Trump just explained the actual purpose of his tax policy better than any critic could. He bragged that a wealthy friend who had never even flown on a private plane went out and bought one because Trump’s law allowed immediate expensing. Think about what that means. The plane was not purchased because the business had identified a productive need. It was not purchased because the owner had been losing contracts while waiting in TSA lines. It was purchased because the tax code made an extravagant asset attractive to someone who previously had no demonstrated need for it. That is not evidence that the incentive was carefully designed to maximize economic growth. It is evidence that public policy was designed to alter the consumption choices of the wealthy. A factory purchases a machine because it can produce more goods. Trump’s friend purchased a private plane because the tax deduction made private-plane ownership too attractive to pass up. Those are both technically “capital investment” under a sufficiently broad tax provision, but they are not socially or economically equivalent. The ordinary worker cannot immediately expense the car required to reach work, the rent required to live near employment, the childcare required to remain in the labor force or the food required to arrive alive and functional. But a wealthy American, likely born in proximity to capital, may be able to accelerate the entire deduction for a qualifying private jet. And Trump offers this not as an embarrassing loophole, but as proof that the law is working. The policy objective is not affordability for the masses. It is making luxury capital formation affordable for people who were already rich enough to buy airplanes.