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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2634 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 31, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So... what's the Elon deficit reduction strategy here? Get like 5-10% of the government to resign, maybe fire another 5-10%, then go to congress and say look we can spend 10-20% less on salaries, go ahead and pass a reduced budget through reconciliation?

This actually sounds not too crazy.

Hopefully losing 10-20% of the work force doesn't cause a corresponding 10-20% reduction in government revenues but... it's kind of hard to see how it would.

EDIT: maybe something's wrong with me but I consider this topic fun and not weighty which is why I posted it here in the Friday thread. Seems like it has created a more typical CW thread discussion. My bad.

How has your country devolved into this? You are letting an unelected bilionaire do whatever he wants? And you are ok with that? 'It sounds not too crazy' no it actually sounds absolutely nuts to anyone with a functioning brain. Even if the federal system is that bloated you think musk , with no specialized knowledge, and a bunch of his yes men will fix it without fucking up your country?

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Well, in a functional organization you would say we have $4 trillion in revenues and $6 trillion in expenses, year over year. This is obviously unsustainable. We need to cut $2 trillion in expenses or we go bankrupt.

So you ask every department head to produce plans to cut their spending by one third. It's hard but they do it and you implement the cuts and layoffs and move on.

That's not the government we have though.

In our government such a process would take years and the conclusion would be that we can't cut anything. The "experts" would not comply. They probably don't even know how to comply, because they've been shielded from "efficiency or death" forces their whole lives.

Faced with this, you can do it in reverse. Randomly shoot big holes in the agencies. Then drip money back into them. It'll be now be clear what roles were most essential and should be filled back in first.

Is this ideal? No. But what's even more not ideal is the current trajectory.

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