A tale as old as time: a tone-deaf leader, a pile of hoarded cash, and a starving child. Today's Marie Antoinette isn't in Versailles—he's in the White House.

Between President Trump’s tariff chaos, haphazard cuts to government functionality via Elon Musk’s rogue agency DOGE, and Congress advancing $5.1 trillion in tax cuts for the rich on the backs of the rest of us, it’s looking like the U.S. economy and the empire that supports it are headed for a painful, stupid end.