Elon Musk is failing to cut American spending
economist.comMany years ago, the university I worked at offered a very generous early retirement benefit. The objective was to "get rid of the dead-wood" to make way for "new blood". The trouble was the 55 year olds most likely to accept the offer were the best faculty members; the ones who knew they would have no trouble getting appointments at a different university. The people who knew they were not very productive stayed, of course.
It has been only a couple weeks. Perhaps it's early to measure the results?
TL;DR: Two thirds of the treasury outlays goes to entitlement programs, 10% on debt payments, and half of what remains goes to defense. They're arguing over scraps, and Republicans want to pass over 4 trillion dollars in tax cuts.
The irony is that outside of entitlement reform, increasing immigration is the easiest way to rightsize the entitlement programs.
Immigration puts pressure on housing, which already has a 4M-7M unit shortage. See Canada, which has liberal immigration policy but wildly unaffordable housing. Entitlements can easily be funded by raising taxes progressively. You cannot say you're the wealthiest country in the world, and then say you cannot afford the entitlements. The very wealthy simply want to remain very wealthy.
Taxes will have to go up, there is not enough to cut, and the bond market will not tolerate continued irresponsible financial policy (pushing 10yr+ treasury yields up, edging us towards a debt spiral).
Agreed that you need to liberalize housing policy. But one mistake Canada made is that they took a huge influx of wealthy, skilled immigrants.
In the US, immigrants are much poorer and come in at the bottom of the labor and housing markets.
But yes, anything besides raising taxes is irresponsible.
Conservatives can't raise taxes. It's an article of faith, very literally, that taxes are bad, and that lowering taxes raises tax revenue.
I don’t know what Republicans are these days, but they aren’t economic conservatives. That they think the Laffer curve kicks in at the level taxes are today is one of the giveaways.
Elon lied? Again? Say it isn't so.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5141086-elon-musk-is-not...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/elon-musk-boosted-fals...
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/04/elon-musk-...
https://www.vox.com/politics/398583/musk-trump-doge-fraud-wa...
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-elon-musk-is-spreading-...