category of government workers that fits in between career civil servants and the small number of political appointees that come and go with every president. The new category, initially called “Schedule F” and now called “Schedule Policy/Career,” includes an estimated 50,000 workers deemed to be “policy-influencing” — meaning those with work that is “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating.” This includes government workers such as bank examiners, attorneys, scientists, policy analysts and even IT professionals. 

Excerpt From “Trump Just Finalized A Dystopian New Rule No President Has Used Before”

Matt Shuham Huffpost

In 30 days from yesterday (Friday 6 Feb 2026) Trump will be able to coerce or fire these folks. Now, of course this will be contested in court. So the deed isn’t done yet. But the implications are profoundly bad.

Not only will anyone doing any research on climate change be in trouble, so will anyone in, say, agriculture involved with food security and resilient food production systems. Bank system regulators, already under fire for simply doing their jobs, will get fired if they even attempt to research or talk about the growing international standard requiring banks and firms to disclose climate change related risk (read flooding, forest fire, hurricanes, ice storms, hail storms, tornadoes, wind storms). REITs (real estate trusts) of various kinds, unless they voluntarily report their risks, will by their nature of being real estate undergo increasing, and increasingly unknown, risks, since research government documentation of natural disasters will be, and already are, discouraged. Indeed, the Trump administration deleted decades of data on the ever increasing cost of natural disasters since it showed a clear, and growing, correlation with climate change.

We’ve already seen how the emphasis on loyalty over competence has gutted professionalism at ICE and in the DOJ. Imagine this same effect on food safety inspectors, government employees dealing with vaccinating animals for food safety, IT security people dealing with Russian hackers—who might be told that Putin denied Russia was doing it to Trump, and Trump told them he believed Putin. (This is an actual case, not a fantasy.) How do you defend against an attack you do not dare research or talk about without fear of losing your job?

This last threat is very real. Foreign hackers from Russia, N. Korea, China and elsewhere have blackmailed whole cities (Atlanta), hospitals, many firms. Trump and company have already fired all those concerned with foreign IT security threats to our voting systems. Tulsi Gabbard, a dupe for Russia for sure, has taken on the role of “investigating” foreign influence on the 2020 election. Anyone who disagrees with her will now be subject to summarily being fired.

And don’t get me started on investigators into fraud and corruption under this Trump policy.

So, will rich people suffer if our whole governance system descends into the kind of Red Guard nonsense that put loyalty over competence so completely that when Mao died roughly 10 million families in China were so poor they could only afford one pair of trousers among them? Yes. I don’t recall anyone being a billionaire in China in 1978. Now there are many. It took China nearly three generations to recover from Maoism, and even now it rears its head as Xi increasingly behaves like Trump and Putin. Just as Mao turned his Red Guards on anyone who opposed him, so too has Putin put his goons against opponents, making even the rich fearful of missteps and speaking their minds. We can see the same rot building among our oligarchs, with Bezos just as happy to wreck the Washington Post so long as it doesn’t offend our Dear Leader. MAGA zealots turn on anyone Trump points them at; exactly as Mao did.

And now, Trump is rapidly preparing to replace our competent, honest, skilled professional civil servants with goons and loyalists. Imagine every DOJ employee a Pam Bondi. Every government department filled with Kash Patels. And don’t forget, Trump really wants to control the FED and force it to do his bidding, whatever their research may show is the right course to ensure our, and your prosperity.

WPF Aims

Weekend Policy Forum aims to build a portfolio of ideas on how to reform the American political system if, and more hopefully, when Democrats achieve majority control of the House and Senate and take back the Presidency in 2029. In 2023-24 Project 2025 looked like a wish list of hopelessly out of reach right wing policies. These policies were so objectionable to most that Trump and many Republicans denied they were part of their plan if they won election. However, we see now that Project 2025 has provided the driving force of policy ideas that are completely rewriting American life.

We’re trying to put together a rough draft of a Project 2029 for Democrats, but in our case, one built on popular policies as well as policies meant to strengthen the American democratic way of government and protect everyone’s lives and interests, not just those who are white or rich. We are not ignoring current events; we want to learn from them and figure out how to prevent the outrages we are seeing every day from getting worse or becoming the shape of the future. If this interests you and you have an area of expertise or interest in policy, see the first article published for this group, join the group, and write for the forum.