Contributed by Jim Hayes

How could it be? Billionaire Donald trump and President of the United States of America paid only $750 tax in 2016 and 2017, according to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax data exposed by the New York Times.

Trump’s initial response was his standard it’s ‘fake news’.

Trump Calls NYT Reporting On His Taxes ‘Totally Fake News’

Video from NBC News

Americans are now confronted with data detailing a decade where Trump paid absolutely no tax, and more years where he paid very little. This man is a morally corrupt individual, and it is too easy to see him as one bad egg and overlook the existence of a tax system, which encourages this sort of behaviour.

If your a billionaire, you get a choice. If you’re a regular wage earner you don’t. This is a class based tax system, made by those who use their power, to benefit people like themselves. Nowhere displays this bias more than the United States of America.

It may not be quite so in your face here in Australia. This does not mean that it is not more or less the same. Tax evasion at the top end is an epidemic here too, and there is a big push for more tax cuts for the evaders.

Tax cuts for the top end will not do much to change how much tax they pay, since the means to avoid paying will still be there. But it does bring the advantage of making tax evasion look smaller than it does now, and this is useful, when the public is turning against it. The Morrison government is the vehicle to push this through.

Trump defenders like Fox, moved quickly to cover up news of his tax evasion, diverting the story by promoting Trump’s fake news call out, as the real story.

McEnany sounds off on ‘biased’ media after Trump tax report

Video from Fox News

Diversion of this sort works, because it is backed by an army of well healed and powerful benefactors looking after their own interests. This includes media moguls like Rupert Murdoch. Together, they are Donald Trump’s real political base, with the resources to take the national stage.

In these uncertain times, they have been using their power to bring in a style of politics, that lifts deception to a new level. Through this, a section regular people hurting and losing faith in the political system, have been convinced, for now at least, that Trump is waging a war a against the elite and for them.

This is how Trump’s war against fake news is striking a chord, and his increasingly militant army, is not going to accept any time soon, that their leader is seriously flawed.

No doubt, this is being helped along, by the absence of sufficiently credible alternative political leadership.

Conditions for a major transformation of politics and economics exist in the United States. But the Democrats, depending on their own faction of Wall Street backers, don’t want to rock the boat too much. They prefer to offer band aid solutions. A good example this is that they offer a plan for a new tax system.

A similar game is being played in Australia. Here too, the benefactors of a rotten tax system protect it. They brand it sound economic management. They say tax cuts at the top end are good of the economy. Alternative opinions are accused being no more than envy, implying that the privileges of the wealthiest are earned and must be respected.

Mainstream media goes along with all of this.

Like the United States, Australia has a growing number of regular people hurting and losing faith in the political system, and a lack of sufficient political leadership offering a real alternative.

Conditions for the rise of Trump like politics exist. So do the conditions where regular people can come to grips with what is going on, and direct their growing anger to finding ways to get together, and and do what they have to do, to put a stop to it.

This is true for both the United States and Australia.