{"id":129322,"date":"2024-11-23T22:50:54","date_gmt":"2024-11-23T15:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129322"},"modified":"2024-11-23T22:50:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T15:50:54","slug":"elon-musk-wants-to-gut-the-government-like-he-did-at-twitter-but-his-private-sector-strategies-are-going-to-be-tested-at-doge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129322","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk wants to gut the government like he did at Twitter. But his private sector strategies are going to be tested at DOGE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk has a new job doing something he knows a great deal about: firing people. Lots of people. Now he\u2019s about to test his axing skills on the greatest downsizing challenge in American history.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>He is co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), recently formed by President-elect Donald Trump to cut back government regulations, dismiss unneeded workers, and save money. Musk\u2019s partner is Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech entrepreneur and candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Their ambition is staggering. In a recent <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> op-ed, they write that they anticipate \u201cmass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,\u201d which will be their primary tool for cutting costs. Ramaswamy has suggested firing 75% of federal employees.<\/p>\n<p>Musk looks like the ideal man for the job. He has sacked significant numbers of workers at <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/spacex\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/spacex\/\" rel=\"noopener\">SpaceX<\/a> and Tesla\u2014he\u2019s CEO of both\u2014but for sheer exuberant terminating, nothing can match his performance at <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/twitter\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>. When he bought the company in 2022 he began mass layoffs within a week, firing thousands of the company\u2019s 8,000 workers overnight. Some got the news by email. Others could only infer they were dismissed when they couldn\u2019t log into the internal computer system the next morning. A few were even fired by accident and were brought back. In following months he cashiered more. Six months after taking over, Musk told the BBC he had reduced the staff by more than 80%.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to tell exactly how X (as Musk renamed Twitter) has fared, since the company is no longer publicly traded, but signs aren\u2019t promising. Fidelity owns a minority share of X and reports its estimated value. Based on Fidelity\u2019s October estimate, X has lost 79% of its value since Musk took over.<\/p>\n<p>Will Musk bring the Twitter playbook to America\u2019s biggest employer, the federal government? It\u2019s easy to picture Washington trembling at the thought. But as other captains of industry have found, government is different from the private sector in some peculiar ways. Here\u2019s what Musk is up against. <\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 <strong>DOGE can\u2019t make it happen.<\/strong> Musk could fire employees of his companies in an eyeblink because he was CEO (and at Twitter, also majority owner). But DOGE \u201cdoesn\u2019t have any power,\u201d says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the center-right American Action Forum. \u201cThey\u2019re an outside advisory group who are going to generate ideas. They are essentially a very high-profile think tank.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 <strong>Dismissals depend on regulatory rollbacks.<\/strong> DOGE\u2019s stated procedure is to identify federal regulations that appear to be invalid under two Supreme Court decisions, from 2022 and 2024. President Trump will then nullify \u201cthousands of such regulations,\u201d Musk and Ramaswamy say in their op-ed. Fewer regulations mean a lighter workload and fewer employees. But while Trump can \u201cimmediately pause the enforcement of those regulations,\u201d they note, he must then \u201cinitiate the process of review and rescission,\u201d which can take a year or more and may not happen at all. Many regulations have constituencies with a voice in what happens. Bottom line, some regulations don\u2019t succumb easily.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 <strong>Dismissals, even if successful, won\u2019t save much money.<\/strong> Musk and Ramaswamy emphasize that cost savings are central to their mission, but labor costs are a small part of federal spending. The vast majority of what government spends goes out the door in the form of benefits\u2014Social Security, veterans\u2019 benefits, food stamps, and many more. All those benefits have powerful constituencies and are extremely difficult to reduce. Payrolls are not where the money is. Brian Riedl, a Washington-based economist who has been a Senate staffer and has worked for Republican officeholders, says, \u201cIf you eliminate 25% of all federal jobs, you would save roughly 1% of federal spending.\u201d Not that he thinks a 25% job reduction will happen. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s remotely workable to reduce the federal workforce by 20%, much less the 75% that Vivek Ramaswamy promises,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00b7 <strong>Federal workers will fight back.<\/strong> About one million federal employees belong to unions, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they are already preparing to take on the Trump administration. Trump has said he will impose an employee category called Schedule F, reclassifying career civil service employees as political employees, who lack civil service protections and can be fired quickly. Several government unions are trying to protect their members from being classified as Schedule F by appealing to the federal Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Even if the unions lose, they may be able to throw sand in the gears.<\/p>\n<p>Musk and Ramaswamy say their \u201ctop goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026\u2014the expiration date we have set for our project.\u201d Ostensibly that is to celebrate DOGE\u2019s work as America celebrates its 250<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary. Practically, it\u2019s to leave six months with Republican control of Congress in case DOGE\u2019s work requires legislation. Musk is accustomed to doing large-scale firings in days, but he\u2019ll likely need every moment he\u2019s got to accomplish the layoff of a lifetime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-cy=\"subscriptionPlea\"><b>How many degrees of separation are you from the globe&#8217;s most powerful business leaders? <\/b>Explore who made our brand-new list of the <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/ranking\/most-powerful-people\/?&amp;itm_source=fortune&amp;itm_medium=article_tout\" target=\"_self\" class=\"sc-93594058-0 fowfrQ  \" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/ranking\/most-powerful-people\/?&amp;itm_source=fortune&amp;itm_medium=article_tout\" rel=\"noopener\">100 Most Powerful People in Business<\/a>. Plus, learn about the metrics we used to make it.<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2024\/11\/23\/elon-musk-wants-to-gut-the-government-like-he-did-at-twitter-but-his-doge-committee-is-nothing-like-his-private-sector-power\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk has a new job doing something he knows a great deal about: firing people. Lots of people. Now he\u2019s about to test his axing skills on the greatest &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129322\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8629],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}