I hear it a lot from international folks I know. Cancelling vacations, turning down job offers, no longer sending their kids here for college, moving their data off US servers.
I’d rather be poor in the UK
I’d rather be chronically sick in the UK, that is if I’m not already wealthy and insured
I’d rather be in the US and middle class - particularly with inherited wealth
I choose to live in the UK as an high level (middle) manager with my similar status American wife
At least one of: cuts to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, or defense; or tax hikes; or some combination thereof. Anyone who claims to cut the deficit without making those difficult choices simply isn't solving the problem.
100% agree, though I think people would scream just as much (if not more) if DOGE were going after social security, medicaid, and/or defense vs. psuedorandom federal programs/orgs. I currently think we need "all of the above":
- Cuts to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and defense
- Tax hikes
That way nobody feels like they are being targetted; everyone should feel at least some pain from austerity measures.
Taxing the rich and corporations for their share instead of giving them unnecessary tax breaks that they will gladly accept while still unnecessarily firing large sums of workers. Not complicated.
Also it would help to actually pass budgets instead of continuing resolution brinkmanship. Previous efforts such as the Hoover Commissions resulted in bipartisan spending reductions without the mass chaos and deprivation of lifesaving medicine to tens of millions of people.
Republicans feigning concern about deficit or debt is fucking rich.
The top GOP priority in Congress right now, outside of ceding their constitutional responsibility, is searching for anyway to pass $4 trillion in tax cuts that will largely accumulate to the top 0.1%.
Most of MAGA is too distracted by culture wars tland identity politics to see the real robbery.
Any spending cut on that scale, ~7% of your GDP, will unavoidably cause a recession so hard the impacts won't be limited to just the USA.
Any tax hike at that scale will do similar, because that just changes who is doing the spending not the amount available in the economy to be spent.
Inflation is — or at least is supposed to — encourage spending by anyone simply holding money instead of creating wealth with it; this is supposed to create investment opportunities that grow the economy, this is supposed to automatically provide a greater tax base that automatically reduces any deficit.
I want to point out a couple of facts to anyone celebrating this.
0. A reduction in X spending by the government means a reduction in X income to businesses and households.
1. If you reduce the federal workforce, the private sector has to absorb them.
2. For the private sector to absorb them, they need the money to pay them.
3. If you say, cut $500 billion in salary from federal government, the private sector needs to come up with $500 billion extra income to pay those people.
4. The private sector will lose $500 billion in income because generally people spend what they earn. All those federal employees were buying from the private sector.
5. The private sector usually pays better than the government, therefore for every dollar "saved" in the government you probably need $1.5 dollars in revenue to absorb them in the private sector.
So given the facts above, I want to ask people who celebrate this, where will the private sector get the money to absorb these people when they lost in aggregate the same amount in revenue? The answer is they need to borrow. Which means the private sector racks up more debt. The debt they rack up will be exactly the amount (or more!) that the federal government doesn't spend.
Regarding point 3 the major point of reducing the civil service is that the service they're providing is not required or can be done far more efficiently with the private sector.
You can say this claim will be wrong but it's odd at the very least to ignore it.
They appear to be interested in monetary flow, for which such questions are irrelevant.
Even if the top level suggestion of 2 trillion eliminated fell entirely on people providing zero economic output (i.e. the cuts consisted of completely eliminating social security and all military/veteran pensions), and thus the private sector has no desire to absorb them at step 1, and consequently 2 and 3 didn't apply at all, the private sector still looses that much in revenue.
The US federal government had a lot of money going into people and activities that were contrary to Republican political values. Finding new structures through which government money can flow is just as much of a goal as removing the unwanted ones. The result should be a government that does valuable things for the American people. For USAID, the Department of Education, and others, their value proposition has been weakened by outsize expenditures that both increased bureaucracy and pushed socio-political agendas.
To your last point, the difference between private sector debt and federal government debt is the former has to pay it off or face consequences, while the latter never has to pay it and can simply print more money. Rather than taxing the rich, such a nation can simply expand the market for its own currency via decades of imperialist strategy. It is what it is. Anyway, exactly how much money you or I think the government should be printing per day doesn't change the fact that easy money leads to frivolous spending.
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times"
Who exactly would need 1.5x the $ to absorb these federal workers into the private sector? I think you have it backwards. With less competition from the federal government in the labor market, the private sector can now scoop up ex-federal talent for 2/3 of what they'd normally pay.
Wasteful spending in the private sector looks like yachts, lavish events, and mansions. In the government, wasteful spending often looks like perfection. Taking information security as an example, the private industry pushed for the NIST CSF because it was more efficient than the government's NIST RMF / SP 800-53. While the latter is more comprehensive, you end up with wasteful excesses like network printers needing FIPS 199 moderate risk control baselines.
Cuts to the managerial class, as has been advocated by Republicans, will reduce these excesses and push people into career paths that produce actual value. If it backfires and leads to an economic downturn, then fine, because I'm OK with property prices going down in one of the most expensive areas in the whole country.
> the difference between private sector debt and federal government debt is the former has to pay it off or face consequences
Absolutely not true. There are nation strategy-class companies. Whether or not the companies that have been bailed out are in that class is another matter, but it'd be stupid to think that a company should die just because the unfree market said so. That's certainly not how the Chinese have been playing this game.
If there is no corresponding tax cut, there will be a recession or depression. Even if there is a tax cut, there is no guarantee that money won’t be used for other things (to buy assets, save, or pay down debt).
Considering Trump and Musk are actively killing the CFPB, which was put in place after the last time the 2008 great recession, it'll likely be sooner and worse than people think.
Really, stay with the conversation here - what are the options that people will have if they lose their job because a "DOGE lead" deems their position no longer covered by statute? If they are ready to retire, then fine. But what about that 30 year old who just bought a house and had a kid?
If the private sector can't absorb them, even at the same level of income as they have now, what will they do?
How will they pay their mortgages or their rent? How will they put food on their table? How will they afford for any kind of healthcare?
Implicit in the "why does the private section have to absorb them?" is the belief that government workers are not deserving of their jobs and, in fact, are not deserving of any job as they are lazy or incompetent.
Perhaps that's not the particular thought that prompted the comment, but let's be honest - it's a common belief. We see it at the heart of the "return to work" cries that Musk and other MAGA supporters have been calling for -- people can't be trusted to do their work at home, they must be in a factory-like setting where their managers can oversee them. You know, crack the whip and all that.
So what's the plan for the displaced workers? Beyond their hardship, what's the expected impact on our overall economy? By what criteria shall we judge these actions as successful?
There is no plan, and the only expectation is chaos. Success will be judged by those who gain the most after the dust settles, and we should not fool ourselves to think that will include the typical person in the United States.
But I'm willing to be convinced. If there's an argument to be made for this "shove the nation off the cliff" approach, then let's hear it.
I asked this question because we don't live in a communist society. No one owes me a job just because I exist. I get a job because someone wants to hire me, and if no one wants to hire me, then I will be unemployed. When unemployed, I would get some small government assistance money, just so that I don't starve to death, and I would get free basic healthcare (medicaid), but I would probably need to move to low CoL area, and give up any luxuries I can no longer afford. This seems fair to me, but I'm open to discussion.
The memo specifically calls for initiating "large-scale reductions in force", focusing on those positions that are specifically covered by "statute or other law". That's not calling on government agencies to get better about cutting deadwood. It's calling for the wholesale elimination of positions that someone is filling right now, regardless of what that position does.
The people who may be losing their jobs may be losing them not because they're bad at them. Someone did want to hire them. That's why they have a job now. A job that may be going away for ideological reasons, and not good policy or sound choices.
These actions are not based on data that shows why this is most likely to achieve broadly supported goals based on the ideals of the United States. There is nothing to show how many people will be affected, what the likely impact on the private sector will be, and how that impact will be of overall benefit to society. It's a reactionary lashing out based this vague notion that "government is too big".
No one owes you a job because you exist, but I believe it's only fair that if you have a job, it's not taken away without cause. Otherwise you have no basis on which to make any long-term plans -- part of that whole "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" thing. Looking out for other people doesn't mean we live in a communist society, it means we live in a society that values making life better for more than just those at the top of the income ladder.
By the way, the people calling to eliminate jobs, and perhaps put displaced workers on medicaid, are often the same people calling to cut medicaid. Slap with the right, punch with the left.
How are these "large-scale reductions in force" different from recent mass layoffs in big tech? Are both equally bad? I work at a startup - they can terminate my employment at any time, for any reason. Do you think it's unfair? I can leave them at any time, for any reason. If you want to restrict their ability to fire me, then you should also restrict my ability to leave them, and I would object to that.
I believe that government has a responsibility to provide (very) basic resources for its citizens, regardless of employment status. I'm talking about social security and healthcare programs available to those in need. For example, a monthly check for $1,000 should cover basic living expenses (simple groceries, a room for rent in a poor area of a poor state, a simple cell phone, public transportation, etc), and medicaid should cover most common health problems. If someone wants more than that, they should acquire skills to do a job, convince others to hire them, and work well enough to keep the job. And if that job is gone (for any reason), they should be ready to acquire new skills to do a different job. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, they should be content with getting by on that welfare check.
> How are these "large-scale reductions in force" different from recent mass layoffs in big tech?
One is eliminating people in necessary to functions the executive branch is legally mandated to perform, the other is not.
> Are both equally bad?
Certainly not for the same reason; they are generally unrelated.
> I work at a startup - they can terminate my employment at any time, for any reason. Do you think it's unfair?
Whether private sector at-will employment is unfair is irrelevant here, so its just a distraction to even discuss it any significant way.
Executive branch officials are not the managers of a private sector firm, and the legal, ethical, and other constraints on their behavior are different. Aside from the fact that the government is limited in way private actors are not (public employees have a property interest in their employment and the government as an employer is still the government, and sondue process failures related to property interests of their employees, who are people and thus possess 5th Amendment rights, are a Constitutional violation), executive branch officials are generally given less leeway in law over employment (other than of narrow classes of mostly top executive officers) in executive branch departments (outside the Executive Office of the President) than is the case for private managers under the governing rules adopted in most private companies.
You're talking about something else. This discussion started from the claim that private sector has to absorb the eliminated government workers.
If I understand you correctly, you claim that necessary government positions have been eliminated, and therefore, government is unable to perform some of its important functions. If this is true, sooner or later these positions will be reinstated and filled: if enough people are negatively affected, their voices will be heard by the next election.
On the other hand, Twitter laid off ~80% of its employees, including roles seen by some as important, and yet, it's running just fine today, so I guess we'll see about the government.
> On the other hand, Twitter laid off ~80% of its employees, including roles seen by some as important, and yet, it's running just fine today, so I guess we'll see about the government.
Except for reportedly losing 84% of its revenue, and apart from getting into legal trouble by not having staff fulfilling legally required roles…
If the people of the USA went into this eyes wide open and actually want to strip the federal government down to the bone and turn it into something much more like the EU — where states are sovereign and the "federal" part that remains is the bare minimum for smoothing inter-state trade, freedom for states to leave the union when they feel like it, and only a very small fraction of each state's income is shared with other states — then I'm sure they'll be very happy with this outcome.
But… are you sure you meant to do that? 'cause one thing it ain't gonna do is make y'all "great again". EU doesn't even have a single unified military (that's a matter for member states); and despite the Euro existing, not all member states use it as their currency.
There's a lot of room between a loose union of independent countries, like EU, and a federal system like in US. There's a huge difference between a state like California, and a state like Louisiana. Perhaps we should let them govern themselves more.
Re: Twitter - did it lose its revenue because of the layoffs, or because of some stupid things Elon said/did?
> Re: Twitter - did it lose its revenue because of the layoffs, or because of some stupid things Elon said/did?
Both, in so far as one of the things he did was lay off content moderation and that this led to brands seeing their names and adverts associated with content that harmed those brands.
Compare Twitter to Tesla stock price to separate the effect of man himself from the layoffs: his personal gaffes have short-lived impacts on the price, but Tesla's stock price still went up.
I mean, yes, we can always choose to shrink the American economy and cause a recession or depression. We can certainly go down that path. It's just not a path most probably want to go down.
But at this point I'm rooting for pain and lots of it. It's literally the only way we're going to get this ruling party out of power. And even that might not be enough.
The dark part of me is like 'Ok, yes, I hope they implement their stupid plans so that people can see how stupid they are'. The sane part of me then thinks 'Well, a lot of people will be hurt and many die if they do.'
Well, it's kind of a trolley car-ish problem to me.
When there is no longer an option of zero people being harmed, we start naturally start thinking about which is the lesser amount of harm -- X people being harmed during a quick crash and burn of Trumpian rule, or Y people being harmed over a greater number of years of sustained Trumpian rule.
I do of course also hope that I am wrong about all of this.
Every government faces that with almost every decision. Every aircraft carrier represents something like 40 never-built schools or 15 never-built hospitals.
> I do of course also hope that I am wrong about all of this.
Every government faces that with almost every
decision. Every aircraft carrier represents
something like 40 never-built schools or 15
never-built hospitals.
Well, it's complicated, right? When the government spends money it doesn't really leave the economy. $10bil on an aircraft carrier is also tens of thousands of jobs... half of the money goes right back to the government in taxes... etc.
The USA has a workforce of something like 170 million. No matter how this is financed, no matter what form of government you have, their collective output is that of 170 million people.
You get some of them to build, maintain, and crew an aircraft carrier, then those specific people are not going to be available for building, maintaining, and staffing 40 or so schools.
That's not a realistic way of thinking about it. From multiple angles.
Back of the envelope math: there are about 26,000 sailors staffing the nation's aircraft carriers. Let's round it up to 50,000 to account for the folks who build them, admin, etc.
That's 0.03% of the available workforce. It's not a remotely significant reason why our school system isn't great.
Additionally, the demographic of people who build and serve on aircraft carriers likely does not overlap significantly with the people who would otherwise be staffing schools.
Have you ever seen a company that has an old guy as CEO who isn't very tech savvy, but has a golden boy employee that talks a whole load of shit in the CEO's ear but he's actually utterly incompetent? Watch this video from tonight and tell me that's not exactly what's going on. Warning: you will cringe.
Long ago, I sometimes pointed at the fact that China installs a "party-approver" on every committee they have as a stark contrast to the democratic, meritocratic US and one of the reasons why the West had been ahead in innovations.
I never thought I would live to see the day the US itself is having one of these. Wtf is this "DOGE team lead"? They will have power over newhires and policies at every federal agency?
I literally can't believe it. It is almost unreal. Sometimes I fantasize about what would happen if the world turn upside down tomorrow. I guess I now know how it actually feels...
