Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s plan for FIRE on a national level

[Herbert Derp]

It seems like Elon Musk and Donald Trump have a plan to do the following:

• Massively cut government spending by ~$2T, balance the federal budget, and create a surplus.
• Establish a sovereign wealth fund similar to what Norway has, funded by tariffs and the budget surplus.
• Use the sovereign wealth fund to invest in “great national endeavors” in a sustainable way that doesn’t drive up the national debt.

I for one am all for this plan. I wish the United States was more like Norway and had more investments than debts. The United States spent $726B on debt last year. That money could have gone to provide free healthcare or something, instead it just got burned up into thin air. Every year, the debt payments just go higher, diverting money from our social safety net and lowering the standard of living.

Establishing a sovereign wealth fund can in theory enable social programs to be funded in a long term sustainable way, as is done in Norway:

• Be fiscally responsible. Have a budget surplus.
• Use the budget surplus to fund a sovereign wealth fund which will continue to grow every year as long as there is a surplus.
• Use the sovereign wealth fund to fund social programs in a long term sustainable way (i.e. 2-3% withdrawal rate), increasing the standard of living for the entire country.

This is FIRE on a national level. I am super excited about this plan!

If there is anyone who can slash ~$2T from the federal budget, it is Elon Musk. He is just as ruthless and effective at slashing expenditures as the best mustachians on this forum. He lived on “a dollar a day” grocery budget for a period of time in his youth. Under his leadership, SpaceX has been massively more financially efficient than legacy aerospace companies, while also innovating faster. Unlike many other auto companies, Tesla has always had more assets than liabilities and funds its growth in a financially responsible way. He somehow managed to fire 80% of the workforce at Twitter and the platform still runs about the same.

If there is anyone in the world who can implement this bold plan, it is Elon Musk, with the support of the US executive branch and congress.

Most of us here despise Donald Trump, but the silver lining of the incoming Trump administration is that we finally have the opportunity to implement FIRE on a national level.

However, many people, including Elon Musk, say that the proposed austerity measures will have a “negative impact on the economy.” Personally, I was willing to make the ruthless sacrifices necessary to build my own sovereign wealth fund, and support similar sacrifices at the national level if those short-term sacrifices can lead to long-term prosperity.

Thoughts?

Related links:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-cut-2-233018038.html

https://www.investopedia.com/sovereign-wealth-fund-biden-trump-8709282

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4222216-elon-musk-federal-budget-cuts-trump-economy

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/elon-musk-once-lived-spending-1-a-day-on-food.html

Edit:

Here’s an interesting article which talks about past efforts to make the government more efficient:
https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/trump-and-musk-want-create-government-efficiency-commission-its-not-new-idea/400693

[Paper Chaser]

He promised to cut the national debt when he ran in 2016 too. And then proceeded to increase the national debt by ~ $8 trillion:

https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

He's always been leveraged to the gills, and has even referred to himself as "the King of Debt". Introducing austerity measures would be a shocking reversal of a lifetime of indebtedness. I think it's much more likely that he runs the debt up even more with spending and tax cuts.

[Herbert Derp]

He's always been leveraged to the gills, and has even referred to himself as "the King of Debt". Introducing austerity measures would be a shocking reversal of a lifetime of indebtedness. I think it's much more likely that he runs the debt up even more with spending and tax cuts.

It is true that Donald Trump has an abysmal track record when it comes to austerity and financial responsibility.

But Elon Musk has a great track record on these things. If he is empowered to do what he says he wants to do, we might actually be able to make significant cuts to the budget.

For decades, the US space program and its legacy aerospace contractors were a shining example of government waste and inefficiency. Elon Musk took a chainsaw to that corrupt, inefficient, and broken system and utterly destroyed it. I sincerely hope that he can do the exact same thing to other areas of waste and inefficiency in the US government.

I don’t know if it will pan out, but this is the first time in my life that I think we even have a chance to balance the budget.

[Paper Chaser]

The Federal Budget was balanced in Clinton's second term from 98-01. Ever since then both parties have been print/spend types.

[Herbert Derp]

The Federal Budget was balanced in Clinton's second term from 98-01. Ever since then both parties have been print/spend types.

Exactly. Someone has got to take an axe to all this waste. Personally, I would start with the US military. Our ecosystem of legacy defense contractors suffers from the same corruption, bloat, and inefficiency as the legacy aerospace contractors involved in the US space program. In many cases these contractors are one and the same, i.e. Boeing.

The legacy defense contractors need to be disrupted and replaced by younger, leaner, and more efficient startups like SpaceX and Anduril. The cost savings to the US military will be massive and we will end up with more innovative defense systems on top of that.

[rantk81]

One political party controlling both the executive branch and controlling both houses of congress is usually not a recipe that leads to cutting the debt.

Longer term treasury bond yields are spiking this morning.  The market doesn't seem to think fiscal hawkishness is in our near future either.

[bill1827]

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund was created when they had an enormous natural resource (North sea gas and oil) which they could sell to the rest of the world to generate great income whilst having a very small population to share it with (and a generally egalitarian philosophy which meaning that they were willing to share the wealth).

At the same time the UK had a good share of the North Sea oil and gas reserves, but the unthinking governments we had at the time frittered the revenue away on giveaways to keep their voters sweet, We also had a much bigger population so the wealth per capita was much lower.

If the US had such a resource I would expect their behaviour would more closely match the UK rather than Norway.

[rebel_quietude]

What we have here is a basic lack of understanding of how tariffs work.

May I suggest a basic economics course. Or, ask Brazil how that worked out for them. Or even the US, in the colonial days. Or a public policy course.

[Tigerpine]

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund was created when they had an enormous natural resource (North sea gas and oil) which they could sell to the rest of the world to generate great income whilst having a very small population to share it with (and a generally egalitarian philosophy which meaning that they were willing to share the wealth).

At the same time the UK had a good share of the North Sea oil and gas reserves, but the unthinking governments we had at the time frittered the revenue away on giveaways to keep their voters sweet, We also had a much bigger population so the wealth per capita was much lower.

If the US had such a resource I would expect their behaviour would more closely match the UK rather than Norway.

Every state is different, of course, but Alaska offers a real-life example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

[frugalecon]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

[rantk81]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

Yep.  They'd have to make huge cuts to social security, and/or medicare, and/or the defense budget.  Otherwise, if not cutting those three items, then they'd have to cut almost every other bit of federal spending.

[curious_george]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

Yep.  They'd have to make huge cuts to social security, and/or medicare, and/or the defense budget.  Otherwise, if not cutting those three items, then they'd have to cut almost every other bit of federal spending.

This.

It's simply impossible to balance the budget without:

1.) Cutting government programs and funding for poor people and/or old people.
2.) Cutting the defense budget.
3.) Increasing taxes on rich people.

Guess which one Elon will do?

[Bokonon_]

So we in Germany had a balanced budget for some time but I think this is not effective. This is based on the fact that there are many, many ways to invest money as a state that pay tremendous dividends, like education, research, public health and transportation. I don't remember the exact quote, but somebody said the sooner you invest money into people, like early education, quality childcare, vaccines the better. The earlier you invest in peoples lives the bigger the dividends get. Think providing excellent childcare and a first rate education for a disadvantaged individual vs. paying for their incarceration.

I think the dividends a state would get by investing in Stocks or whatever would pale in comparison.

Conversely, If you start aggressively cutting the budget you will incur massive negative consequences that will dwarf the paltry 2% or something you pay in servicing this debt.

[AnotherEngineer]

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund was created when they had an enormous natural resource (North sea gas and oil) which they could sell to the rest of the world to generate great income whilst having a very small population to share it with (and a generally egalitarian philosophy which meaning that they were willing to share the wealth).

At the same time the UK had a good share of the North Sea oil and gas reserves, but the unthinking governments we had at the time frittered the revenue away on giveaways to keep their voters sweet, We also had a much bigger population so the wealth per capita was much lower.

If the US had such a resource I would expect their behaviour would more closely match the UK rather than Norway.

Every state is different, of course, but Alaska offers a real-life example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

Yes, and it was great until it wasn't as great, but still better than if we didn't have the fund. The drop in % of the state budget covered by oil royalties dropping from 95% to 85% was devastating. The government has raided the Permanent Fund to fund government to avoid taxes (Alaska has no state income or sales tax...for the moment). Despite the fund, Alaska is propped up by oil prices and federal subsidies.

To get any sort of fund to the levels needed to pay dividends is unlikely. See Social Security, the Highway Trust Fund (now funding less than half highway projects), etc.

Elon will breeze in (to what position is unclear), suggest/make some drastic short term changes (likely screwing over the poor, aged, women, immigrants, etc.), and breeze out again without any responsibility of the harm he creates.

[Herbert Derp]

Here’s an interesting article which talks about past efforts to make the government more efficient:
https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/trump-and-musk-want-create-government-efficiency-commission-its-not-new-idea/400693

[JGS1980]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

Yep.  They'd have to make huge cuts to social security, and/or medicare, and/or the defense budget.  Otherwise, if not cutting those three items, then they'd have to cut almost every other bit of federal spending.

This.

It's simply impossible to balance the budget without:

1.) Cutting government programs and funding for poor people and/or old people.
2.) Cutting the defense budget.
3.) Increasing taxes on rich people.

Guess which one Elon will do?

PTF - I agree with the above. They will also likely mask SS and Medicare cuts and SNAP cuts with zombie concepts like "state block grants". People just don't pay attention to the details. The details are where they will get the $$$.

[Chris Pascale]

Something to consider outside of cuts is how to make cost centers less costly. For example, veterans spending is humongous, but I do not know if there is a single solar panel on VA property.

And it's not like we can't. In 1979 solar panels were installed at the White House, but taken down and put in storage in 1986. They were perfectly good panels, just removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House

[Morning Glory]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

Yep.  They'd have to make huge cuts to social security, and/or medicare, and/or the defense budget.  Otherwise, if not cutting those three items, then they'd have to cut almost every other bit of federal spending.

This.

It's simply impossible to balance the budget without:

1.) Cutting government programs and funding for poor people and/or old people.
2.) Cutting the defense budget.
3.) Increasing taxes on rich people.

Guess which one Elon will do?

PTF - I agree with the above. They will also likely mask SS and Medicare cuts and SNAP cuts with zombie concepts like "state block grants". People just don't pay attention to the details. The details is where they will get the $$$.

My guess is they will privatize everything that isn't nailed down and hand the contracts to their billionaire donors, costing taxpayers more  and providing lower quality services. That's why Musk is cosying up.

[swashbucklinstache]

The Federal Budget was balanced in Clinton's second term from 98-01. Ever since then both parties have been print/spend types.

Exactly. Someone has got to take an axe to all this waste. Personally, I would start with the US military. Our ecosystem of legacy defense contractors suffers from the same corruption, bloat, and inefficiency as the legacy aerospace contractors involved in the US space program. In many cases these contractors are one and the same, i.e. Boeing.

The legacy defense contractors need to be disrupted and replaced by younger, leaner, and more efficient startups like SpaceX and Anduril. The cost savings to the US military will be massive and we will end up with more innovative defense systems on top of that.

Being more efficient is good and ever-escalating debt is probably bad. Sovereign wealth funds are awesome once you have them.

I can't speak to the defense industry directly but I work with the same big defense contractors on other federal contracts.

Direct contractor labor expense is probably smaller than you think. In healthcare for example you might get 10 million dollars a year to operate a program that pays out more than a billion dollars a year (to private companies/doctors) in healthcare expenses for services rendered. That's done more efficiently than private insurers once you account for their profits by the way. Fed contractor labor is 1% of the program cost. Also, these small disruptive, leaner blah blah blah already exist, and the defense contractors mostly subcontract to them and organize them. Most people on the inside , contractor and fed alike, agree that we'd be better off and more efficient moving in the direction of, gasp, fewer contractors and more well-compensated federal employees. Guess why we can't do that. Instead we get big tech washouts thinking everything is a tech-limited problem, with no understanding of business logic or business context. 3-5 years later they realize government problems are different and hard and wash out. Rinse and repeat.

Re: austerity - has it ever worked in government? Governments are not corporations. Fiat fiscal policy is not like personal finance policy. At this level you can't just add up the dollars and be in first place - it says right on the dollar "backed by the full faith of the US government" so you have to invest in keeping the value of the faith of the US government high. Usually by government spending to educated the populace. Maybe via debt sometimes.

The goal of government is not efficiency. In fact most of the problems the government deals with are government problems specifically because they can't be dealt with "efficiently." To beautifully come full circle, in my industry these disruptive startups usually wash out when they realize the problems we're dealing with fundamentally cannot be dealt with "efficiently." It's literally the people you're talking about saying "these problems cannot be dealt with efficiently by private corporations" and thus implicitly "so they should not deal with them, government should."

I'm all for funding great national endeavors like feeding and educating the most vulnerable among us. A sovereign wealth fund is great if you have it. Want to guess how long it will take to pay for US healthcare from a sovereign wealth fund? (1/2.5%)*4.5 trillion is 160 trillion dollars. Somewhere between 1/4 to 2x the amount of money in the world and 5x the US GDP. I hope we have a bigger savings rate than 2 trillion a year or we might be here a while.

[Must_ache]

Anyone who thinks they can cut $2 trillion from the Federal budget has not spent a lot of time looking at what the Federal government spends money on.

You should all watch this video by Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft executive.  He tries hard not to be biased and simply present the numbers as they are.  $2T will be extremely difficult to erase, so I think higher taxes will also be necessary.  But it's a great presentation to educate you on the basics in 13 minuntes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQoh9jdRZPM

[Scandium]

It seems like Elon Musk and Donald Trump have a plan to do the following:

He somehow managed to fire 80% of the workforce at Twitter and the platform still runs about the same.

Haha! Why do you even both discussion the "plans" by the biggest political liar of our lifetime? And a cognitively decrepit lunatic who's only concern is personal grievances?? Absolutely laughable! He's not fit to run a potato farm, he'll clearly screw up anything he ytouches.

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

What is this OAN bs being spewed here? I expected better from relatively informed people on this forum.


Oh, and BTW; the pension and healthcare obligations of norway exceed the value of the sovereign wealth fund. They've raised taxes (which were already way higher than the US), and take out increasing percentage of the fund every year to cover the deficit. So you were saying..?

[HPstache]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

[cantgrowone]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

Trump said he will make a government efficiency commission that Musk will head.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/politics/trump-economic-plans-musk-government-commission/index.html

[GuitarStv]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

Trump said he will make a government efficiency commission that Musk will head.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/politics/trump-economic-plans-musk-government-commission/index.html

Yep.  Musk is in charge of cutting government programs.  He has good experience cutting jobs from twitter and making things run great so this is a natural choice to make.  Robert Kennedy is in charge of health care and vaccinations.  As an anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridated water, fringe-health guy Kennedy is also a natural choice.  His EPA choices are less well known names, but equal in quality - https://environmentalintegrity.org/trump-watch-epa/whos-running-trumps-epa/.  :D

[mistymoney]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

Trump said he will make a government efficiency commission that Musk will head.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/politics/trump-economic-plans-musk-government-commission/index.html

Yep.  Musk is in charge of cutting government programs.  He has good experience cutting jobs from twitter and making things run great so this is a natural choice to make.  Robert Kennedy is in charge of health care and vaccinations.  As an anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridated water, fringe-health guy Kennedy is also a natural choice.  His EPA choices are less well known names, but equal in quality - https://environmentalintegrity.org/trump-watch-epa/whos-running-trumps-epa/.  :D

Dangling supposed fiscal goodies while destroying everything for profit and control. Sounds about right for this crew.

[HPstache]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

Trump said he will make a government efficiency commission that Musk will head.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/politics/trump-economic-plans-musk-government-commission/index.html

Yep.  Musk is in charge of cutting government programs.  He has good experience cutting jobs from twitter and making things run great so this is a natural choice to make.  Robert Kennedy is in charge of health care and vaccinations.  As an anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridated water, fringe-health guy Kennedy is also a natural choice.  His EPA choices are less well known names, but equal in quality - https://environmentalintegrity.org/trump-watch-epa/whos-running-trumps-epa/.  :D

ugh.

[tooqk4u22]

I think its intellectually lazy to say that it is impossible or pointless to try to cut spending but cutting $2Trillion is likely not feasible.  Federal spending is up 47% since 2019 (and obviously it was far higher during the pandemic) and is about $1trillion higher than if the 2019 spending just kept pace with inflation (which itself accounts for $1.2trillion of additional spending assuming it was purely due to inflation).

Some of the pandemic era spending got continued or get funneled into chips act, inflation reductio act, and just stayed elevated. 

Interest expense increased a lot due to combination of increased debt (and don't forget massive amounts from covid bills) and significantly higher rates.  But a dirty little secret is that its really not about the debt level and more about duration as prior administrations (Trump, Obama, Bush, etc) completely ignored the smart play, which would have been to move far more debt into 10-, 20-,30- year bonds and had the treasury issue relatively short duration debt because the difference to rollover debt to long term duration would have cost an extra $200-300billion, but it would have been locked in.  Instead treasury has to rollover all those short dated debts coming due now at significantly elevated rates.   So dumb. 

Even now I think  the average duration of US debt is like 5-6 years - could you imagine if it was 15-20 years at 3%.   So so dumb.


Social Security - basically pays for itself and pretty much can be ignored in reality, but it should still be modified like simply increasing full retirement age dates by a few years.   When SS was created average life expectancy after collecting was like a year and now its 15+.   Its not designed to be forever.

Defense - such nonsense that no cuts could occur, even 10%. 

$2Trillion may not be realistic but nothing isn't the answer either. 

[tooqk4u22]

I guess I have missed something... what exactly is Elon Musk's official role with respect to Trump?  Is he getting a cabinet position?  Advisor?

Trump said he will make a government efficiency commission that Musk will head.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/politics/trump-economic-plans-musk-government-commission/index.html

Yep.  Musk is in charge of cutting government programs.  He has good experience cutting jobs from twitter and making things run great so this is a natural choice to make.  Robert Kennedy is in charge of health care and vaccinations.  As an anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridated water, fringe-health guy Kennedy is also a natural choice.  His EPA choices are less well known names, but equal in quality - https://environmentalintegrity.org/trump-watch-epa/whos-running-trumps-epa/.  :D

ugh.

I do think its comical that the icon of the green agenda is a Trump lackey especially given that the richest nut on earth is mostly so because of government largess by way of massive tax credits and other government subsidies that he and his companies have received. 

It would surprise me if the EV credits get slashed across the board but Tesla will be carved out as an exception.   

[bacchi]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Right, Twitter still has a negative cash flow. I'm not sure that's the example one should be using to recommend Musk for reducing the US debt.

So do we get the SpaceX Musk or the Twitter Musk? (Are NASA contracts included in the austerity measures?)

[Michael in ABQ]

Something to consider outside of cuts is how to make cost centers less costly. For example, veterans spending is humongous, but I do not know if there is a single solar panel on VA property.

And it's not like we can't. In 1979 solar panels were installed at the White House, but taken down and put in storage in 1986. They were perfectly good panels, just removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House

They installed solar panels over most of the parking lots at the Albuquerque VA at least a decade ago.

https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-awards-recovery-funded-renewable-energy-project/ - 3,206 Kw according to this press release from 2010. I think they may have added more later on. Then again, we get 300+ days of sunshine here so it's an ideal location.

[Michael in ABQ]

New Mexico has a Sovreign wealth fund from oil and gas taxes. There are a couple of different ones totaling a little over $50 billion. A set amount goes towards funding education and the state budget - about $2 Billion per year. That used to represent a good chunk of the budget. However, the state spending has exploded in recent years from around $6 billion to about $10 billion. Meanwhile revenue has grown to match and exceed that as New Mexico is now the #2 oil and gas producing state behind Texas. Every $1 rise in the price of a barrel of crude oil translates to about $60 million in state tax revenue.

https://www.nmdfa.state.nm.us/2024/09/17/permanent-fund-investments-to-surpass-oil-and-gas-revenue-securing-new-mexicos-future-by-2038/

With a population of about 2.2 million that means every person in the state has about $20k allocated to them. That would probably be pretty hard to replicate on a national scale, but I think it would be worthwhile. The government could start with all the bitcoin it owns. About 200k BTC worth approximately $12 billion. Of course, they can't exactly invest that in a broad market index fund and get a nice rate of return.

[Telecaster]

If there is anyone who can slash ~$2T from the federal budget, it is Elon Musk. He is just as ruthless and effective at slashing expenditures as the best mustachians on this forum. He lived on “a dollar a day” grocery budget for a period of time in his youth. Under his leadership, SpaceX has been massively more financially efficient than legacy aerospace companies, while also innovating faster. Unlike many other auto companies, Tesla has always had more assets than liabilities and funds its growth in a financially responsible way. He somehow managed to fire 80% of the workforce at Twitter and the platform still runs about the same.

If there is anyone in the world who can implement this bold plan, it is Elon Musk, with the support of the US executive branch and congress.

Most of us here despise Donald Trump, but the silver lining of the incoming Trump administration is that we finally have the opportunity to implement FIRE on a national level.

However, many people, including Elon Musk, say that the proposed austerity measures will have a “negative impact on the economy.” Personally, I was willing to make the ruthless sacrifices necessary to build my own sovereign wealth fund, and support similar sacrifices at the national level if those short-term sacrifices can lead to long-term prosperity.

Lots to unpack there.   First, I heard this same story back in 2016.   It sounded too good to be true then, and it sounds way too good to be true now.   Trump presented himself as a successful businessman who knows how to get things done efficiently.   Remember, back in 2016, Trump promised to end deficits "relatively quickly."    In fact, he promised to pay off the entire national debt in just eight years.   He promised the economy would grow by 4%/year, he would replace the ACA with something better, freeze federal hiring, build a wall and have Mexico pay for it, on and on and on.   The only significant legislative accomplishment of Trump's first term was the TCJA, which was Paul Ryan's baby.   

Trump can claim a bit of a mulligan because of COVID disruption, but bottom line is all of his promises from 2016 regarding spending and deficits were bullshit.   Every single one of Trump's budgets increased the budget.   Trump's first budget in fact, contained $2.1 trillion dollars of fictional savings and income.   Fictional financial statements might work if you are trying to defraud the bank into giving you a loan, but it is a poor way to run the government.   

Re:  Musk.  He deserves, and I'll give him 100% credit, for all his accomplishments,  but by the same token it is fair to examine his shortcomings too, of which there are many.   SolarCity was a disaster and he was fired from Paypal.   The jury on the Boring Company is still out, but it is looking grim.   At one time, TBC had examples of planned projects in DC, LA, and Chicago on its website, and all have since been taken down.   The Vegas Loop is more a novelty than serious transit system.    The Twitter acquisition has been a full-on disaster.   SpaceX has been a great success, but also required a change in government policy, which was not entirely popular at the time.   

Musk's superpower is his willingness to fail forward.   But along the way he's told so many whoppers I don't believe anything he says.  This could be the time the wolf is among the sheep, but he was bluffing the last 27 times.   Tough to take his word seriously. 

[Telecaster]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Latest estimates are that Twitters' value has dropped to dropped to $9.4 billion. 

Musk is suing companies for not advertising with him.   He'll lose of course, but as the world's richest man he's will to damage other people financially just because he can.  But if you are an advertiser thinking about buying ads on Twitter, why would you?   If you change your mind your mind Elon might sue you.   Better to spend your ad dollars somewhere else.   

I think that's why Musk and Trump get along so well.  They both view the world from the perspective of spoiled, petulant children. 

[tooqk4u22]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Latest estimates are that Twitters' value has dropped to dropped to $9.4 billion. 

Musk is suing companies for not advertising with him.   He'll lose of course, but as the world's richest man he's will to damage other people financially just because he can.  But if you are an advertiser thinking about buying ads on Twitter, why would you?   If you change your mind your mind Elon might sue you.   Better to spend your ad dollars somewhere else.   

I think that's why Musk and Trump get along so well.  They both view the world from the perspective of spoiled, petulant children.

......and who are extreme Narcissists!

[Scandium]

The Veterans Administration (VA) health system is also targeted by Project 2025. It plans to eliminate VA hospitals and health clinics and replace them with privatized outpatient clinics. This would have an especially considerable  impact on Veterans living in rural areas. Project 2025 even calls for the privatization of TRICARE, the active duty service members (ADSMs) health system, threatening to drive up health care costs for millions of servicemembers and their families."

Now veterans and military retirees get to die in the street along with the old people and the poor people. Yay!

Considering veterans support trump 61% vs 37% harris, this is one I'm perfectly ok with. Let them get what they asked for
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-veterans-remain-a-republican-group-backing-trump-over-harris-by-wide-margin/

55% of vets said "trumps policies would make things better" (23% said harris') Lol! Hope they're ready.. popcorn.gif

[Bartlebooth]

New Mexico has a Sovreign wealth fund from oil and gas taxes. There are a couple of different ones totaling a little over $50 billion.

With a population of about 2.2 million that means every person in the state has about $20k allocated to them. That would probably be pretty hard to replicate on a national scale, but I think it would be worthwhile. The government could start with all the bitcoin it owns. About 200k BTC worth approximately $12 billion. Of course, they can't exactly invest that in a broad market index fund and get a nice rate of return.

North Dakota has one too!  The Legacy Fund, somewhere north of $10 billion, about $15k per person in the state.

[fuzzy math]

I was hoping to open this and find out they had a plan for FIRE. Reminds me of this Onion article

https://theonion.com/report-finds-you-should-get-to-retire-after-like-6-years-working-full-time-job/

[jrhampt]

The Veterans Administration (VA) health system is also targeted by Project 2025. It plans to eliminate VA hospitals and health clinics and replace them with privatized outpatient clinics. This would have an especially considerable  impact on Veterans living in rural areas. Project 2025 even calls for the privatization of TRICARE, the active duty service members (ADSMs) health system, threatening to drive up health care costs for millions of servicemembers and their families."

Now veterans and military retirees get to die in the street along with the old people and the poor people. Yay!

Considering veterans support trump 61% vs 37% harris, this is one I'm perfectly ok with. Let them get what they asked for
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-veterans-remain-a-republican-group-backing-trump-over-harris-by-wide-margin/

55% of vets said "trumps policies would make things better" (23% said harris') Lol! Hope they're ready.. popcorn.gif

This is something I will never understand (and neither will my spouse who is a veteran).  All the horrible things Trump has said about veterans being suckers and losers...I don't get it.  He is not pro-military except for when he wants to use them as props.

[wenchsenior]

The Veterans Administration (VA) health system is also targeted by Project 2025. It plans to eliminate VA hospitals and health clinics and replace them with privatized outpatient clinics. This would have an especially considerable  impact on Veterans living in rural areas. Project 2025 even calls for the privatization of TRICARE, the active duty service members (ADSMs) health system, threatening to drive up health care costs for millions of servicemembers and their families."

Now veterans and military retirees get to die in the street along with the old people and the poor people. Yay!

Considering veterans support trump 61% vs 37% harris, this is one I'm perfectly ok with. Let them get what they asked for
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-veterans-remain-a-republican-group-backing-trump-over-harris-by-wide-margin/

55% of vets said "trumps policies would make things better" (23% said harris') Lol! Hope they're ready.. popcorn.gif

This is something I will never understand (and neither will my spouse who is a veteran).  All the horrible things Trump has said about veterans being suckers and losers...I don't get it.  He is not pro-military except for when he wants to use them as props.

My guess is that it's b/c most military recruits are from poor demographics, and Trump seems to be attracting nearly all the white ones and now many of the minorities as well. Plus, the military culture tends to support extremely conservative views in its enlisted people, so the bulk of the military always votes GOP (more of the officers are liberal, from what I understand, likely correlative with higher levels of education and income).

ETA: I should note that DH was in the military in the 1980s, and he came from a typical poor white family that the military successfully recruits from. He was staunchly conservative due to both background and military service until he was a few years into college. So he fit right into the cliche... the more education and exposure to the world/different people/different ideas, the more he rejected conservative ideology. Which is more or less what the GOP always worries happens to college students LOL.

[Herbert Derp]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Right, Twitter still has a negative cash flow. I'm not sure that's the example one should be using to recommend Musk for reducing the US debt.

The reason why Twitter revenue and valuation has declined so sharply is political, not technical. Elon Musk put his thumb on the politics of Twitter and shifted it sharply to the right. Which is the sole reason why he bought Twitter in the first place.

Shifting Twitter to the right drove away a significant portion of its left-leaning userbase, and more importantly, drove away advertisers. These purely political decisions were disastrous for the financials of Twitter, but apparently that was the price that Elon is willing to pay to push his right wing viewpoints.

Laying off 80% of the company and still being able to keep the platform running about the same was a stunning technical accomplishment. When Elon fired all those people, everyone said it was idiotic, that the website would break down and cease to function because the people who knew how to keep it running were all gone. But Twitter kept running. Yet again, Elon pulled off the impossible.

[GuitarStv]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Right, Twitter still has a negative cash flow. I'm not sure that's the example one should be using to recommend Musk for reducing the US debt.

The reason why Twitter revenue and valuation has declined so sharply is political, not technical. Elon Musk put his thumb on the politics of Twitter and shifted it sharply to the right. Which is the sole reason why he bought Twitter in the first place.

Shifting Twitter to the right drove away a significant portion of its left-leaning userbase, and more importantly, drove away advertisers. These purely political decisions were disastrous for the financials of Twitter, but apparently that is a price that Elon is willing to pay to push his right wing viewpoints.

Laying off 80% of the company and still being able to keep the platform running about the same was a stunning technical accomplishment. When Elon fired all those people, everyone said it was idiotic, that the website would break down and cease to function because the people who knew how to keep it running were all gone. But Twitter kept running. Yet again, Elon pulled off the impossible.

I mean . . . if you ignore the times that the website has actually broken down very publicly with either outages or by failing to be able to properly host events (like the livestream between Trump and Musk in Aug this year as a recent example) then I guess that's true.

[bacchi]

And Elon? A coked out lunatic! Twitter is a complete disaster after he took over. Almost all their advertisers are leavening, because, surprise, firing 80% of the people who make it run will turn it to shit! It "runs about the same"? Hah! Is that why the value has dropped to $15B from the $44B he paid??

Right, Twitter still has a negative cash flow. I'm not sure that's the example one should be using to recommend Musk for reducing the US debt.

The reason why Twitter revenue and valuation has declined so sharply is political, not technical. Elon Musk put his thumb on the politics of Twitter and shifted it sharply to the right. Which is the sole reason why he bought Twitter in the first place.

Shifting Twitter to the right drove away a significant portion of its left-leaning userbase, and more importantly, drove away advertisers. These purely political decisions were disastrous for the financials of Twitter, but apparently that was the price that Elon is willing to pay to push his right wing viewpoints.

And this makes you think he'd be a good Cabinet member of Efficiency how exactly?

[Herbert Derp]

I mean . . . if you ignore the times that the website has actually broken down very publicly with either outages or by failing to be able to properly host events (like the livestream between Trump and Musk in Aug this year as a recent example) then I guess that's true.

Every major tech company has outages. Amazon Web Services has had numerous outages over the years that brought the entire Internet to its knees. But nobody laid off 80% of the workforce at Amazon Web Services.

[Herbert Derp]

And this makes you think he'd be a good Cabinet member of Efficiency how exactly?

Elon Musk has a proven track record of being able to ruthlessly optimize large organizations for financial efficiency.

I don’t trust Elon’s politics. But I trust in his ability to financially optimize complex systems.

[bacchi]

And this makes you think he'd be a good Cabinet member of Efficiency how exactly?

He has a proven track record of being able to ruthlessly optimize large organizations for financial efficiency.

Ok but what about the politicizing, the driving away of the userbase, and advertisers -- the source of revenue -- leaving? And "financial efficiency" usually doesn't encompass negative cash flow.

[dandarc]

And this makes you think he'd be a good Cabinet member of Efficiency how exactly?

He has a proven track record of being able to ruthlessly optimize large organizations for financial efficiency.

Ok but what about the politicizing, the driving away of the userbase, and advertisers -- the source of revenue -- leaving? And "financial efficiency" usually doesn't encompass negative cash flow.

I'm not going to grant the assumption this myth that the government is inefficient. Medicare does what the private insurance industry does at an 80-90% lower overhead burden. Financially, government, where not overly ruined by the Republicans already, is actually among the most financially efficient things we do in the US.

[Cranky]

And this makes you think he'd be a good Cabinet member of Efficiency how exactly?

Elon Musk has a proven track record of being able to ruthlessly optimize large organizations for financial efficiency.

I don’t trust Elon’s politics. But I trust in his ability to financially optimize complex systems.

But to whose benefit, besides his own? Government isn’t actually a business.

[Herbert Derp]

Elon Musk has a proven track record of being able to ruthlessly optimize large organizations for financial efficiency.

But to whose benefit, besides his own? Government isn’t actually a business.

SpaceX has saved the US government billions of dollars. They do things cheaper and better than the legacy contractors. Look at Crew Dragon vs Starliner, or Starship vs the Space Launch System.

[obstinate]

I am mostly concerned that the planned changes to the ACA will render it unreliable for people with preexisting conditions. They tried to repeal it last time, and very nearly succeeded. JD Vance is on the record recently saying they want to diversify the risk pools. Without more specificity as to what exactly is proposed, I don't want to presume. But in general, diversified risk pools means that people who are riskier pay more. This means that anyone who FIREs takes a gamble that they aren't going to ever have an expensive health condition.

It's entirely possible that the ACA will remain in place in roughly the current form through this administration. However, it's far from a certainty.

I'm forty, and looking to retire maybe next year. But it would require a big bet that neither me nor my wife get, e.g., cancer, between now and 65 when we'd be eligible for medicare. In fact, there's a 10-20% chance that at least one of us would be diagnosed with a disease like that in that time period. If there's no ACA, we'd effectively have to self-fund the treatment after the first year, because the HCI company would drop us when it is time for renewal. We don't need to guess about this -- we know because this is exactly what happened to people before the ACA.

Now, we have oodles and boodles of money saved up. Maybe enough to self fund treatment for any reasonably foreseeable form of cancer. We also do not have any particular risk factors for this disease or any other. But it's still giving me pause.

[PathtoFIRE]

The United States spent $726B on debt last year. That money could have gone to provide free healthcare or something, instead it just got burned up into thin air.

You've got this backwards to some extent. If the government takes in more money in taxes than it spends (government surplus), then that is removing money from the system, i.e. burned up into thin air. Government deficit means that there is money being added to the system. The national government choosing to pay interest on it is a technical choice, not necessarily required (with the caveats that this isn't unlimited, confined to the national US government, etc.). Fed/gov could have a negative interest rate on required bank reserves, meaning banks paid interest to hold, meaning government debt generated additional government revenue, to some extent, but it doesn't make sense to do in most economic situations that we've seen before. Operationally, just makes sense to raise taxes or use other mechanisms to pull money out of the non-gov side.