Inside Elon Musk's plan to slash government costs

[New Breed Leader]

Inside Elon Musk’s Plan to Slash Government Costs

An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.

As President-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against ‘wasteful’ spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.

After Inauguration Day, the group of Silicon Valley-inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they seek to cut costs like Mr. Musk did at X, his social media platform.

more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-government-trump.html

[malaise]

1. He has no such power

That is all

[New Breed Leader]

2. Yes he does

Well, he can manipulate those who DO have the power to do what he wants. Democrats are already lining up to kiss his ass. He either has something on them or he's threatening them, one of the two. SOMETHING is going on.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Who will stop him?

The courts? No
Congress? No
The people? No
US government? He is the US govt now.

[Bluethroughu]

5. Wrecking crew.

These losers are about to show why business men come to work in government, to cut government services from people's tax dollars and give themselves MORE of those tax dollars to monopolize more of the so called market, in the capitalist system, they recieve people's tax dollars from, building their wealth and business with.

[bluesbassman]

10. This. Business is largely about access. Why do you think Jarvanka worked for "free"?

The ultimate goal of this exercise is not going to be cutting costs, it’s going to be infiltrating and setting up alliances that will direct tax dollars toward the operatives’ entities.

[Bluethroughu]

13. And Contracts too.

[sop]

6. Cost-cutting? Eliminate wasteful government spending?

Nah, they're just trying to offset the cost of their multi-trillion dollar tax cut.

[Historic NY]

7. I got an idea Elon go home starting another agency is just packing government

Are they doing this for free and do they even know what the function of government is?

[Buns_of_Fire]

8. Archive link:

https://archive.ph/5LbMv

[karynnj]

9. The purpose of government and private business differ and Musk's Twitter cost cutting damaged Twitter.

I am old enough to remember when many businesses at least spoke of adding to their communities by being "good corporate citizens". That was before the "greed is good" period. Now, many companies consider neither the impact on their communities or their employees. All that matters is making the most possible profit in the next reporting period. The DOGE leaders seem to have carried this to an extreme.

The goal of government should be to keep the citizens of the country as safe and healthy as possible. In addition to national defense, that should include insuring adequate food, housing, education etc. what is needed is to improve the latter list. it is all the latter things that I fear will be sacrificed as unnecessary spending by people like Musk, who are extremely unlikely to consider that allowing the portion of the Trump tax cuts benefiting the wealthiest to expire is an easier alternative way to cut the deficit.

None of the Republicans who look back fondly at the 1950s consider that (ignoring all its inequalities for POC and women) was a period of greater income equality and more progressive income taxes. Democracy functions best in countries with a large middle class. Wealthier third world nations often have a large impoverished population and a small very wealthy class and a small group in-between.

As to Twitter, the loss in value of the company FAR exceeded the savings of his cuts.

[struggle4progress]

11. Jump off a cliff! Only two quid!

[C_U_L8R]

12. All those new Trump department heads

... won't want their own budgets slashed. Just like last time, Trump and his incompetent idiot hoodlums will run up enormous debt and leave it to us to clean up his mess.