At the rate he's adjusting his policy positions, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might be indistinguishable from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by November.

Last fall, Trump rejected suggestions that the national minimum wage should be increased. "I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country," the businessman and reality-TV star said.

On Sunday, he took a very different view. "I don't know how you live on $7.25 an hour," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press," insisting that as president he will seek "an increase of some magnitude" in the minimum wage.

Trump is also disavowing a key feature of his own economic plan, which calls for a dramatic tax cut for the wealthy to spur growth, with only piddling tax relief (about $2,700) for the middle class. He now says that this original economic plan, released last year, is only a starting point for negotiations with Congress.

"I'm not under the illusion that that's going to pass," he said on "Meet the Press." "They're going to come to me. ... But the middle class has to be protected. The rich [are] probably going to end up paying more. And business might have to pay a little bit more. But we're giving a massive business tax cut." He added:

"When it comes time to negotiate, I feel less concerned with the rich than I do with the middle class. ... For the wealthy I think frankly it is going to go up and, you know what, it really should go up."

Chuck Todd, the "Meet the Press" moderator, and NBC news writers Mark Murray and Carrie Dann called Trump's comments "a jaw-dropping flip-flop on policy" that "runs counter to today's entire Republican Party and conservative movement."

Trump's shift will make it even harder for Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other prominent GOP leaders to endorse Trump's candidacy, increasing the possibility of a schism in the party. Todd, Murray and Dann suggested President Barack Obama could use Trump's words to pummel the Republican Congress, saying something along the lines of, "Now that the presumptive Republican nominee is calling for raising taxes on the wealthy, Republican leaders in Congress can now work with me on eliminating ... tax loopholes benefiting the Top 1%."

The British newspaper The Independent cites Trump's flip-flops as "fresh evidence he is making up his policy priorities as he goes along," but more likely it is all part of the plan. Trump is betting that voters have short memories, and indeed that many voters -- especially the all-important independents -- weren't paying close attention during the Republican primaries, when Trump embraced some "hard right" positions and aggressively hit his rivals with schoolyard insults.

This is nothing new. Candidates have always appealed to the base of their parties during primary campaigns and then shifted to the ideological center for the general election. Trump is simply more shameless about it than your typical politician. He is aware that he and Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who has had unexpected success running for president as a Democrat, are in many cases appealing to the same disaffected voters, just from different sides of the partisan divide.

Trump has made statements during the campaign that, if issued by a U.S. president, might cause panic on the world's financial markets. Last week he suggested that the U.S. should default on its sovereign debt "if the economy crashed," a statement so far out there that he felt compelled to walk it back. Sort of.

"It was reported in the failing New York Times and other places that I want to default on debt," Trump said. "I'm the king of debt. I understand debt probably better than anybody. I know how to deal with debt very well. I love debt." He added: "This is the United States government. You never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you. Okay, so there's never a default."

That didn't really clear up the matter, but Trump moved on to talking about the minimum wage and taxes on "Meet the Press."

What would happen if U.S. government bondholders "took a haircut" under President Trump? Acclaimed writer Lionel Shriver's new dystopian novel "The Mandibles: a Family, 2029-2047" -- in which "the U.S. defaults on its national debt and a new international currency replaces the sinking dollar, destroying American wealth on a staggering scale" -- provides one possible outcome.

-- Douglas Perry