[izend]

I am skeptical that Elon/Vivek will actually cut any Federal spending as the only administration to actually reduce the number of Federal gov jobs was President Clinton from 1992 to 1997.

What I find very interesting is that in the early 1990s when the deficit hit 4.5% of GDP (1992) Congress actually viewed it as a major issue and decided to cut spending but now the deficit is above 6%+ of GDP and reducing spending is an extremely controversial topic.

[juancn]

Well, salaries are about 15% of the federal budget, you don't necessarily need to cut jobs to reduce spending.

You may even increase it and still reduce spending since it's such a small part of the spending.

[dvdhnt]

While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done.

For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.

[scoofy]

The idea that we've lived in this "deficits don't matter" fantasy for the last 25 years (45 years?) is that we have a situation in which nobody ever thinks about why the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Aside from simple path dependency, all of the foundational reasons why it became the reserve currency are hardly relevant any longer. So, we sit here driving the debt car as fast as we can, with no idea what is in front of us. Sure, it might work out, but the fact that many financial analysts don't put any risk premium on treasuries at this point just terrifies me.