Elon and Vivek aren't selling two trillion dollars of efficiency.

in #trump5 days ago

1000057763.jpg

They're selling false hope with amateur accounting.

With the Trump administration, entitlement reform and military spending are both off the table, nothing can be done about the trillion a year on interest on the national debt without fiddling with rates or defaulting, and there's not enough left outside of those big budget items to find two trillion of savings in. It simply doesn't exist.

I consider myself more on the white pill side. For that matter, the whole point I'm making here is that Elon is selling an unrealistic utopia rather than promoting one myself.

I'm just being realistic here. Given the limitations, on the high end maybe they'll find 250b in efficiencies, and maybe 10 percent of those might have a chance at passing through Congress. I'd welcome that as a step in the right direction.

But taking entitlements, military spending, and debt service off the table as Trump has, there aren't 2t in efficiencies to be found in the remaining budget. They don't exist.