Over the previous few months, Elon Musk has labored his method again into the interior circle of Donald Trump — a circle he as soon as left over local weather change issues, again in a distinct time. Now, regardless of Trump’s obvious private dislike of Musk, it appears the previous President has large plans for the world’s richest man in a future administration: Setting Musk in command of huge cuts to authorities spending, totaling within the trillions of {dollars}.
Earlier this week, Trump got here out in favor of a fee to audit authorities spending, with the purpose of offsetting trillions in tax cuts by merely spending trillions much less. The maths type of virtually works out, for those who don’t take a look at it too onerous, however it will imply leaving Elon Musk in command of deciding which authorities applications keep and which go. From the Washington Post:
Trump’s advisers have mentioned the fee for months, and Musk has publicly expressed curiosity in it on X, the social media platform he owns. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, formally expressed his assist throughout a speech right here.
“This fee will develop an motion plan to completely get rid of fraud and improper funds inside six months,” Trump stated, including that the brand new fee would save “trillions of {dollars}.” Finances specialists have stated it’s potential a fee might determine tens of billions or presumably a whole lot of billions of {dollars} in authorities spending cuts however that it isn’t credible to think about the fee slicing trillions of {dollars} with out severely affecting federal companies.
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Now, the rising ties between Musk and Trump are set to be cemented via a governing physique that may in all probability put Musk on the middle of U.S. policymaking, if Trump wins a second time period. Regardless of potential conflicts of curiosity along with his sprawling enterprise empire, Musk would both chair or assist lead an impartial fee that may comb via 1000’s of federal applications and formally advocate which of them to chop, in line with the plan lengthy mentioned by Trump and plenty of of his prime advisers. Cuts to authorities spending would in all probability want congressional approval, however cuts to authorities laws might usually be no less than tried by Trump unilaterally, ought to he win the 2024 election.
This is able to be a transfer that matches proper in Musk’s wheelhouse, after he bought Twitter and instantly lower 80 p.c of the location’s employees. This has led to widespread technical issues on the location, a sequence of outages, and a surge in hate speech because of cuts to content material moderation, in addition to the platform’s unilateral ban in Brazil. Customers have run from Twitter in droves following the adjustments, however what occurs when these adjustments are made to one thing that may’t be fled?
Musk’s basic plan to cost-cutting seems to be merely working fewer individuals tougher, with out concern for burnout and even the essential performance of the service he’s having them make. The opportunity of this strategy being taken to the very operate of our authorities programs — issues like roads — is harrowing to say the least. Our infrastructure is rubbish sufficient as it’s.
